PROJECTS, PROGRAMS, AND PORTFOLIOS

This book illustrates how the traditional practice of project management advances to handle the more complex problems inherent to strategic organizational transformation.

Projects are a part of everyday life in an organization. Tools and procedures for project management are well understood and applied. However, the management of projects by an organization for substantial transformation is less certain in both practice and study. An awareness of how to manage increasingly complex projects, and collections of projects, to achieve the benefits of organizational transformation becomes ever more crucial in the implementation of new strategies.

This book goes beyond a simple review of tools and techniques common in most publications of project management. We illustrate how the traditional practice of project management advances to handle the more complex problems inherent to strategic organizational transformation. The linkages among projects, operations, and the foundations of an organization provide a perspective of how an organization might pursue the difficult changes required of comprehensive transformation. The fashion in which the project world interacts with the executive world through successive layers of project management principles is prelude to operational benefits realization.

James J. Jiang is professor of information systems with National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Professor Jiang's expertise centers on information technology project, program, and portfolio management. He was the inaugural recipient of the Fu-Bon Endowed Professorship and the Dr. Yuan Tseh Lee Outstanding Chaired Professor of the Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of the Pacific Asia Journal of Association of Information Systems.

Gary Klein is the Couger Professor of Information Systems at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. His expertise includes project management, information system development, and mathematical modeling. Dr. Klein is an active member of the Project Management Institute and currently serves as editor-in-chief of the Project Management Journal. Before pursuing an academic career, Dr. Klein was director of the IS department for a major financial institution.

Wei (Wayne) Huang is the dean of Business School, Southern University of Science and Technology, China. He holds the Changjiang Chair Professor and the Directorship of the Collaborative Innovation Center of China Pilot Reform Exploration and Assessment in China. The center aids the Chinese government's reform efforts and local governments' efforts to become experimental, adaptive, and agile while still delivering social value through digital government projects, programs, and portfolios.