Project Leadership : Creating Value with an Adaptive Project Organization

Today’s organizations need to introduce new products and enhance existing services faster in order to remain competitive. The common cause of project failure is that leadership fails to appreciate the extent of uncertainty and complexity in a project and therefore doesn’t adapt their management structure accordingly. This book highlights how successful projects rely not just on the project team, but on the culture of executive leadership. Concepts are presented in an anecdotal manner that will suit today’s leaders. The book offers straight-forward takeaways and solutions to provide executives with the tools to implement an effective project environment.

Look around your organization: can you identify who owns project management? Would that person appreciate that they own responsibility for your projects? Project Leadership: Creating Value with an Adaptive Project Organization highlights the importance of these questions—underlining the importance not only of the project team but on the culture of executive leadership to the success of projects. It offers straight-forward takeaways and solutions to provide executives with the tools to implement an effective project environment.

The book begins with a discussion of the project environment and what it means for a project to succeed or fail in today’s world. It introduces the Adaptive Project Management Model followed by a review of the systems and tools that give firms increasing ability to maintain priority on strategic projects and manage their associated uncertainty. Working through the book, you can progressively apply tactics from each chapter to increase your project leadership capability and improve your process so that your projects adapt as required depending on the nature of the portfolio itself.

Ask yourself this—what is my customer buying? What do they really want? The one element that all organizations have in common is that customers are buying execution, and not much else. Therefore, ultimately, this book is about execution—getting things done and making things happen. It details methods and tactics that help you execute projects more effectively and give your organization the edge in the current, fast-paced marketplace.