Managing Projects as Investments by Devaux, Stephen A.;

Short description:

Due to a lack of appreciation of the true economic identity of projects, techniques and metrics that could hugely improve project selection and performance are not being used. This book provides insights and innovative techniques drawn from more than a quarter century of experience. These techniques have the potential to transform program and pr

Long description:

Every project is an investment; however, traditional project management methodologies do not support assessment of the business value that enables senior management to maximize decision making. The next evolution in project management, therefore, will be to manage projects as investments. Managing Projects as Investments: Earned Value to Business Value provides tools and metrics to enable planning, measuring, evaluating, and optimizing projects.

This book shifts the paradigm. It builds on traditional scope-cost-schedule tools, adding a critical new focus on the expected value of projects and programs. The enhancements in processes and metrics allow senior management and PMOs to guide the entire organization on the basis of business benefits, and to ensure that decisions ranging from project selection to resource assignment facilitate those goals. The author shows how framing projects as investments enables significant improvement in project performance. He provides metrics that allow you and your team to track and maximize performance based on ROI.

Demonstrating the importance of recognizing an enabler project in a program, and why its value and cost of time are so great, the book provides the tools to determine right-sized staffing levels for project-driven organizations. It includes a comprehensive but easy-to-understand explanation of both basic and advanced earned value metrics, their shortcomings, and how they can be improved and shows you how to optimize contract terms on projects in a way that can avoid misaligned customer/contractor goals.

"For first time users, this book is a valuable contribution to the project management industry. Simple, clear, concise examples ensure the understanding of the reader. … Good, clear, concise descriptions of the theory certainly make the case for project managers to use the methodology presented. [It] should help prevent cost and time overruns, which too often occur. … very chatty style! The summary points are very useful and time saving."
—Raphael M. Dua, Micro Planning International Asia Pacific Pty. Ltd., Melbourne, Australia

"… easy to follow and clearly explains current project management methods and concepts in order to introduce the, now seemly obvious, benefits of new ones. … an eye opener and a career enhancer. This book challenges the project manager to step out of his comfort zone and to start thinking like a business manager who invests in value. Extremely well written with no fluff, this book should not only be on every project managers and senior managers bookshelf, but well-thumbed and ‘dog eared’ from repeated reading.
—Emily Foster, Ten Six Consulting

"I am delighted to see an author address project management from this innovative perspective. An investment is the keystone to organizational success. If a project is viewed as such, more resources and efforts will be directed at this, thereby increasing the chances for success. Project management is an investment, not an overhead. This book brings this fact to the forefront."
—Adedeji Badiru, Air Force Institute of Technology

"… approachable, clear and thought provoking. Mr. Devaux presents the reader with the tools to improve their project management maturity - tools essential to replacing intuition based decision making with quantifiable and justifiable analysis."
—Bernard Ertl, Vice President, InterPlan Systems

"… is very useful to practitioners seeking to expand their understanding on managing projects and project portfolios. The new concepts may help even the experienced project managers. The layout of the author’s rationales in driving towards the implications contained in the chapters should also allow anyone new to project management to follow and to understand the challenges and the best practices in managing projects."
—Kuo-Ting Hung, Suffolk University

"In his book Stephen Devaux promotes innovative approach to project management when project management goal is not just meeting triple constraint but maximizing project business value. He suggested new project metrics that is very useful for informed management decisions and being properly used may save a fortune to project owners."
—Vladimir Liberzon, Spider Project

"Steve Devaux identifies and illuminates the secret sauce that has been at the root of many successful projects across multiple industries. Outsiders looking in may attribute project success as being at the right place at the right time or having a unique team of superstars. However, successful project teams know the four important ingredients: having a clear vision of product value, executing the project to meet a market window, creating project methodologies to deliver the project, and assembling the team with the right skill diversity."
—Edward R Equi, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

"… sets a foundation for the value of project delivery reliability and it’s affect on the program/portfolio business case. In a greater sense, it enlightens organizations regarding the value and importance of improving their organizational project management maturity. … takes a value driven approach to organizational project management and is an enabler for Lean thinking with regards to program or portfolio management."
—Joseph A. Sopko, Joseph A. Sopko Consulting, LLC

"This new book by Mr. Stephen A. Devaux explains detailed methodology for enhancing project value with his original tools and metrics which he has been developing these years. These ingenious methodologies would surely be helpful for professionals in managing projects and programs, I do believe."
—Tomoichi Sato, JGC Corporation/Tokyo University

"The book is easy to follow and clearly explains current project management methods and concepts in order to introduce the, now seemly obvious, benefits of new ones. Everything is very well presented with great examples and anecdotes used to reinforce key points. All project managers regardless of experience should read this book. It accurately captures project management and its use today and offers a great new perspective and methods to manage projects as investments and track performance based on ROI. For most in our industry, this book should be an eye opener and a career enhancer. This book challenges the reader to step out of their comfort zone and to start thinking like a business manager who invests in value. Extremely well written with no fluff, this book should not only be on every project managers and senior managers bookshelf, but well thumbed and ‘dog eared’ from repeated reading."
—Book Review by Ten Six Consulting

Table of Contents:

Introduction: "A Disgrace to the Human Race!" Earned Value: What It Is and What It Isn’t. The Project as Investment. Planning the Project as Investment. Contracting and Controlling the Project as Investment. Projects within a Program. Managing the Investment at the Project Level. Managing Resources on the Critical Path. Postmortems and Lessons Learned. Selling the Investment Approach Internally. Conclusion.