Project Workout: A Toolkit for reaping the rewards from all your business projects (2nd Edition) - Softcover

Buttrick, Robert.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 027364436X ISBN 13: 9780273644361

Publisher: Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2000

Synopsis

(Pearson Education) Shows the user how to measure critical success factors, diagnose the difficulties of implementation, analyze the project as a single entity, assess resource strategy and management, put enterprise-wide project management into organizations. Softcover.

About this title

About the Author

ROBERT BUTTRICK currently works in one of the world's fastest growing industrial sectors, communications. He is accountable for creating and running a project-based framework for managing change within Cable and Wireless's UK operating company, enabling it to plan for, and develop, new systems, products, services, and capabilities to meet the ever growing needs of its customers. Prior to this he was a member of the management team which was accountable for managing the company's UK residential sector, acting as coach to sponsors and project managers, enabling them to succeed in a wide range of business projects.

Before joining Cable and Wireless in 1993, Robert was with PA Consulting Group, a management and technology consultancy. There, he specialized in business-led project management, advising clients such as TSB Bank, National Rivers Authority, Property Services Agency, Avon Industrial Polymers, National Westminster Bank, and RHM.

His early career was as a civil engineer. After graduating from the University of Liverpool with a first class honors degree, he joined Gibb Ltd, who provide consulting, design, and management services for infrastructure projects worldwide. He has lived and worked in countries as diverse as Kenya, Mauritius, Yemen, Senegal, and Sudan on the evaluation, design and supervision of a number of marine and water resource projects. He has also worked with the World Bank in Washington DC on investment appraisals for major development projects. Following this, he became Gibb's manager for marketing strategy and analysis.

Robert is a Master of Business Administration (Henley Management College), a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and a Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

His main pastime is watercolor painting. His one, unknown, claim to fame is that he once stopped a column of Russian tanks dead in its tracks.

From the Back Cover

• measure critical success factors
• diagnose the difficulties of implementation
• analyze the project as a single entity, and the complexities of managing large portfolios of projects
• assess your resource strategy and management
• analyze your understanding of the business culture
• improve your project tracking
• put enterprise-wide project management into your organization

Put yourself and your business through The Project Workout to direct and manage projects that will drive change and improve the health of your business.

The Project Workout 2e, updated with a revised section on business programs and interactive workouts on CD, is the definitive book on business-led program and project management. This book is easy to read and use, uniquely meeting your needs, whether you are a senior executive, manager or student.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface

"Nothing is impossible to him who has not got to do it!" How often doour managers complain about having to balance the apparently conflicting priorities presented to them by their leaders? But those same leaders today are under increasing pressure to deliver value to their stakeholders and the pace of change being experienced by organizations is putting more and more strain on their processes and systems.

How does the company manage complex demands on resources most effectively? How does it implement a long-term infrastructure investment program while at the same time seeing sweeping change in the marketplace demanding the launch of brand-new technologies and products to very short timescales? This involves far more than just recruitingproject managers and planning projects properly.

As this book shows, companies can never rely on a single project to achieve their aims; they need many projects. Companies need to have acommon way of managing a portfolio of projects and a way of selecting and choosing which should go ahead and which should not. It means functions giving up their "rights" over their own resources to a decision-making body that will put the company's interest first. It means striking a balance between formal and informal working. It means creating a planning culture that can be flexible enough to deliver strategic initiatives while managing short-term imperatives. This takes time and effort and most large, complex organizations are still on the steep learning curve to success.

This book is all about the hard business issues of increasing customer satisfaction, creating a happier, empowered workforce and ultimately increasing profits. If we no longer have a stable playing field, the least we can do is give ourselves a stable way of managing change.

I commend Bob Buttrick's book to all leaders who lie awake at night wondering how they can process a mass of conflicting priorities through a system which will deliver. Greg Clarke
Chief Executive Officer, Cable Wireless Communications

Edition details

• Publisher: Financial Times Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 027364436X
• ISBN 13: 9780273644361
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 496