Harvard Business Review Project Management Handbook: How to Launch, Lead, and Sponsor Successful Projects

The one primer you need to launch, lead, and sponsor successful projects.

We're now living in the project economy. The number of projects initiated in all sectors has skyrocketed, and project management skills have become essential for every leader and manager. Still, project failure rates remain extremely high. Why? Leaders oversee too many projects and have too little visibility into them. Project managers struggle to translate their hands-on, technical knowledge up to senior management. The result? Worthy projects are starved of time and resources and fail to deliver benefits, while too much investment goes into the wrong projects. To compete in the project economy, you need to close this gap. The HBR Project Management Handbook shows you how.

In this comprehensive guide, project management expert Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez presents a new and simple framework that will increase any project's likelihood of success. Packed with case studies from many industries worldwide, it will teach you how to manage your organization's projects, strategic programs, and agile initiatives more effectively and push the best ones ahead to completion. Timeless yet forward-looking, this book will help you win in the project-driven world.

In the HBR Project Management Handbook you'll find:

• Everything you need to know about project management in practical, nontechnical language
• A definitive taxonomy of project types, from product launches to digital transformations to megaprojects
• A road map for becoming an effective project leader and executive sponsor
• A new, simple, and universal project framework, the Project Canvas, that breaks down any project into essential building blocks that can be easily understood by all project stakeholders
• Original concepts and exclusive case studies from public- and private-sector organizations worldwide

You'll learn:

• A common language for project managers and executives to run successful projects across your organization
• When to use agile, traditional, or hybrid methods in your projects
• The twelve principles of successful projects, including purpose, agility, and a focus on outcomes
• Techniques for selecting and advancing the best projects and managing a strategic and balanced project portfolio
• How today's projects will help address some of the most pressing global trends, including automation, sustainability, diversity, and crisis management
• Why project management needed to be reinvented and what the future holds

HBR Handbooks provide ambitious professionals with the frameworks, advice, and tools they need to excel in their careers. With step-by-step guidance, time-honed best practices, and real-life stories, each comprehensive volume helps you to stand out from the pack—whatever your role.

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is an author, practitioner, and consultant who teaches strategy and project implementation to senior leaders. He is a visiting professor and a frequent guest speaker at business schools and project management events around the world. He has held leadership positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers, BNP Paribas Fortis, and GlaxoSmithKline. His research has been recognized by Thinkers50 with its prestigious "Ideas into Practice" award, and he is featured in the 2020 Global Gurus Top 30 list of management professionals. He served as chairman of the global Project Management Institute, and in that role he launched the Brightline Initiative. He is also the founder of Projects & Co, cofounder of the Strategy Implementation Institute, and a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches group. He is the author of three books, The Project Revolution, Lead Successful Projects, and The Focused Organization.

For more information, follow him on LinkedIn or on Twitter @ANietoRodriguez or visit antonionietorodriguez.com.