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Roger Davies’ video interview around value management highlights the continued problems in project and programme management; the fact that we persist in doing the wrong things, for the wrong reasons and, what’s worse, we do them rather badly. Roger posits value management as a process for ensuring the effectiveness of big programmes. Roger Davies is author of Value Management: Translating Aspirations into Performance, published by Gower.
Surely Michel Thiry’s Executive Seminar, which he will be delivering at the University of Technology, Sydney (8th and 9th of September) represents two of the fundamental skills for senior managers in today’s environment. The key is in the description ‘how to manage multiple projects and add value’. What else is there that senior managers need to know! Michel Thiry is author of Gower Publishing’s Program Management, part of the Fundamentals of Project Management Series.
Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez’s recent article in the London Business School’s ‘Business Strategy Review’ outlines a suprising new business trend, i.e.: the shift from operations to project-focused activities. Nieto-Rodriguez holds an MBA from London Business School, is Head of Transversal Portfolio Management with BNP Paribas Fortis, as well as Professor of Strategic Programme Management at Solvay Business School in Brussels and Boston University. This article is based on extracts from his forthcoming title The Focused Organisation, to be published by Gower in 2012.
This is the second in the promised series of posts highlighting Gower’s publishing programme in a given topic area for the next 12 months. I won’t attempt to document all our new books but rather a give you a flavour of some highlights.
Project and Programme Management
Is the largest single list within our current publishing, on the basis of number of books published and commissioned. There are several continuing themes to our new books in 2011:
Project Performance and Resilience
Many of our new titles are designed to help you address a particular aspect of your organization’s project or programme management or develop your capability or resilience for project delivery. Some books, such as Emanuel Camilleri’s Project Success or Michael Cavanagh’s Second Order Project Management, go to the heart of those strategies and techniques that don’t just secure project or programme delivery but ensure value and commercial success too. Others, such as David Cleden’s Bid Writing for Project Managers or Integrated Cost-Schedule Risk Analysis, the follow up to David Hulett’s wonderful Practical Schedule Risk Analysis, provide expert help on one or more specific element within project management.
The Context of Projects and Programmes
We have a clutch of titles in preparation for 2011 or early 2012 that offer perspectives on the context within which projects and programmes are managed. There are a couple of titles from Professor Darren Dalcher’s highly regarded series, Advances in Project Management, that do this particularly well, for example: Haukur Ingi Jonasson and Helgi Thor Ingason’s Project Ethics, Ron Basu’s Managing Project Supply Chains and Spirituality and Project Management by Judith Neal and Alan Harpham.
Programme or Program Management
We have some strong titles to follow on from Michel Thiry’s 2010 Program Management. Roger and Adam Davies’ Value Management does a good job of connecting programmes with strategy and their intended outcomes and the first of two books from the author of The Lazy Project Manager, Peter Taylor, provides those people responsible for their project or programme management office with a very pragmatic guide to leadership: Leading Successful PMOs.
People in Projects and Programmes
The final clutch of three titles I want to highlight are those that cover human factors or, if you prefer, people in projects. There are two follow up titles in this group: Kaye Remington’s Leading Complex Projects (which follows her 2008 book Tools for Complex Projects) and Lynda Bourne’s Advising Upwards (which is a follow up to her 2009 book, Stakeholder Relationship Management) . There is also Sharon Di Mascia’s Using Psychology in Project Management, which is another book that very successfully draws in models and pragmatic advice from outside the usual project methodologies.
And, if I am allowed a last minute, wild card entry, let me sneak in a mention for Penny Pullan and Ruth Murray-Webster’s A Short Guide to Facilitating Risk Management from the Short Guides to Business Risk Series; very definitely appropriate for anyone involved in project risk management.
Please do offer any feedback on this programme of publishing or, if you wish, you can contact me with your own subject suggestions, requests or even book proposals.
Jonathan Norman, Publisher
Just a last minute reminder about the Association of Project Management Conference which is this Thursday (21st October in Central London). The conference programme showcases Gower authors: Stephen Jenner (Transforming Government and Public Services) is speaking on Portfolio Management; David Hancock (Tame, Messy and Wicked Risk Leadership) on Rethinking Risk and Project Management, Michael Cavanagh (2nd Order Project Management) is the closing speaker and, Darren Dalcher, (Series Editor Advances in Project Management and Fundamentals of Project Management) is giving the welcome address and setting the scene.
I heard Michel Thiry (Program Management) present recently for the London Branch of PMI on Program Management: The Four Key Components (Governance, Decision Management, Stakeholder Management and Benefits Management). Michel has a gift for offering a perspective on program management that is both sophisticated and entirely sensible. I am sure that the audience, who were very responsive, went away with a number of mental models that will change the way they understand the relationship of programs, projects, portfolios and the corporate strategy that underpins them all. If you haven’t heard Michel speak, then I urge you to take advantage of one of his forthcoming presentations to go and listen to him. He’s presenting on Project -Based Organizations on 15th and 16th September in Las Vegas, for PMI; on 20th September he’s talking to the PMI UK, North and Midlands Chapter, on Program Management, Beyond Standards and Guides; and he’ll also be talking on program management at the PMI North American 2010 Global Congress in Washington between 6th and 9th October.
Not, as you might imagine, a guide to claiming money from the Government, but rather a neat little exercise in assessing how well your organization performs when it comes to realising project and programme benefits. The simple health check on the Sigma UK site is hardly scientific but it does have the advantage of focusing your mind on some of the simple strategic questions you can usefully ask yourself (and others) to get a handle on your organization’s state of health. If you feel you need help then the new edition of Gerald Bradley’s Benefits Realisation Management has been recently published and includes a complete series of full-colour benefit maps.
I think the first edition of Gerald Bradley’s Benefit Realisation Management was ahead of the curve when it was published back in 2006. It was very well received at the time. Ed Burney-Cummin in Project Magazine said: “Sometimes a book will be published that fills a need within the market. This book is one of those. It provides a master class on the subject, enabling understanding and providing the tools to allow project managers to implement practical and viable processes to identify, track and measure benefits. If you buy one book on benefit realisation management for your organisation then I suggest you buy this.”
So I am delighted to say that Gerald is launching the second edition of the book, which has been updated to include all he has learned in the interim and features four-colour benefit maps throughout, at a breakfast in The Institute of Directors (116 Pall Mall) on Wednesday 21st July (8.00 am – 10.30 am).
If you’d like to meet the author, talk to other people who have implemented or are implementing a benefits realisation approach to their projects or programmes and have the chance to buy signed copies of the book, then do come along. Please RSVP to Linda Graham at Sigma (lindagraham@sigma-uk.com) or by phone 01372 450272.
Michel Thiry’s presentation at the recent National Centre for Project Management Project Experts’ Forum covered a huge amount of ground. Offering insights into the tension between change management and business as usual; the differences between uncertainty and ambiguity (from a project management perspective) and closing with a picture of the role and value of both project and value management (and the importance of integrating the two). I hope I have done his ideas full justice in the notes that I took and which you may download. Michel is author of the forthcoming Program Management.
