There are many myths about Artificial Intelligence (AI) relating to what it is and what it can and cannot do. The people making decisions on AI projects are often not technologically savvy and unable to find easy answers. The spending on and the returns from AI projects are not necessarily straightforward. Part of the reason for this is the lack of understanding of the impact of critical decision criteria. AI touches on many ethical concepts - data privacy, validity, and, more importantly, its potential misuse. AI often replaces human decision-making, as managers do not clearly understand the implications of those choices. This book provides an easy and accessible guide for practitioners without a technological background to understand AI. It guides the reader through the fundamental issues confronting decision-makers. It offers advice on 'how to ask relevant questions' using the 15 decision scales. There is currently no comparable book on the market that acts as a pocketbook management reference guide for the AI layman.

Systems Thinker's Toolbox: Tools for Managing Complexity provides more than 100 tools based on systems thinking and beyond. Each tool is described, and when necessary, examples are provided of how each of them can be used. Some of the simplest tools can be combined into more complex tools. The tools may be things such as lists, causal loops, and templates, as well as processes and methodologies. Key Features Provides an explanation of the two views of systems thinking; systemic and systematic thinking, and then shows how to perform each of them in a complimentary manner Presents a set of thinking tools that can be used to apply systems thinking to solving problems in project management, engineering, systems engineering, new product development, and business Describes the tools from simple such as lists, and goes on to more complex such as Categorized Requirements in Process (CRIP) charts, and then onto the processes Introduces new tools that have been tested with positive feedback Discusses a set of communication tools that can improve project reviews and communicating innovative ideas

This book presents a set of tools that will aid in deciding whether a project should go ahead, be improved, or abandoned altogether by pinpointing its vulnerabilities. It offers a review of project feasibility analysis, and more critically, psychodynamic aspects that are often neglected, including how stakeholders interact. It provides a complement to the common techniques used for analyzing technical, financial, and marketing feasibility. The goal is to identify "hidden truths" and eliminate those gray areas that jeopardize the success of a given project. The focus is on uncovering points of vulnerabilities in four key aspects of a project: People, Power, Processes, and Plan.

This book is a must-have resource for those engineering professionals seeking out best practice in engineering leadership and innovation. It is underpinned by years of applied experience in engineering settings, and is designed to develop and prepare engineers as leaders to accept the technical and managerial challenges that they will face as professionals At a time when engineering and innovation in technology is of importance on so many fronts, this text encourages engineers and technical professionals to become effective, socially conscious leaders and innovators. The text and course material is designed to create an environment of interactive, high-engagement learning that will produce lifelong skills. Some of the many benefits of this book include: Accompanying notes, instructor's manual, sample syllabi for qualifying textbook adoption; A complementary website with a wealth of ancillary resources; Case studies in STEM contexts; An international approach, underpinned by years of experience in US settings; Practical advice on how to distinguish yourself as an engineering leader; A solid grounding in ethics and professional responsibility. Drawing together best practice in engineering leadership education, and current research in the field, this book is an essential read for those wishing to develop expertise in engineering leadership. Current professionals in the field, educators as well as students of engineering wishing to excel, will all be particularly interested readers.

Winner of the IIE Book of the Month for June 2012 A project can be simple or complex. In each case, proven project management processes must be followed. In all cases of project management implementation, control must be exercised in order to assure that project objectives are achieved. Statistical Techniques for Project Control seamlessly integrates qualitative and quantitative tools and techniques for project control. It fills the void that exists in the application of statistical techniques to project control. The book begins by defining the fundamentals of project management then explores how to temper quantitative analysis with qualitative human judgment that makes project control nebulous but also offers opportunities to innovate and be creative in achieving control. The authors then discuss the three factors (time, budget, and performance) that form the basis of the operating characteristics of a project that also help determine the basis for project control. They then focus on computational network techniques for project schedule (time) control. Although designed as a practical guide for project management professionals, the book also appeals to students, researchers, and instructors.

* The first real AI in project management book on the market published by a respected press * Provides behind-the-scenes insights on what technology providers are planning for project managers * Explores how AI will reinvent project, programme, and portfolio management, allowing project managers to get back to focusing on people

Ensure that your projects succeed every time Whether you are organising an important event or heading up a large team, running a project can be a daunting process. Spiralling costs and missed deadlines are part of everyday life for many project managers - in fact, more projects fail than succeed! But project management doesn't have to be this way. It is possible to manage projects that consistently meet deadlines and come in within budget. Brilliant Project Management shows you how. Drawing on over 30 years of experience, you'll discover how to ensure your projects succeed every time. * Make a success of any project Deliver on your promises Save money, time and your sanity! It's the ultimate guide to becoming a brilliant project manager.

The Stakeholder Perspective places people at the center of both projects and project management. It gives to the project management community a helpful, innovative, stakeholder-centered approach to increase projects' delivered value and success rate. It presents a logical model also called the "Stakeholder Perspective," which acts as the reference point in a structured path to effectiveness. Starting from the analysis of a project's stakeholders, the model integrates both rational and relational innovative approaches. Its continuous focus on stakeholder requirements and expectations helps to set a proper path, and to maintain it, in order to target success and to achieve goals in a variety of projects with different size and complexity. The book presents a set of innovative and immediately applicable techniques for effective stakeholder identification and classification, as well as analysis of stakeholder requirements and expectations, key stakeholders management, stakeholder network management, and, more generally, stakeholder relationship management. The proposed stakeholder classification model consists of just four communities, each one based on the commonality of main interests and behavior. This model features an accurate and stable identification process to increase effective communication and drastic reduce relationship complexity. A systemic approach is proposed to analyze both stakeholder requirements and expectations. The approach aids in detecting otherwise unclear stakeholder requirements and/or hidden stakeholder expectations. An interactive communication model is presented along with its individual and organizational frames of reference. Also presented are relevant cues to maximize effective and purposeful communication with key stakeholders as well as with the stakeholder network. The importance of satisfying not only the project requirements but also the stakeholder expectations is demonstrated to be the critical success factor in all projects. An innovative approach based on the perceived value and key performance indicators shows how to manage different levels of project complexity. The book also defines a complete structured path to relationship effectiveness called "Relationship Management Project," which can be tailored to enhance stakeholder and communication management processes in each one of the project management process groups (i.e. initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing). The book concludes with a look ahead at Project Management X.0 and the stakeholder-centered evolution of both project and portfolio management.

Project management disciplines have been a part of IT for many years. Why then, are so many challenges still directly associated with how a project is managed? Many projects fail for a myriad of reasons; most, however, stem from poor or inadequate project evaluation and performance appraisal, while, improved project planning and direction is considered to be one of the key factors to IT project success. Eriona Shtembari arranges evaluation methods and techniques into three groups, managerial-financial-and-development. This book explores the process of project evaluation and the purposes of evaluation, given its strong relationship to the success of the project. It examines IT project evaluation; identifies methods and techniques to be used throughout the project life cycle; examines the benefits of project evaluation and proposes a systematic approach/framework of project evaluation to serve as a tool for successful project management. Shtembari analyses the most up-to-date research relating to the process and methods/techniques of project evaluation, throughout the project life cycle. From the systematic literature review, she identifies the most usable methods and techniques in project evaluation and focuses on the adequacy of these methods and techniques in the service sector. The theoretical underpinning of the book, serves as a base to interpret the interviews in the case study and build a theory as to how the project evaluation context relates to the proposed scientific theory. The findings in this book provide solutions for practitioners to help them boost the evaluation framework and consequently improve their IT project management.

There are many myths about Artificial Intelligence (AI) relating to what it is and what it can and cannot do. The people making decisions on AI projects are often not technologically savvy and unable to find easy answers. The spending on and the returns from AI projects are not necessarily straightforward. Part of the reason for this is the lack of understanding of the impact of critical decision criteria. AI touches on many ethical concepts - data privacy, validity, and, more importantly, its potential misuse. AI often replaces human decision-making, as managers do not clearly understand the implications of those choices. This book provides an easy and accessible guide for practitioners without a technological background to understand AI. It guides the reader through the fundamental issues confronting decision-makers. It offers advice on 'how to ask relevant questions' using the 15 decision scales. There is currently no comparable book on the market that acts as a pocketbook management reference guide for the AI layman.

Project risk management is regarded as a necessary dimension of effective project delivery. Current practices tend to focus on tangible issues such as late delivery of equipment or the implications of technology. This book introduces a framework to identify emergent behavior-centric intangible risks and the conditions that initiate them. Decision Making in Risk Management: Quantifying Intangible Risk Factors in Projects identifies the quantitative measures to assess behavior-induced risks by presenting a framework that limits the interpersonal tension of addressing behavioral risks. Included in the book is an illustrative case study from the oil and gas sector that demonstrates the use of the framework. The missing dimension of behavior-centric intangible risk factors in current risk identification is explored. The book goes on to cover management processes, providing a systematic analytical approach to mitigate subjectivity when addressing behavioral risks in projects. This book is useful to those working in the fields of Project Management, Systems Engineering, Risk Management, and Behavioral Science.

The global business environment has never been so complex, making supply chains more fragile than ever. A stable business environment seems like a distant dream in today's global marketplace; instability, not stability, has become the norm. Anti-globalization and nationalization, coupled with populist movements and transnational terrorism, just to name a few targeting global supply chains, now pose significant challenges and risks when doing business across the globe. To address such issues, Political Risk Management for the Global Supply Chain: Provides an overview of basic political terminology and political risk management Presents the basic processes of political risk management Examines the current and future impacts of political events on global supply chains By putting aside the passions that politics can raise, the book aims to objectively look at political risk management. Topics covered include: Identifying different categories of political risk Understanding the relationship of political risk management, enterprise risk management, supply chain, project management, change management, and business continuity Laying the groundwork for efficient and effective political risk management Evaluating the effectiveness of responses The book begins with an overview on why political risk management is an important yet overlooked topic and the corresponding consequences if it is ignored or overlookedby enterprises and their global supply chains. Next, it provides systemic and systematic perspectives on political risk management and explains why the topic is more important than ever. Most important, it provides a framework that enterprises, regardless of nationality, can use to develop and deploy to manage political risks. The book concludes by discussing the full spectrum of developing, deploying, testing, and maintaining processes to conduct political risk management.

It has been almost 20 years since the Institute of Medicine released the seminal report titled, Crossing the Quality Chasm. In it, the IoM identified six domains of care quality (safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable, and patient-centric) and noted a huge gap between the current state and the desired state. Although this report received a great deal of attention, sadly there has been little progress in these areas. In the U.S., healthcare still has huge disparities, is inefficient, and is fragmented with delays in care that are often unsafe. Most U.S. citizens are expected to suffer from a diagnostic error sometime during their lifetime, not receive a large fraction of recommended care, and pay for one of the most expensive systems in the world. Much has been written about quality improvement over the years but many prominent quality and safety experts. Yet progress has been slow. Some have called on the healthcare professions to look outside of healthcare to other industries using examples in nuclear power and airlines for safety, the hotel and entertainment industry for a 'customer' focus, and the automotive industry, particularly Toyota for efficiency (Lean). This book by Dr. Oppenheim on lean healthcare systems engineering (LHSE) is a fresh approach that brings forth concepts that systems engineers have used in huge national defense projects. What's unique in this book is that these powerful system engineering tools are modified to be able to address smaller sized healthcare problems that still involve similar problems in fragmentation and poor communication and coordination. This book is an invaluable reference for a new powerful process named Lean Healthcare Systems Engineering (LHSE) for managing workflow and care improvement projects in all clinical environments. The book applies to ambulatory clinics and hospitals of all types including operating rooms, emergency departments, and ancillary departments, clinical and imaging laboratories, pharmacies, and population health. The book presents a generic rigorous but not mathematical step-by-step process of integrated healthcare, systems engineering and Lean. The book also contains the first major product created with the LHSE process, namely tabularized summaries of representative projects in healthcare delivery applications, called Lean Enablers for Healthcare Projects. Each full-page enabler table lists the challenges and wastes, powerful improvement goals, risks, and expected benefits, and some useful descriptions of the healthcare system of interest. The book provides user-friendly solutions to major problems in healthcare delivery operations in all clinical environments, addressing fragmentation, wastes, wrong incentives, ad-hoc and stove-piped management, lack of optimized processes, hierarchy gradient, lack of systems thinking, "blaming and shaming culture", burnout of providers and many others.

A Sensible Guide to Program Management Professional (PgMP) (R) Success is for program managers preparing to take the PgMP exam based on The Standard for Program Management - 4th Edition (PgM4 Standard). It is designed for busy professionals whose responsibilities have taken them into the realm of coordinating, facilitating, managing, and leading programs. Program managers are leaders who are directly managing large amounts of project resources for their organizations. This study guide addresses three main concerns facing PgMP exam candidates: What are the essential concepts, processes, and tools that form the foundation of today's program management? Since program management is still an emerging profession with professionals often working in different ways, what does this mean for a "standard" exam? More specifically, how does that impact your ability to pass the PgMP exam? What is the best way to prepare for the PgMP exam? To address the first concern, this book highlights the underlying rationale for program management: why it exists in organizations; why it is becoming ever more important; what programs are, especially for the purpose of passing the exam; how to think like a portfolio manager; and what the most important concepts, processes, and tools are for this profession. By simplifying complex ideas and communicating them in plain English with relevant examples, this book aims to help readers not only to pass the PgMP exam but also to serve as an essential guide for program managers. For the second concern, this book differs from other study guides by describing the author's personal experience as a program manager and addressing the most pressing questions for each of the performance domains in The Standard for Program Management. To address the last concern, this book contains 420 practice questions, access to an online exam simulator and an online PgMP community, and a time-tested approach for passing the PgMP exam.

Business Agility is an approach that gives the right business flexibility and fast decision-making in a volatile environment, providing a great capacity for innovation, adaptation and change. Businesses everywhere are trying to 'get business agile' - but it's not easy to adapt to becoming this adaptive. How can conventional organisations succeed in this transformation? In this book, project and change management expert Peter Taylor walks you through the change process step by step, providing a tried and tested transformation roadmap: benefits are outlined, solutions to common challenges offered, and tried and tested methods and tools provided. He guides you towards a decentralised management style that offers more successful decision making through collaboration. By reducing processes, adjusting the governance and believing in 'the power of the people' to deliver simple success in a time of complex demand, the guidance in this book will help any manager get Business Agile.

This book examines the management of three projects from the nineteenth century which led to substantial business transformation: the Stockton to Darlington Railway, the US Transcontinental Railroad and the Manchester Ship Canal. The lessons learned are of great relevance to contemporary project management, particularly those concerned with disruptive technology. The book addresses a wide range of project management topics associated with transformation. These include value management, sponsorship, governance, partnerships, opportunity management, project culture and morale, project complexity, uncertainty, prototyping and piloting, agility, innovation, risk and knowledge management.

Exploring the practices developed by remote teams to maintain trust across cultures, this book offers both theoretical and practical resources to enable better working in challenging contexts of project work. This book emphasizes building trust between team members from a practice perspective, meaning patterns of collective, shared activities that are produced and reproduced within the virtual team with the purpose of developing team trust. The author explores the trust practices that members of remote project teams use to describe their relationships and interactions. Team trust practices are powerful organizational tools for members of remote cross-cultural teams, influencing team decision-making and facilitating team effectiveness. This book offers extensive descriptions of team practices that build and maintain trust in virtual teams in two different cultures: Germany and Singapore. This is a unique contribution as it offers case studies from project teams that were observed and interviewed during their work and provides readers an in-depth, contextual analysis of the trust practices that virtual project teams develop, which previous research has overlooked. This book will appeal to researchers and graduate students in MBA programs studying project management, human resource management, and strategic leadership. This book is also of direct interest to many practitioners, particularly management consultants and project managers of virtual, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary project teams.

Large infrastructure projects generally involve multiple stakeholders such as government parties, local communities, and private organizations. New projects can create tensions between different stakeholder groups because different groups naturally have different interests and opinions. This book offers a view of how stakeholders are able to influence the project management's decision-making process as the project proceeds from the investment preparation phase, to the project execution phase, and on to the operations phase through various methods such as protests, legal battles, and even illegal activities. This book provides multiple case studies in aviation industry reflecting how large projects create dynamic contexts for stakeholder management and stakeholder behaviour as the project moves through different phases of its lifecycle.

"I am happy to recommend this work. I believe in the principles presented in it and identify with its context. Due to the lack of knowledge on the subject in the market, it is a topic that must be made known. The book should be in the library of all project and change managers."- Paul Dinsmore, PMI Fellow "Every manager should integrate HCMBOK (R) practices into their project management methodology in order to fully develop their work. This book addresses a simple and practical way that the critical component in organizational change management can be applied to projects of all kinds: the human factor."- Bruno Machado, Director, Project Management Office, Grupo Anima Educacao "We live in a time of change, speed, and an avalanche of information. It is still very difficult for most companies to change their organizational culture efficiently. This book makes us reflect upon the crucial element in any change, and which most managers do not place in the foreground-the people." - Joyce Meyer, CEO, iDigo "In today's constantly changing world, the Project Manager must have sensitivity to how people react to change. Knowing a method that provides a structured way to take care of the human aspect is a key factor in the success of any project! HCMBOK (R) offers a simple and practical approach to managing change, which can be easily incorporated into the project management routine, providing amazing results."- Pedro Augusto Cardoso da Silva, Engineering Director, METRORIO This reference starts by presenting the concept of change management, its players, strategies, and applicable models. In the second part, the book covers the set of good practices, methodology, and tools known as the HCMBOK (R)- Human Change Management Body of Knowledge. The third part introduces the concept of the Change Management Office (CMO) and its relation to the strategic planning of an organization. The book concludes with the competencies essential for a change manager, an approach to agile methodologies, and a model for managing cultural change.

This book offers a new understanding of innovation in the built environment. The ways meaning of innovation is constructed has important implications for policymakers, project managers, academics and students. Through a longitudinal research study into innovation in firms and projects, the book addresses some key themes, challenges and concerns that practitioners face when managing innovation in the built environment. It examines the key drivers for innovation in the construction, engineering and infrastructure firms and projects. In particular, the questions of how and why innovation becomes recognised and sustained over time are explored. Different theoretical perspectives are considered to explain different aspects of innovation. This includes sensemaking, organisational and individual identity, storytelling and narration. The book has practical implications for how organisational activities become labelled as 'innovation' and for what purpose. It shares some lived stories of innovation as mobilised by practising managers. The connectivity between the formal narratives of innovation at the policy level and the lived narratives of innovation articulated by practitioners is explored. Combining the theory with practice, this book presents an insightful view on the implications of innovation in the business world today.

Transformation and Your New EHR offers a robust communication and change leadership approach to support electronic health record (EHR) implementations and transformation journeys. This book highlights the approach and philosophy of communication, change leadership, and systems and process design, giving readers a practical view into the successes and failures that can be experienced throughout the evolution of an EHR implementation.

The highly competitive and globalized software market is creating pressure on software companies. Given the current boundary conditions, it is critical to continuously increase time-to-market and reduce development costs. In parallel, driven by private life experiences with mobile computing devices, the World Wide Web and software-based services, peoples general expectations with regards to software are growing. They expect software that is simple and joyful to use. In the light of the changes that have taken place in recent years, software companies need to fundamentally reconsider the way they develop and deliver software to their customers.

This book introduces fundamentals, trends and best practices in the software industry from a threefold perspective which equally takes into account design, management, and development of software. It demonstrates how cross-functional integration can be leveraged by software companies to successfully build software for people. Professionals from business and academia give an overview on state-of-the-art knowledge and report on key insights from their real-life experience. They provide guidance and hands-on recommendation on how to create winning products. This combined perspective fosters the transfer of knowledge between research and practice and offers a high practical value for both sides.

The book targets both, practitioners and academics looking for successfully building software in the future. It is directed at Managing Directors of software companies, Software Project Managers, Product Managers and Designers, Software Developers as well as academics and students in the area of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), and Innovation Management. "

A Sensible Guide to Program Management Professional (PgMP) (R) Success is for program managers preparing to take the PgMP exam based on The Standard for Program Management - 4th Edition (PgM4 Standard). It is designed for busy professionals whose responsibilities have taken them into the realm of coordinating, facilitating, managing, and leading programs. Program managers are leaders who are directly managing large amounts of project resources for their organizations. This study guide addresses three main concerns facing PgMP exam candidates: What are the essential concepts, processes, and tools that form the foundation of today's program management? Since program management is still an emerging profession with professionals often working in different ways, what does this mean for a "standard" exam? More specifically, how does that impact your ability to pass the PgMP exam? What is the best way to prepare for the PgMP exam? To address the first concern, this book highlights the underlying rationale for program management: why it exists in organizations; why it is becoming ever more important; what programs are, especially for the purpose of passing the exam; how to think like a portfolio manager; and what the most important concepts, processes, and tools are for this profession. By simplifying complex ideas and communicating them in plain English with relevant examples, this book aims to help readers not only to pass the PgMP exam but also to serve as an essential guide for program managers. For the second concern, this book differs from other study guides by describing the author's personal experience as a program manager and addressing the most pressing questions for each of the performance domains in The Standard for Program Management. To address the last concern, this book contains 420 practice questions, access to an online exam simulator and an online PgMP community, and a time-tested approach for passing the PgMP exam.

Using the example of four Taiwanese brand-name multinational companies, this study seeks to unpack the relationship between project team performance measurement systems and new product success/failure. It examines the use of performance measurement results and the resulting impact on team-member behaviour and functional departments.

In an increasingly globalised built environment industry, achieving higher levels of integration across organisational and software boundaries can lead to improved economic, social and environmental outcomes. This book is the direct result of a collaborative global network of industry and academic researchers spread across nine countries as part of CIB's (International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction) Task Group 90 (TG90) Information Integration in Construction (IICON). The book provides a broad view of some of the opportunities and challenges brought by integrating information across organisational and system boundaries in the built environment industry. Chapters cover a large range of topics and are separated into three sections: resources, processes and added value. They provide a much-needed international perspective on a current global evolution in the industry and present leading original research and valuable lessons for researchers, industry practitioners, government clients and policy makers across the industry. Key features include: a broad range of topics that are not covered elsewhere in the literature; contributions from a diverse group of industry research leaders from across the globe; exemplar case studies providing real-world examples of where information integration has been a key factor for success or lack thereof has been at the root cause of failure; an analysis of future priority areas for research and development investment as well as their strategic implications for public and private decision-makers; the book will deliver innovation in best practice methodology for information sharing across disciplines and between the design, construction and asset management sectors.