Mastering Project Discovery

Introducing a comprehensive approach to invigorate project leadership, this book provides a framework – the OUtCoMES Cycle – for developing, managing, advancing, and optimizing engineering and analytics projects.

All too often, issues of moral hazard and completion bias prevent engineering and analytics managers and team leaders from asking the critical question 'What’s the problem?', before committing time, energy, and resources to solve it. This book draws attention to the definition, structuring, option consideration and ultimately the addressing of the right problems, exploring the OUtCoMES Cycle framework that facilitates and energizes systematic thinking, knowledge sharing, and on-the-fly adjustment with an explicit focus on the maximization of value and ROI. Each chapter includes discussions and lessons in analytical and engineering problem identification, problem structuring, iterative problem development (mental and computational) and problem resolution, at least three embedded real-world case studies, and a closing 'Practitioner’s Recap' to contextualize key chapter takeaways.

Written by a team of established academic scholars and practicing analysts and engineers, this is an accessible and culture-shifting action guide for instructors interested in training the next generation of project and analytics leaders, students of analytics and engineering, as well as practicing project leaders and principals.

Elliot Bendoly is the Fisher College of Business Distinguished Professor at The Ohio State University and has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Operations Management. Apart from more than 70 peer review articles, he has authored eight texts including Excel Basics to Blackbelt and Visual Analytics for Management.

Daniel G. Bachrach is an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Science (APS), and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). He is a Business Professor at the University of Alabama and his research focuses on the structure and movement of information in teams.

Kathy Koontz is a Principal Data Strategist with Amazon Web Services, working to help customers create sustainable competitive advantage from their data, analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning investments. She has more than 30 years of experience working with large organizations across multiple industries in both business and technology roles.

Porter Schermerhorn is a Principal Engineer at Amazon where he holds patents across AWS, marketing, and customer engagement. A career mentor and coach, Porter serves in the MBA Mentorship Program at the University of Washington and on the advisory board for the Russ College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Ohio University.