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Books > Business & Economics > Business & management > Management & management techniques > Project management
This is a design guide for architects, engineers and contractors concerning the principles and application of design management. This book addresses the value that design management and design managers contribute to construction projects. As part of the PocketArchitecture series, Design Management is divided into two parts: Fundamentals and Application. In Part 1, Fundamentals, the chapters address the why, what, how and when questions in a simple and informative style, illustrated with vignettes from design management professionals. In Part 2, case studies from Colombia, Norway and the USA represent unique examples of the application of design management. This book offers a concise overview of design management for postgraduate students and early career design managers.
Lean and Six Sigma initiatives are designed to enable sustained improvements in your company or organization's efficiency and competitiveness. As with other improvement strategies they are dependent on two things, effective management and your ability to automate or digitize elements of your business process. Lean and Digitize provides you with a convincing picture of each of these elements (process improvement, digitization and the management of both) to help you eliminate waste, improve process and service, and better align your information and communications technology with your strategic objectives. Bernardo Nicoletti analyses and reviews the development of automation and telecommunications systems in the context of quality management and process improvement. He uses case examples to illustrate organizational and management approaches to implementation. These, along with his practical guidance, will help you make sense of the complexity, benefits and interrelations between these different elements. The text shows you on the one hand, how to integrate information and communication systems into your process improvement projects and, on the other, how to align information and communication projects with your quality strategy. Without a holistic approach to technology and quality improvement, your initiatives run the risk of being misdirected or simply running out of steam. Changes of this kind will never be easy but at least if you follow the advice in Lean and Digitize you will significantly increase your chances of success.
This book provides events management students with an accessible and essential introduction to project management. Written by both academics and industry experts, Events Project Management offers a unique blend of theory and practice to encourage and contextualise project management requirements within events settings. Key questions include: What is project management? How does it connect to events management? What is effective project management within the events sector? How does academic theory connect to practice? The book is coherently structured into 12 chapters covering crucial event management topics such as stakeholders, supply chain management, project management tools and techniques, and financial and legal issues. Guides, templates, case study examples, industry tips and activity tasks are integrated in the text and online to show practice and aid knowledge. Written in an engaging style, this text offers the reader a thorough understanding of how to successfully project manage an event from the creative idea to the concrete product. It is essential reading for all events management students.
Parametric cost estimating models are flexible tools which bring engineering, scientific and mathematical rigour to cost and schedule estimating, but great tools alone will not keep programs affordable. Tools must be applied as part of a credible process if estimates and analyses are to be accepted. Complex major projects involving engineering, hardware, software, service and IT, all suffer from two basic problems: the project sponsors often struggle to specify the project effectively, and project managers find themselves wrestling with unpredicted cost or schedule overruns. Everyone wants to be successful with the tools and solutions they use, so this book is a comprehensive collection of methods with proven success. The applications described by Dale Shermon and his co-authors have evolved over 30 years of cost engineering experience during which time they have been matured by the parametric community. Each chapter explores a different application of parametrics, based on real-life case examples, providing you with a detailed guide to the rationale and value of cost engineering in a different industry or program context. Systems Cost Engineering will help cost engineers, project and program directors, and the champions that support them, to understand and apply parametrics to ensure that their programs: * offer a credible analysis of alternative cost options * are never initiated with insufficient funding because of inaccurate estimates of cost or quantification of risks * are never diverted from their objective because of a lack of credible cost management * share and communicate knowledge of realistic and dynamic cost and productivity metrics amongst the program team * are never derailed by surprise cost overruns or schedule delays The information in this book will give projects sponsors and bid managers confidence in the business case that they are developing and enable them to communicate a clear and transparent picture of the risks, opportunities and benefits to stakeholders and project owners.
In this very distinctive book, Images of Projects challenges how we think about projects in the most fundamental way: it rejects outright the idea of a one 'best way' to view all projects and also the idea of following a prescriptive approach. In contrast, Images of Projects seeks to encourage a more pragmatic and reflective approach, based on deliberately seeing projects from multiple perspectives, exploring the insights and implications which flow from these, and crafting appropriate action strategies in complex situations. Based on real examples and the authors' work over the last ten years, Images of Projects presents seven pragmatic images for making sense of the complex realities of projects. Illustrated using various models, these images are presented in ways that allow the reader to reflect upon their own mental models in relation to the different perspectives in this book.
Winner of 2020 PMI David I. Cleland Project Management Literature Award This book is a complete project management toolkit for project leaders in business, research and industry. Projects are approved and financed to generate benefits. Project Management: A Benefit Realisation Approach proposes a complete framework that supports this objective - from project selection and definition, through execution, and beyond implementation of deliverables until benefits are secured. The book is the first to explain the creation of organisational value by suggesting a complete, internally-consistent and theoretically rigorous benefit-focused project management methodology, supported with an analytical technique: benefit engineering. Benefit engineering offers a practical approach to the design and maintenance of an organisation's project portfolio. Building upon the authors' earlier successful book, Project Management for the Creation of Organisational Value, this comprehensively revised and expanded new book contains the addition of new chapters on project realisation. The book offers a rigorous explanation of how benefits emerge from a project. This approach is developed and strengthened - resulting in a completely client-oriented view of a project. Senior executives, practitioners, students and academics will find in this book a comprehensive guide to the conduct of projects, which includes robust models, a set of consistent principles, an integrated glossary, enabling tools, illustrative examples and case studies.
Global virtual teams (GVTs) have evolved as a common work structure in multinational corporations due to their efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The cultural differences can produce great benefits in terms of perspective, creativity, and innovation, but can also exacerbate interpersonal tensions, miscommunications, and clashing decision-making behaviors. This book outlines cultural competencies specific to GVTs and sheds light on management strategies for creating an optimal inter-cultural GVT environment. It covers theory, decision making strategies, and activities for cultural competence and problem resolution, all told through vignettes and lessons-learned.
In Project Risk Governance, Dieter Fink breaks new ground in two ways. Firstly, he places project risk management in the context of today's organisations in which objectives are increasingly implemented through projects to better respond to fast-changing markets. Secondly, he applies a governance perspective to examine project risk at the project and corporate levels, an approach which is significantly under-researched and for which theoretical knowledge and professional practice are at an early stage of maturity. Project risk governance falls between corporate governance and project governance and is attracting increasing attention. The author argues that there are two reasons for this. The first is the 'projectisation' of organisations, in particular within organisations conforming to the Project-Based Organisation (PBO) model. The second is the prevalence of a strategic approach to managing risk for the purposes of protecting organisational values and creating competitive advantage. The book addresses governance, strategy, value management and building enterprise-wide Project Risk Governance (PRG) capabilities. Chapters examine the role of projects in organisations and the need to integrate project and business strategy within the framework of the Project-Based Organisation. PRG is introduced via its links with corporate and project governance and its scope is covered in chapters that identify relevant processes, structures and relationship mechanisms. Contextual influences such as the professionalisation of project management are recognised and insights provided to increase readers' understanding of uncertainty, risk events, and probabilities and of the essential requirements of managing risks at project level. The final chapter provides a roadmap to the stages and dimensions of a PRG maturity model.
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.
Projects are ubiquitous to modern society, yet, concerns around successful delivery, value realisation, resilience and making change stick force a significant re-evaluation of the scope and extent of the 'normal' project discourse. The common thread for all of this is around capabilities, skills, attitudes, values and perspectives that are needed for successful delivery and the sustained realisation of interest, relationships, benefit, value and impact. The chapters collated in this volume bring together leading authorities on topics that are relevant to the management, leadership, governance and delivery of projects. Topics include people, communication, ethics, change management, value realisation, benefits, complexity, decision-making, project assurance, communication, knowledge management, big data, project requirements, business architecture, stakeholder engagement, strategy, users, systems thinking and resilience. The main aims of the collection are to reflect on the state of practice within the discipline; to propose new extensions and additions to good practice; to offer new insights and perspectives; to distil new knowledge; and to provide a way of sampling a range of the most promising ideas, perspectives and styles of writing from some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the discipline.
In the increasing number of heavily projectized organizations, sustainable, commercial performance depends on their ability to measure and develop the performance of project management. This involves developing new skills and capabilities, such as a learning approach across projects. It also involves transforming established approaches such as corporate governance to match the new project-oriented context and, finally, it involves learning to use projects to enable key organizational objectives, such as sustainability, as well as the project-specific outcomes. The Performance of Projects and Project Management offers perspectives on all of these fundamental aspects of project performance. As such, it is an important book for those concerned with project strategy, project delivery and business sustainability.
The literature on family business has developed significantly over the last years. However, efforts remain to summarize and systematize the main aspects that affect the behavior of this type of company. In this regard, the topic of strategic management has been developed. In this sense, it is especially important to recognize how the family decisively influences the behavior of the company and also to identify how the existence of the company affects family dynamics. Those who manage family businesses, whether family or not, must reconcile both perspectives (business and family) in the definition of strategic objectives, allowing sustainability and continuity in this type of organization. Challenges and Opportunities for the Strategic Management of Family Businesses provides emerging research that covers how strategic management in the family business has been developed and identifies the objectives that sustain this strategic behavior, the main areas of analysis (family and business), the definition of strategies, and their implementation. Also, the authors of this book review the different scenarios for family firms and propose strategies to tackle the challenges and seize the possibilities to grow in a competitive and dynamic environment. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as human capital, organizational leadership, and knowledge creation, this book is ideally designed for family firms, managers, advisors, consultants, policymakers, business professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, researchers, academicians, and students.
This book enhances the reader's understanding of the nature and presence of risk by raising the organisation's awareness of the risks it faces, and formalising the systems needed to deal with and learn from those risks. While based on the experience of the construction industry, the book also acts as a broader project management text, meeting the needs of project managers and students in many disciplines and professions from architecture and construction through engineering and commerce to IT, finance and banking. Essential for anyone studying or involved in organisational decision-making for projects, this book will help readers to develop confidence in dealing with risk in a systmatic manner.
In Understanding and Negotiating EPC Contracts, Volume 1, Howard M. Steinberg presents a practical and comprehensive guide to understanding virtually every aspect of engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for infrastructure projects.
This two-volume collection offers a comprehensive practical and legal guide to the complex process of negotiating engineering, procurerment and construction contracts. In Understanding and Negotiating EPC Contracts, Volume 1, Howard M. Steinberg explores virtually every aspect of (EPC) contracts for infrastructure projects. The 25 chapters in Volume 1 are supplemented with real-life examples and court decisions, and offer tactical advice for anyone who must negotiate or understand EPC contracts in connection with the implementation, financing or operation of infrastructure projects. Emphasizing current market practices and strategic options for risk sharing, the book contains a narrative explanation of the underpinning of all of the issues involved in EPC contracting. The challenge of the parties to an EPC contract is not to eliminate risk but rather put into place a narrative structure that enables you to predict the contractual result if a risk materializes. If the EPC contract does not allow the parties to determine the consequences of an unanticipated situation, they will have to look to an expert, mediator, tribunal, or court to impart guidance or pass judgment. The sample forms of contract in Volume 2 of Understanding and Negotiating EPC Contracts are intended to serve as a guide to demonstrate how risks and responsibilities can be allocated among project sponsors, EPC contractors and the various other parties that may be involved in a project.
Understanding governance as it applies to portfolios, programs, and projects is growing in importance to organizations, because appropriate governance is a factor in the success or failure of strategic initiatives and portfolios, as well as an organization's programs and projects. Implementing an effective governance framework can be challenging due to factors such as increasing business complexities, regulatory requirements, globalization, and rapid changes in technology and business environments. Many organizations do not have a consistent approach to portfolio, program, and project governance. PMI's Governance of Portfolios, Programs, and Projects: A Practice Guide, developed by leading experts in the field, provides guidance to organizations and practitioners on how to implement or enhance governance on portfolios, programs, and projects. This practice guide provides definitions for governance in an effort to distinguish the different levels of governance and to identify their common elements.
Managing Sport Mega-Events explores global developments in the management of sport mega-events. Sport mega-events such as the Olympic Games and the Football World Cup have been examined from a number of academic perspectives including history, sociology, politics, urban planning and economics. What is lacking, however, is a book which identifies and evaluates the current issues and complexities faced by those charged with the responsibility of managing these sport mega-events. This book fills the gap. The book addresses three broad but interconnected themes. First, strategic matters are explored focusing on the rise of sport mega-events, the management of stakeholders and governance issues. Second, how organisers can best ensure the sustainable management of sport mega-events is considered. Third, operational matters and related issues are examined including media management, broadcast management, venue management, risk management, marketing and sponsorship management. The book draws on leading international sport management scholars, each of whom has expertise in the organisation of sport mega-events. It makes a valuable contribution to the existing literature.
Recent computer-based tools for project planning and management focus on user-friendliness and interconnectivity. However, these programs function on the Critical Path Method, or CPM, which was created in the 1950s. These programs, which involve simplistic models and methods, ignore the fact that the underlying computations on which they function have become woefully inadequate for the complex projects of today. The product of nearly a decade of work, The Dynamic Progress Method: Using Advanced Simulation to Improve Project Planning and Management provides an overview of the research conducted while illustrating some of the issues with current approaches. It presents the Dynamic Progress Method (DPM), an innovative simulation-based approach to project management. It also includes instructions on how to use the accompanying DPM-based simulation tool pmBLOX to plan, manage, and analyze projects. This groundbreaking book is a must-have resource for project planning and management. It introduces a new and better way of planning, estimating, and managing projects that corrects some of the fundamental flaws of the CPM. It brings the computational integrity of planning simulations up to speed with modern needs, making it useful not only to current project managers but also to students who will become project managers.
Designated by PMI as Recommended Reading for Business Analysts! This innovative guide shows how the business analyst (BA) role can be executed in collaboration with the project or program manager (PM) role to produce higher quality products, requirements, and success rates, with solutions that deliver business value and products and services that better satisfy stakeholder needs. It evaluates the PM and BA roles current contrasting perceptions and defines the roles they should fulfill.
Performance Coaching for Complex Projects recognises a world of complex undertakings for which the common transactional mindsets and methodologies will not produce the required results. The author advocates, instead, the novel concept that the project manager or team leader should coach the team as part of their role. Managing complexity requires greater use of influence and less reliance on coercion. Learning how to recognise the clues that reveal personal preferences, character traits and motivations will allow you to communicate in a way that recognises how different team members see the world. Team coaching helps the project team work together to think through their issues and then collectively implement the solution. Tony Llewellyn has structured his book in two parts. Part I looks at the challenges of complexity and makes the case for a shift from a transactional directive mindset to a transformational coaching philosophy. Part II introduces a model of project team coaching including the processes and methodologies that have been shown to be effective in improving team performance. Complex projects are invariably messy, not least because of the human factors associated with them. Performance Coaching for Complex Projects is essential reading for anyone responsible for managing in uncertain, challenging and changing environments.
Providing in-depth analysis, this book enables readers to understand the theoretical aspects of personal selling and explores the difficulties of selling services which are sensitive to cultural, age and gender differences, and to customers originating from diverse cultural zones. Agents and personal sellers must be aware of these differences and be familiar with the expectations of customers. Cross-cultural Personal Selling provides extensive empirical research results with special emphasis on competences, skills and qualifications of personal sellers which are necessary for successful, effective and efficient promotion campaigns aimed at customers from different cultures. Academics of international marketing and promotion will find this study extremely useful, as well as practitioners looking to expand their knowledge on personal selling.
The management of organizational resources is extremely difficult. Managers face serious and complex challenges when managing the required resources for the benefit of their organization. This book presents a unique approach that aims to tackle these management challenges. This approach is based on four propositions that together form a solid framework for the management of organizational resources. The propositions state that organizational resources that are considered as management objects must first be conceptually modeled. With the help of these models, stakeholders are integrated into the management process. The new management approach presented in this book is called the Evolute approach. The Evolute approach precisely defines the meaning of organizational resources for management on three levels: concept level, organizational resource level, and situation level. The Evolute approach helps managers lead their people and manage their resources in a more targeted way, providing better results with less effort. The author includes real-world case studies that illustrate how this approach can be used in several different fields. The Evolute approach has been used and tested in many companies, organizations, and universities in more than ten languages around the world. The scope of the book is general management, since the Evolute approach is applicable to any kind of management field. It can be applied to the management of any kinds of objects-not only organizational resources. With this book, managers will have the tools to develop more relevant organizational resources and, thus, improve the performance of their entire organization in an efficient and targeted manner.
"This is the project management book I've been waiting a decade for! . . . The new world is the Project World, and this book gloriously shows the way."-Tom Peters
If you have tried to implement Agile in your organization, you have probably learned a lot about development practices, teamwork, processes and tools, but too little about how to manage such an organization. Yet managerial support is often the biggest impediment to successfully adopting Agile, and limiting your Agile efforts to those of the development teams while doing the same old-style management will dramatically limit the ability of your organization to reach the next Agile level. Angel Medinilla will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of what Agile means to an organization and the manager's role in such an environment, i.e., how to manage, lead and motivate self-organizing teams and how to create an Agile corporate culture. Based on his background as a "veteran" Agile consultant for companies of all sizes, he delivers insights and experiences, points out possible pitfalls, presents practical approaches and possible scenarios, also including detailed suggestions for further reading. If you are a manager, team leader, evangelist, change agent (or whatever nice title) and if you want to push Agile further in your organization, then this is your book. You will read how to change the paradigm of what management is about: it is not about arbitrary decisions, constant supervision and progress control, and the negotiation of changing requirements. It is about motivation, self-organization, responsibility, and the exploitation of all project stakeholders' knowledge. We live in a different world than the one that most management experts of the 20th century describe, and companies that strive for success and excellence will need a new kind of manager - Agile managers."
Research and Development is the vehicle by which organizations and economies create opportunity, innovation and secure a stream of future products and services.These outcomes are all critically important sources of sustainability in a world that is changing faster than most companies can keep up.The challenge behind them is the fundamental unpredictability of R which is why effective project management is so important. Ron Basu's Managing Projects in Research and Development explains how and why project management can provide a means of helping to plan, organise and control multi-disciplinary research activities without stifling innovation. Combining research with practical examples and experience from a career that has included blue chip organizations such as GSK, GlaxoWellcome and Unilever, Ron Basu offers a rigorous guide to the fundamentals of R&D project management including project lifecycle management, risk management, cost, time quality and other success measures as well as the keys to operational excellence in this complicated world. |
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