In today's challenging commercial environment, many business projects are now categorized as strategic investment with the primary concern being value impact on an organization's bottom line. This title equips project managers with the skills necessary to effectively manage projects as strategic investments.

When Fortune Magazine estimated that 70% of all strategies fail, it also noted that most of these strategies were basically sound, but could not be executed. The central premise of Strategic Project Management Made Simple is that most projects and strategies never get off the ground because of adhoc, haphazard, and obsolete methods used to turn their ideas into coherent and actionable plans. Strategic Project Management Made Simple is the first book to couple a step-by-step process with an interactive thinking tool that takes a strategic approach to designing projects and action initiatives. Strategic Project Management Made Simple builds a solid platform upon four critical questions that are vital for teams to intelligently answer in order to create their own strong, strategic foundation. These questions are: 1. What are we trying to accomplish and why? 2. How will we measure success? 3. What other conditions must exist? 4. How do we get there? This fresh approach begins with clearly understanding the what and why of a project - comprehending the bigger picture goals that are often given only lip service or cursory reviews. The second and third questions clarify success measures and identify the risky assumptions that can later cause pain if not spotted early. The how questions - what are the activities, budgets, and schedules - comes last in our four-question system. By contrast, most project approaches prematurely concentrate on the how without first adequately addressing the three other questions. These four questions guide readers into fleshing out a simple, yet sophisticated, mental workbench called "the Logical Framework" - a Systems Thinking paradigm that lays out one's own project strategy in an easily accessible, interactive 4x4 matrix. The inclusion of memorable features and concepts (four critical questions, LogFrame matrix, If-then thinking, and Implementation Equation) make this book unique.

Turn your strategy into business reality with proven project management and leadership best practices According to Harvard Business Review, IT project failure costs businesses $3 trillion dollars annually. That’s just IT. For the full scope this issue, increase that number exponentially. If you expect more from strategic planning and don’t think projects should decimate budgets and professional reputations, you’re in good company. CEO of UltiMentors Duane Petersen has dedicated his career to helping business leaders transform their companies by turning their strategic vision into portfolios of successful projects. Now, Petersen shares his winning method with you. Transforming Project Management takes you beyond envisioning a great strategy and into the realm of implementing it―with skill, care, and expertise. Petersen explains how to break down a strategic plan into key objectives and project portfolios to make sense of all the project “parts”—then successfully lead the execution of the plan. You’ll learn how to evaluate where you are versus where you want to be, develop plans to move your vision forward, translate strategic plans into action plans with tangible efforts, budgets, and schedules, and guide and inspire the individuals and teams tasked with implementing their plans. Knowing precisely how much a major project will cost before it begins and having processes and tools to monitor how well it’s meeting benchmarks along the way should be standard business practice. Clearly, it’s not. With Transforming Project Management, you have everything you need to tie strategic planning directly to project management—and lead your company to the head of your industry.

As executives build and nurture their organization’s strategic agility in today’s turbulent, uncertain business environment, the ability to lead strategic change has become more critical than ever. The Strategic Project Leader: Mastering Service-Based Project Leadership, Second Edition will help project managers lead with confidence in temporary, ambiguous team structures that execute risk-laden work in an increasingly agile project environment. Like the first edition, this edition encourages readers to take ownership of their leadership agenda and become disciplined in the processes of building a framework of leadership skills. Readers are introduced to a new role: the service-based project leader. This role serves the entire project organization by creating a meaningful experience for team members, customers, and critical stakeholders. The book provides practical guidance to help you move from project manager to service-based project leader. Detailing a framework for developing and refining leadership skills, it explains how to build a leadership competency pyramid and then execute a self-directed plan for building leadership competencies. The leadership competency pyramid includes an intuitive model that will be helpful to project managers at any level. The book elaborates on the components of each layer of the pyramid and how each layer relates to the others. A chapter is dedicated to each layer of the pyramid, with supporting evidence for the necessity of each of these layers, as well as practical advice on how to build and practice these component layers.

Improve Your Business Results Through Organizational Project Management Organizational project management (OPM) aligns project deliverables with strategy. Understanding this emerging process is essential for all stakeholders, from the corporate sponsor to project team members. OPM is a valuable new tool that can enhance your organization's successful execution of projects in alignment with strategic priorities. Under the editorship of Rosemary Hossenlopp, PMP, ten contributors from around the globe, representing a wide variety of industries, offer valuable insights on how OPM can give any organization the competitive edge. They discuss how to • Improve business outcomes • Better align project work with strategies • Set priorities • Organize project work Whether you direct projects, fund projects, or conduct project work, Organizational Project Management: Linking Strategy and Projects is vital to your understanding of this emerging business discipline.

Organizations need to constantly innovate and improve products and services to maintain a strong competitive position in the market place. The vehicle used by organizations for such constant reinvention is a business transformation program. This book illustrates a tested program management roadmap along with the supporting comprehensive frameworks

Written for executives from all disciplines, this book highlights many of the root causes of the IT value dilemma and explains how executives can prevent and counter these issues. Readers will learn the portfolio management methods essential to achieving value. This book provides executives with the tools to: *Illuminate, assess and improve existing practices *Design a governance structure and allocate appropriate decision rights *Ensure centralsied control with decentralised execution *Increase collaboration between business unit and IT leadership *Instill a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.