- The Problems You Face
- The Goals of Projects and Project Management
- How We Achieve These Goals
- Project Management Maturity
- Summary
How We Achieve These Goals
I’ve arranged the book based on several overriding themes. Although these themes weave throughout the text, I’ve divided the book into sections that focus on each theme:
Part I, “Understanding Projects and Project Management”—When properly supported, project management already defines sufficient tools and techniques to achieve project success.
Your role as an executive is to identify those aspects of project management that are critical to your organizational success and then to promote and improve those aspects. Chapter 2, “Project Management Framework and Structure,” and Chapter 3, “Project Definition and Planning,” cover project management to help you better understand the discipline for this purpose. These chapters also present key concepts needed for executive management and strategic planners for improving overall management, planning, and communication at the senior staff level. Even if you’re knowledgeable in basic project management, these chapters offer insight into those areas of project management needed for the overall architecture of the organization.
Part II, “Aligning Project Management with the Organization”—Projects are not ancillary activities to our real jobs; they are an integral part of all organizations. Successfully aligning project management within the organization involves three aspects: strategic, organizational, and process.
- Strategic alignment ensures that project goals align with and support organizational goals. When properly structured, this alignment reduces scope creep, overly dynamic priorities, resource shuffling, and activity waste. Fortunately, project management itself offers tools for such alignment.
- Organizational alignment integrates project resources and activities with the rest of the organization. We examine committees, teams, and other structures to help facilitate project success and resource utilization, and improve communication and decision making throughout the organization.
- Process alignment examines project management as a formal business process. By examining the interfaces among project management processes and other business processes, senior management can improve product hand-off, resource hand-off, and communication among all organizational activities.
Part III, “Project Management Oversight”—As with all organizational disciplines, project management must be managed.
As an executive, you are responsible for managing all disciplines employed within your area. Project management is no different. Each organization must employ sufficient oversight to make sure that work activities are being done correctly, that phase reviews occur at the right times and for the right reasons, that resources move smoothly between project work and other organizational work, that project managers correctly manage their budgets and finances, and that clients are satisfied.
- Part IV, “Projects as Capital Investments”—Projects are capital investments. Projects invest resources and capital to achieve goals. The project’s primary objective might be profit, more efficient processes (process improvement projects) that will save money over the long run, or increased market share to create more sales. The organization’s strategic plan incorporates multiple objectives, all designed to move the organization forward. Projects are the means by which you invest your capital and resources to obtain these objectives.
Part V, “Globalization and Resource Optimization”—Globalization and advanced techniques enable us to optimize resources. Globalization has created a true need for strategic outsourcing for both manufacturing and project management. I present techniques to add flexibility and improve the organization’s capability to outsource both projects and activities within projects.
I also present advance resource optimization techniques, including Dr. Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints, queuing theory applied to a dynamic project environment, centralized resourcing, and others.