A hands-on guide for all C-level executives, project portfolio owners, and project portfolio managers.
It will show you:
> Why your project should be short and fat
> Why killing projects is so hard (and how to do it anyway)
> Why you should stop wasting money on FOMO innovation projects
> Why you should start slow in order to run fast later
> Why you should stop funding on a project level
And much more…
If you are responsible for managing portfolios of technology programs and projects, your success in maximizing business outcomes with finite resources is vital to your company’s future in a fast-changing and digital world.
You can buy the eBook in my store by clicking on the image below.
Project portfolio management is the art and science of making decisions about investment mix, operational constraints, resource allocation, project priority, and schedule. It is about understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the portfolio, predicting opportunities and threats, matching investments to objectives, and optimizing trade-offs encountered in the attempt to maximize return (i.e., outcomes over investments) at a given appetite for risk (i.e., uncertainty about return).
As an independent project recovery consultant with over 15 years of experience with managing large technology projects, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to run such projects successfully. I have had the privilege to work with great companies and people on challenging technology projects and innovation portfolios. This has given me some unique experiences and insights on how such projects, and the portfolios they are part of, can be successful.
During these years I have learned that most large companies have a project portfolio management process in place, and they mostly follow the traditional project portfolio management process as put on paper by the Project Management Institute (PMI). This process is comprehensible and stable by nature.
Even better, it has the appearance of a marvelous mechanical system that can be followed in a plannable, stable, and reproducible manner. In the end, the project with the greatest strategic contributions always wins the battle for the valuable resources.
Unfortunately, this process does not work well in the real world, despite its apparent elegance. Ultimately, it is characterized by uncertainty, difficulties, ever-changing market environments, and, of course, people—and these do not function like machines.
Although I am a voracious reader I had a very hard time finding material that helped me with addressing these real-life problems. There are many (many) books on project portfolio management. There are also organizations that offer certification in project portfolio management. But they are all theory, and much of it does not work in practice—especially not when technology projects are concerned.
This led me to conclude that there is a shortage of candid and straightforward information for executives responsible for technology project portfolio management.
At the same time, I grew frustrated with the shortcomings of blogging, which I began to do in earnest in 2015 with my blog “Doing the right projects and doing projects right” I quickly learned that people rarely scroll past the homepage of a blog or search for previous articles. However, I wanted my blog to serve as a constant reference source for a wide range of topics on technology project and portfolio management.
The reality is that blogs aren’t for everyone. These two forces inspired me to publish this book.
In short, The Art of Technology Project Portfolio Management is a tweaked, updated, and supplemented compilation of the best essays I have written based on everything I’ve done and seen that pertains to technology project portfolio management.
“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.” ― Henry David Thoreau
My hope is that The Art of Technology Project Portfolio Management makes you act—in other words, that it passes the Henry David Thoreau test for a “truly good book.”
Buy the eBook in my store by clicking on the image below.