This book provides a powerful insight into strategic portfolio management and its central role in the delivery of organisational strategy, maximisation of value creation, and efficient allocation of resources and capabilities to achieve organisational strategic objectives. The book makes a valuable contribution to the development of thinking on the translation of strategy into actionable work. Whether you are a senior manager building a high-performing strategic portfolio for your organisation or an academic searching for new perspectives on strategy execution through portfolio management, you will find great significance in this book. Twenty-eight chapters in four sections provide multiple perspectives on the topic, with in-depth guidance on organisational design for strategic portfolio management and covering all process, capability, and leadership aspects of strategic portfolio management. The book includes several detailed case studies for the effective deployment of strategic portfolios, bringing together theory and practice for strategic portfolio management. This book is particularly valuable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of project and portfolio management, strategic management, and leadership who are looking to expand their knowledge within the multi-project environment. Highly practical and logical in its structure, it also shows project management professionals how to effectively manage their business portfolios and align this with their business strategy.

This book examines how safety failings during the use of any designed product or system-be it a car, a building, or a chemical plant-can be mitigated through effective understanding of the conditions and controls surrounding its use. Drawing on historical failures and their own real-world experience, Dr Andy Painting and David England explain how corporate culture, engineering safety, personnel selection, and proper safety auditing are key ingredients to maintaining safety in all aspects of an organization's operations. This effective strategy is also crucial to linking back to the design of future products in establishing where operational failures have been identified and can therefore be "designed out" in future iterations. The book challenges silo thinking among the various safety-related disciplines and shows how this can be counter-productive to effective safety management. Effectively Managing the Case for Safety draws on key features from engineering, design, and health and safety processes, which, when used cohesively, promote a better working environment for everyone and help to reduce wasted time, money, and effort for any organization. Safety is tracked from the initial design stage through any product's entire service life and includes evidence of how safety affects, and is affected by, all those who interact with a product, system, or project. Following their first book, An Effective Strategy for Safe Design in Engineering and Construction, which demonstrated how current construction regulations can be used as a framework to ensure that safety is embedded into the design of virtually any product from machinery to buildings, this follow up book defines what safe is, how it is initially derived, and how the operational safety of any product, during its in-use phase, can be managed and assessed. The result is not only to ensure compliance with relevant regulations but also to actively ensure the ongoing safety of all those who interact with a product or project.

Business Principles for Landscape Contracting, fully revised and updated in its third edition, is an introduction to the application of business principles of financial management involved in setting up your own landscape contracting business and beginning your professional career. Appealing to students and professionals alike, it will build your knowledge of financial management tools and enable you to relate their applications to real-life business scenarios. Focusing on the importance of proactive financial management, the book serves as a primer for students in landscape architecture, contracting, and management courses and entrepreneurs within the landscape industry preparing to use business principles in practice. Topics covered include: Financial management and accountability Budget development Profitable pricing and estimating Project management Creating a lean culture Personnel management and employee productivity Professional development Economic sustainability.

The first book, in the brand new Routledge Introductions to Translation and Interpreting series, to provide a comprehensive accessible textbook for project management courses within translation studies. Written by an experienced scholar, instructor and professional, it is both the ideal set text for all PM courses, widely taught within translation studies and part of the European Masters in Translation Competence and for professionals working in the area. Carefully structured, drawing on relevant theory and wide-ranging practice and offering discussion points, assignment suggestions, guides to further reading and online resources through the Routledge Translation studies portal.

While innovation can be defined in many ways, the author sees it as a process. It is not the sudden eureka moment in the middle of the night, nor is it a clear and linear path towards a final destination. Instead, it involves a strong sense of creativity and curiosity. An innovative mind has a natural inclination towards out-of-the-box thinking. It involves a willingness to try something new, without fear or judgment, to develop something no one else has ever articulated. While the mindset comes naturally, it requires fuel to keep it running. Innovators are voracious readers and researchers. They feed their mindset all of the fuel it needs to stay informed and relevant in their field. Many of the same things can be said for the Lean mindset. Lean management doesn't happen overnight, and it is very rarely a clear and linear path to true Lean thinking. Some might consider Lean a subset of innovative thinking, while others see it in reverse. Regardless of the relationship's directionality, one thing is certain: You cannot have one without the other. This book follows John Riley, the CEO of a medium-sized valve company just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who will stop at nothing to create an innovative work environment. Through the ups and downs of his journey, he learns a number of Lean and innovative skills, strategies, and mindsets to help him build the business he's always envisioned for himself. Throughout the book, you see examples of both strong and poor innovative leadership skills demonstrated by each of the main characters. The key messages are ones that help leaders build and access a mindset insistent on continuous improvement. Leadership techniques and abilities that bolster creative thought and problem-solving are the most successful throughout this book. To be truly innovative, you can never stop driving the learning process. For this to happen, leaders need to recognize when there is a need for a change or improvement. This is the beauty of the marriage between Lean and innovation: They both require continuous learning and growth. The desire to improve is only one piece of this equation, however. The other is the willingness to act. Without both of these factors, true innovation will always be out of reach.

This book is a comprehensive and practical guide to project marketing - a crucial aspect of businesses worldwide. It encompasses a variety of key infrastructure projects such as roads, airports, ports, power, irrigation, commercial, and industrial buildings. The volume: * Provides key definitions and discusses concepts such as segmentation, target marketing, positioning in projects, and organizational buyer behaviour. * Draws and adapts from extant marketing theory and provides real-life case studies to demonstrate application of concepts. * Focuses on project marketing logic, marketing mix, negotiation techniques, and strategies to aid contracting/subcontracting firms to realize better pricing and project profitability. An essential handbook for professional marketers and researchers, this book will be indispensable for B-Schools, project managers, entrepreneurs, infrastructure corporations, and start-ups. It will serve as a key text to foster hassle-free relationships between different business actors and reduce roadblocks such as time and cost escalation, litigation, and the like.

The rise of the information age and the digital economy has dramatically changed engineering. With tremendous advances in computing and communication systems, causing major organizational upheaval, all fueled by complexity, globalization, short cycle times, and lean supply chains, the functions of engineers have significantly changed. Engineers must be technically savvy and have product management and costing skills all while working in a distributed and often unstable environment. This new edition textbook is updated to cover the integration of cost, risk, value, scheduling, and information technologies going beyond basic engineering economics. Engineering Economics of Life Cycle Cost Analysis, Second Edition offers a systems and life cycle or total ownership cost perspective. It presents advanced costing techniques such as simulation-based costing, decision analysis, complex systems costing, software, big data, and cloud computing estimation. Examples and problems demonstrating these techniques with real-world applications are also included. All engineers will find this book useful, but it is mainly written for systems engineers, engineering management, and industrial engineers along with graduate courses on advanced engineering economic analysis and cost management, and financial analysis for engineers. To assist with classroom teaching, the textbook provides an instructor's manual for qualified course adoption and downloadable Excel solutions.

Project management as a discipline has experienced near-exponential growth in its application across the business and not-for-profit sectors. This original, authoritative guide provides both practitioner and student researchers with a complete guide to research practice on project management. In Designs, Methods and Practices for Research of Project Management, Beverly Pasian has brought together original chapters from a veritable who's who of project management research including authors such as Harvey Maylor, Christophe Bredillet, Derek Walker, Miles Shepherd, Janice Thomas, Naomi Brookes and Darren Dalcher. The collection looks at research strategy, management, methodology, techniques as well as emerging topics such as social network analysis. The 38 chapters offer an international perspective with examples from a wide range of project management applications; engineering, construction, mega-projects, high-risk environments and social transformation. Each chapter includes tips and exercises for the research student, as well as a complete set of further references.

The primary aim of Project Management is to facilitate the successful completion of projects. For this reason it puts particular emphasis on the importance of careful preparation and strategic co-operation within the project team. The first part of this new textbook offers a description of the project-based approach to the work environment, an analysis of when such an approach is appropriate and an account of how to make projects work. In addition, this part of the book discusses the role of planning software within the project environment. Part Two of the book describes the practical tools and skills needed to tackle projects. A number of the skills outlined in Part Two are also relevant to learning contexts other than projects. This new edition offers additional material on the life-cycle of the project: from setting up to completing a project. New sections deal with skills such as brainstorming and decision making in the project group. The text makes for required reading for project management students everywhere.

This book provides administrators in public and non-profit organizations with direction and a framework from which to lead their organizations effectively. Taking a global approach to the issues administrators need to examine when managing a group of employees at any level (including budgeting and expenditures, forecasting, policy creation and execution, communication and reporting), this book explores the driving forces in organizational decision making. Author Nick Valcik takes a holistic view on organizational management, beginning with the core aspects of public organizations and the leadership competencies necessary to manage an organization successfully. Designed to be used on undergraduate and graduate courses in public administration and in public affairs programs, the book discusses the basics of organizational structure, delves into risk management issues, and offers a set of tools that can be used by administrators to make informed decisions based on actual data or documented processes. Throughout the book, real world case studies provide students and practitioners with a clear understanding of how exactly the right decision tool may be applied when facing a particular decision in any organization.

Managers in organisations must make rational decisions. Rational decision making is the opposite of intuitive decision making. It is a strict procedure utilising objective knowledge and logic. It involves identifying the problem to solve, gathering facts, identifying options and outcomes, analysing them, considering all the relationships and selecting the decision. Rational decision making requires support: methods and software tools. The identification of the problem to solve needs methods that would measure and evaluate the current situation. Identification and evaluation of options and analysis of the available possibilities involves analysis and optimisation methods. Incorporating intuition into rational decision making needs adequate methods that would translate ideas or observed behaviours into hard data. Communication, observation and opinions recording is hardly possible today without adequate software. Information and data that form the input, intermediate variables and the output must be stored, managed and made accessible in a user-friendly manner. Rational Decisions in Organisations: Theoretical and Practical Aspects presents selected recent developments in the support of the widely understood rational decision making in organisations, illustrated through case studies. The book shows not only the variety of perspectives involved in decision making, but also the variety of domains where rational decision support systems are needed. The case studies present decision making by medical doctors, students and managers of various universities, IT project teams, construction companies, banks and small and large manufacturing companies. Covering the richness of relationships in which the decisions should and must be taken, the book illustrates how modern organisations operate in chains and networks; they have multiple responsibilities, including social, legal, business and ethical duties. Nowadays, managers in organisations can make transparent decisions and consider a multitude of stakeholders and their diverse features, incorporating diverse criteria, using multiple types and drivers of information and decision-making patterns, and referring to numerous lessons learned. As the book makes clear, the marriage of theoretical ideas with the possibilities offered by technology can make the decisions in organisations more rational and, at the same time, more human.

A Cost Based Approach to Project Management: Planning and Controlling Construction Project Costs introduces early-career architects, construction managers, civil engineers, and facility managers to the essentials of delivering projects on-time and at cost. Drawing on the author's decades of experience managing marquee building and infrastructure projects around the world, this primer offers busy professionals a crash course in budgeting, cost estimating, scheduling, and cost control. Chapters break down the details of cost elements, structuring project costs, and integrating budget with schedule, providing novice project managers with the key skills to plan and execute construction projects with confidence and precision. Features: Illustrates the principles of project management and the essentials of cost planning and control with easy-to-understand examples from the construction industry Includes step-by-step details of project planning, cost estimating, and management processes Offers clear, cost-based methods for defining scope, preparing bids, and planning for contingencies, as well as monitoring progress and determining when to take remedial action Contains a user-friendly guide to project management acronyms and terminology Provides sample construction schedules, budgets, and progress report forms An ideal resource for self-study, on-the-job training, or courses in construction, architecture, or civil engineering project management, A Cost Based Approach to Project Management makes a worthy addition to the aspiring project manager's reference shelf.

In his ground-breaking book, Reinventing Communication, Mark Phillips shows how even the most mature organization can fail to deliver successful projects - and worse, how this can lead to an organization's demise. With clear examples, Mark reveals the underlying principles at work and introduces a revolutionary new technique for harnessing the power of communication to ensure long term success. For organizations of all sizes, this book changes the way we think about management and leadership. Mark makes his case by looking at teams and individuals that set out to deliver ambitious achievements in complex and challenging environments. We meet the leadership team that built the F-18 Super Hornet fighter jet, one of the US Navy's most successful programs. We discover the untraditional approach to risk used in building a new terminal at London's Heathrow airport. We draw lessons on corporate survival from the cat and mouse fight against IED's in Afghanistan, and are introduced to a website where online video gamers solved a critical piece of the AIDS puzzle using their gaming prowess. Reinventing Communication is about creating the conditions for performance and attaining long term success. Whether a start-up, a global enterprise or a government agency, this book shows us how to deliver ambitious achievements by getting communication right. It is a book that no manager, leader or innovator should be without.

Recognizing the importance of selecting and pursuing programs, projects, and operational work that add sustainable business value that benefits end users, the Project Management Institute (PMI (R)) issued its first Standard on Portfolio Management in 2006. In 2014, it launched the Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP (R)) credential-which several of the experts who contributed to this book earned-to recognize the advanced expertise required of practitioners in the field. Presenting information that is current with The Standard for Portfolio Management, Third Edition (2013); Portfolio Management: A Strategic Approach supplies in-depth treatment of the five domains and identifies best practices to ensure the organization has a balanced portfolio management that is critical to success. Following PMI's standard, the book is organized according to its five domains: strategic alignment, governance, portfolio performance management, portfolio risk management, and portfolio communications management. Each chapter presents the insight of different thought leaders in academia and business. Contributors from around the world, including the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Australia, supply a global perspective as to why portfolio management is essential for all types of organizations. They provide guidelines, examples, and models to consider, along with discussion and analysis of relevant literature in the field. Most chapters reference PMI standards, complement their concepts, and expand on the concepts and issues that the standards mention in passing or not at all. Overall, this is a must-have resource for anyone pursuing the PfMP (R) credential from PMI. For executives and practitioners in the field, it provides the concepts you will need to address the ever-changing complexities that impact your work. This book is also suitable as a textbook for universities offering courses on portfolio management.

The categorisation of analytical projects could help to simplify complexity reasonably and, at the same time, clarify the critical aspects of analytical initiatives. But how can this complex work be categorized? What makes it so complex? Data Analytics Initiatives: Managing Analytics for Success emphasizes that each analytics project is different. At the same time, analytics projects have many common aspects, and these features make them unique compared to other projects. Describing these commonalities helps to develop a conceptual understanding of analytical work. However, features specific to each initiative affects the entire analytics project lifecycle. Neglecting them by trying to use general approaches without tailoring them to each project can lead to failure. In addition to examining typical characteristics of the analytics project and how to categorise them, the book looks at specific types of projects, provides a high-level assessment of their characteristics from a risk perspective, and comments on the most common problems or challenges. The book also presents examples of questions that could be asked of relevant people to analyse an analytics project. These questions help to position properly the project and to find commonalities and general project challenges.

* Presents the first quantitative index to measure construction project management performance

This book is about the behaviour of systems. Systems are important, for we interact with them all the time, and many of the actions we take are influenced by a system - for example, the system of performance measures in an organisation influences, often very strongly, how individuals within that organisation behave. Furthermore, sometimes we are involved in the design of systems, as is any manager contributing to the definition of what those performance measures might be. That manager will want to ensure that all the proposed performance measures will drive the 'right' behaviours rather than (inadvertently) encouraging dysfunctional 'game playing', and so anticipating how the performance measurement system will work in practice is a vital part of a wise design process. Some of the systems with which we interact are local, such as your organisation's performance measurement system. Some systems, however, are distant, but nonetheless very real, such as the healthcare system, the education system, the legal system and the climate system. Systems, therefore, exist on all scales, from the local to the global. And all systems are complex, some hugely so. That's why understanding how systems behave can be very helpful. Systems are complex for two main reasons. First, the manner in which they behave over time can be very hard to anticipate - and anticipating the future sensibly is of course a key objective of management. Second, the 'entities' within a system can be connected together in very complex ways, so that an intervention 'here' can result in an effect 'there', perhaps a long time afterward. Sometimes this can be surprising, and so we talk of 'unintended consequences' - but this is of course a euphemism for 'because I didn't understand how this system behaves, I had not anticipated that'. Systems thinking, the subject matter of this book, is the disciplined study of systems, and causal loop diagrams - the 'pictures' of this 'picture book' - are a very insightful way to represent the connectedness of the entities from which any system is composed, so taming that system's complexity.

On the evidence of the authors of Advances in Project Management: Narrated Journeys in Unchartered Territory, there is a sea change coming. That change will affect the way projects are perceived, lead and governed, particularly in the context of the wider organisation to which they belong; whether that is in the public, private or not-for-profit sectors. Many organisations have struggled to apply the traditional models of project management to their new projects in the global environment. Anecdotal and evidence-based research confirms that projects continue to fail at an alarming rate. A major part of the build-up to failure is often the lack of adequate project management knowledge and experience. Advances in Project Management covers key areas of improvement in understanding and project capability further up the management chain; amongst strategy and senior decision makers and amongst professional project and programme managers. This collection, drawn from some of the world's leading practitioners and researchers and compiled by Professor Darren Dalcher of the National Centre for Project Management, provides those people and organisations who are involved with the developments in project management with the kind of structured information, new approaches and novel perspectives that will inform their thinking and their practice and improve their decisions.

* Introduces a new approach, project team performance, that can dramatically increase the probability of project success * Written by two renowned leaders of PMOs around the globe * Puts people back at the center of project management

This set brings together two essential books in understanding how to deliver and manage business transformation - A Handbook of Business Transformation Management Methodology and Business Transformation Essentials. The Handbook of Business Transformation Management Methodology providesa '360-degree' view on what business transformation means and how to manage it successfully. Suitable for business executives dealing with organizational change, illustrative case studies ensure this is also a valuable resource for academics interested in change and transformation management. Using a variety of case studies including: Allianz SE, Shell, SAP, Vodafone, and Mercedes-Benz, Business Transformation Essentials provides unprecedented insights into characteristics of current transformation programs and the potential that can be leveraged by applying a holistic transformation management approach.

__________________________ The definitive book on the Scrum methodology from its co-creator and the CEO of Scrum, Inc., Jeff Sutherland. Scrum is the revolutionary approach to project management and team building that has helped to transform everything from software companies to the US military to healthcare in major American hospitals. In this major new book its originator, Jeff Sutherland, explains precisely and step by step how it operates - and how it can be made to work for anyone, anywhere. Take the FBI attempt to digitize its records, for example. As with so many software projects the first attempt failed, having taken four years and cost over $400 million.Then the FBI turned to Scrum, and just over a year later unveiled a functioning system that cost less than a tenth of the first project and employed a tenth of the staff. And it's not just grand projects that Scrum can help with. Every organisation, whatever its size, constantly has to come to grips with delivering a product or service on time and on budget. Scrum shows you how. It explains how to define precisely what it is that you are seeking to achieve, how to set up the team to achieve it, and how to monitor progress until the project is successfully completed. Filled with practical examples drawn from all types and organisation it will make you rethink the fundamentals of successful management - and show you how to get things done however everyday or ambitious, however small or large your organisation. __________________________ 'Full of engaging stories and real-world examples. The project management method known as Scrum may be the most widely deployed productivity tool among high-tech companies. On a mission to put this tool into the hands of the broader business world for the first time, Jeff Sutherland succeeds brilliantly.' - ERIC RIES, New York Times bestselling author of THE LEAN STARTUP 'Engaging, persuasive and extremely practical... Scrum provides a simple framework for solving what seem like intractable and complicated work problems. Amazingly, this book will not only make your life at work and home easier, but also, better and happier.' - SHAWN ACHOR, New York Times bestselling author of BEFORE HAPPINESS and THE HAPPINESS ADVANTAGE 'Scrum is mandatory reading for any leader, whether they're leading troops on the battlefield or in the marketplace. The challenges of today's world don't permit the luxury of slow, inefficient work. Success requires tremendous speed, enormous productivity, and an unwavering commitment to achieving results. In other words, success requires Scrum.' - U.S. General BARRY McCAFFREY 'Jeff Sutherland is the master of creating high-performing teams. The subtitle of this book understates Scrum's impact. If you don't get three times the results in one-third the time, you aren't doing it right!' - SCOTT MAXWELL, Founder & Senior Managing Director, OpenView Venture Partners 'This deceptively simple system is the most powerful way I've seen to improve the effectiveness of any team. I started using it with my business and family halfway through reading the book. - LEO BABAUTA, creator of ZEN HABITS '[Scrum] dramatically increases productivity while reducing employees' frustrations with the typical corporate nonsense. This book is the best description I've seen of how this process can work across many industries. Senior leaders should not just read the book - they should do what Sutherland recommends.' - PROFESSOR JEFFREY PFEFFER, Stanford Business School; co-author of THE KNOWING-DOING GAP

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Take advantage of a powerful visual management tool for teams as you work together and deliver great results. It's been used by thousands of teams for project success! 59% of U.S. workers say that communication is their team's biggest obstacle to success, followed by accountability at 29% (Atlassian). High-Impact Tools for Teams explains a simple, powerful tool that helps team leaders and members align and get clarity on exactly who is responsible for each part of the team's most important activities and projects. The tool is complemented by 4 trust add-ons that help teams build trust and increase psychological safety, so every member can be confident in sharing ideas or concerns about obstacles the team may face. It's a proven tool for project teams, based on years of research, and thousands of teams are already using the Team Alignment Map to run effective "get-to-action meetings", give projects a good start and de-silo organizations. Co-author Alex Osterwalder is the international best-selling author who co-created the Business Model Canvas, a strategic management tool used by 1 million+ industry leaders globally. Plan as a team and know who does what Uncover and proactively remove the most likely obstacles to any project Boost team member contributions Run more effective team meetings Get more successful projects With the guidance of High-Impact Tools for Teams, you can be better prepared as a team leader or team member to plan effectively, reduce risks, and collaborate with others. Your team will be accountable and ready to deliver results!

The primary aim of Project Management is to facilitate the successful completion of projects. For this reason it puts particular emphasis on the importance of careful preparation and strategic co-operation within the project team. The first part of this new textbook offers a description of the project-based approach to the work environment, an analysis of when such an approach is appropriate and an account of how to make projects work. In addition, this part of the book discusses the role of planning software within the project environment. Part Two of the book describes the practical tools and skills needed to tackle projects. A number of the skills outlined in Part Two are also relevant to learning contexts other than projects. This new edition offers additional material on the life-cycle of the project: from setting up to completing a project. New sections deal with skills such as brainstorming and decision making in the project group. The text makes for required reading for project management students everywhere.