Creating the Project Office:
A Manager's Guide to Leading Organizational Change
Jossey Bass Business and Management Series

(by Randall L. Englund, Robert Graham, Paul C. Dinsmore)

"We write this book from the point of view of advising a small group of people, call them change agents, who are attempting to implement..."

Creating the Project Office is written for managers who are searching for ways to transform their organizations into more effective and efficient project-based workplaces. As this important book reveals, there is no more effective way to make that change than to create a project office tailored to the needs of the organization. While a project office model leads to better products from projects, it is also a vehicle for generating overall organizational change— by transforming the organization from function-based to project-based. This model incorporates projects into the very fabric of the organizational strategy and revitalizes organizations, creates competitive advantage, and increases shareholder value.

The Project Management Scorecard:
Measuring the Success of Project Management Solutions
Improving Human Performance

(by Jack J. Phillips, Timothy W. Bothell, G. Lynne Snead)

Pioneering Portfolio Management:
An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment

(by David F. Swensen)

Project Portfolio Management:
A Practical Guide to Selecting Projects, Managing Portfolios, and Maximizing Benefits
Jossey-Bass Business & Management

(by Harvey A. Levine)

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) goes beyond the typical project management approach to offer a set of proven business practices that can help executives, program managers, and project managers bring projects into alignment with the strategies, resources, and executive oversight of the overall enterprise.  Step by step, this book shows how to take a project from the inception of a vision to the realization of benefits to the organization. Project Portfolio Management draws on project management expert Harvey A. Levine’s years of research and distills the knowledge and best practices from dozens of leaders in the field to show how to select and implement the projects that will garner the best results. Throughout this important resource, Levine tackles the many challenges associated with PPM, including

• Ranking value and benefits
• Determining the size of the portfolio pipeline
• Assessing the impact of uncertainty on projects and portfolios
• Understanding the benefit and risk relationship
• Establishing a portfolio governance capability
• Managing the portfolio to maximize benefits
• Implementing PPM

Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management:
Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy

(by Anand Sanwal, Gary Crittenden)

If where an organization allocates its resources determines its strategy, why is it that so few companies actively manage the resource allocation process? "Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management: Aligning Investment Proposals with Organizational Strategy" goes beyond platitudes about why you should use corporate portfolio management (CPM) by offering a practical methodology to bring this powerful discipline to your organization.

"Optimizing Corporate Portfolio Management" takes an expansive view of where CPM can be utilized by demonstrating that it can be used across any business line, product group or functional area, e.g., IT, R&D, innovation, marketing, salesforce, capital expenditure, etc. CPM is appropriate anywhere discretionary investments are being selected and executed. As a result, other terms used to describe portfolio management such as IT portfolio management, enterprise portfolio management, and project portfolio management are all merely subsets or slices of CPM.

The book is written by Anand Sanwal, an expert on CPM, who has led American Express' CPM discipline (referred to as American Express Investment Optimization). American Express' CPM efforts are widely recognized as the most extensive, substantial and progressive deployment of CPM across any organization. Sanwal avoids academic theories and consultant jargon to ultimately deliver pragmatic and proven recommendations on how to make CPM a reality. The book features a foreword by Gary Crittenden, former CFO and EVP of American Express, and several case studies from leading financial services, technology, and government organizations utilizing CPM. Additionally, the book has received significant praise from thought leaders at Google, HP, American Express, The CFO Executive Board, Gartner, Accenture Marketing Sciences, The Wharton School of Business and many others.

Program Management for Improved Business Results

(by Dragan Z. Milosevic, Russ Martinelli, James M. Waddell)

The need for information on program management is more critical now than ever before. PMIs development of a new standard on program management is driving even greater interest. At the same time, there are few books covering the subject, which provide practical answers, benchmarks, and case studies, however, this book fills the gap. The authors focus on both the macro level of integrating projects and portfolios into the business strategy and the micro level of managing a single program. It contains 6 issue-oriented cases weaved throughout the text, and an additional 5 comprehensive cases in the appendix. The result is a blueprint for the successful implementation of program management.

Managing High-Technology Programs and Projects, Third Edition

(by Russell D. Archibald)

"Programs and projects are of great importance to all industrial, governmental, and other human organizations..."

The Program Management Office:
Establishing, Managing And Growing the Value of a PMO

(by Craig J. Letavec)

The effective management of project portfolios that include numerous short-term projects, large multi-project programs, or both has become a growing challenge for industry, government, and other institutions. The Program Management Office is a guide to satisfying the needs for improved coordination, standardization, optimization, and management of project portfolios and the general practice of project management. It details the role and function of the PMO, processes for establishing and managing a PMO, and the three primary missions the PMO should serve to bring maximum value to organizations.

Earned Value Project Management

(by Quentin W. Fleming, Joel M. Koppelman)

"Once upon a time there was a young man who wanted to be a project manager..."

"Earned value" is a project management technique that is emerging as a valuable tool in the management of all projects, including and, in particular, software projects. In its most simple form, earned value equates to fundamental project management.

This is not a new book, but rather it is an updated book. Authors Quentin Fleming and Joel Koppelman have made some important additions. In many cases, there will be no changes to a given section. But in other sections, the authors have made substantial revisions to what they had described in the first edition.

Fleming and Koppelman’s goal remains the same with this update: describe earned value project management in its most fundamental form, for application to all projects, of any size or complexity. Writing in an easy-to-read, friendly, and humorous style characteristic of the best teachers, Fleming and Koppelman have identified the minimum requirements that they feel are necessary to use earned value as a simple tool for project managers. They have also witnessed the use of simple earned value on software projects, and find it particularly exciting. Realistically, a Cost Performance Index (CPI) is the same whether the project is a multibillion-dollar high-technology project, or a simple one hundred thousand-dollar software project. A CPI is a CPI … period. It is a solid metric that reflects the health of the project.

In every chapter, Fleming and Koppelman stick with using simple stories to define their central concept. Their project examples range from peeling potatoes to building a house. Examples are in round numbers, and most formulas get no more complicated than one number divided by another.

Earned Value Project Management—Second Edition may be the best-written, most easily understood project management book on the market today. Project managers will welcome this fresh translation of jargon into ordinary English. The authors have mastered a unique "early-warning" signal of impending cost problems in time for the project manager to react.