"A project has to have a goal, otherwise, how do you know you're done? In the old days of engineering, setting project goals wasn't that hard. But when you're making software products, done is less obvious. When is Microsoft Word done? When is Google done? Or Facebook? In reality, software systems are never done. So then how do we give teams a goal that they can work on? Mostly, we simply ask teams to build features-but features are the wrong way to go. We often build features that create no value. Instead, we need to give teams an outcome to achieve. Setting goals as outcomes sounds simple, but it can be hard to do in practice. This book is a practical guide to using outcomes to guide the work of your team"--Publisher's website.

The key to successful project control is the fusing of cost to schedule whereby the management of one helps to manage the other. Project Control: Integrating Cost and Schedule in Construction explores the reasons behind and the methodologies for proper planning, monitoring, and controlling both project costs and schedule. Filling a current void the topic of project control applied to the construction industry, it is essential reading for students and professionals alike.

Are we happer, freer, healthier, wealthier, safer, more comforatble, more interesting? How we answer these questions depends on how we define and measure 'a better life'. How and what we measure to show if life is improving is what this book explores. Measuring Progress is the most wide-ranging exploration of lifestyle improvement yet undertaken. It considers social, economic and environmental perspectives. Twenty-three of Australia's leading researchers have contributed chapters on indicators of national performance and what they tell us about the quality and sustainability of life in Australia. The contributors consider how these measures can be improved. The book includes additional commentaries from nine senior bureaucrats, academics and community representatives. Tipics covered include: new measures of progress, the use and abuse of GDP, the causes of correlates of happiness, what 'Middle Australia' thinks about the changes reshaping their lives, income distribution and poverty changes in the workplace and the family, health and well-being, measuring civic and social trust, the state of the environment. Measuring Progress is a major contribution to a debate that could alter ra

How the obsession with quantifying human performance threatens business, medicine, education, government—and the quality of our lives Today, organizations of all kinds are ruled by the belief that the path to success is quantifying human performance, publicizing the results, and dividing up the rewards based on the numbers. But in our zeal to instill the evaluation process with scientific rigor, we've gone from measuring performance to fixating on measuring itself—and this tyranny of metrics now threatens the quality of our organizations and lives. In this brief, accessible, and powerful book, Jerry Muller uncovers the damage metrics are causing and shows how we can begin to fix the problem. Filled with examples from business, medicine, education, government, and other fields, the book explains why paying for measured performance doesn't work, why surgical scorecards may increase deaths, and much more. But Muller also shows that, when used as a complement to judgment based on personal experience, metrics can be beneficial, and he includes an invaluable checklist of when and how to use them. The result is an essential corrective to a harmful trend that increasingly affects us all.

Why do some innovation projects succeed where others fail? The book reveals the business implications of Jobs Theory and explains how to put Jobs Theory into practice using Outcome-Driven Innovation.