John Goodpasture sent me his new book Maximizing Project Value, Management Concepts, 2013. I promised John I'd review the book. I started to write a simple review, but then I started marking up my copy and learning and use new ideas. So here's my new approach. I'll post a talking points review of each Chapter across the next few weeks. This is more than a book review. It is a cliff notes for the book.
Chapter 1 - Understanding the Value of Projects
- The project's value is the worth of a project's throughput, or the difference in business value measured before and after a project, as earned during the course of the project schedule.
- Managing the tension between business and the project is optimizing project success in the context of business success.
- The object of risk management and optimization is to effect the best overall outcome as valued by the business. This is an important concept.
- Project managers are leaders as well as managers - this should end the discussion about if PM is management or leadership. Both, everyone back to work.
- The value earned is planned as the project's budget. This is the simplest definition of Earned Value.
- Eberhardt Rechtin defines emergent value as value created solely by the relationship among the elements of the system. Rechtin's book must be on the shelf of any credible project manager.Systems Architecting of Organizations: Why Eagles Can't Swim and The Art of Systems Architecting, Second Edition. Rechtin is the orginal systems thinker.
Chapter 1 is a great opening, defining how project value is measured.
