Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO: Multiplying ROI at Warp Speed [Hardcover]

Gerald I. Kendall (Author), Steve C. Rollins (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1932159029 | ISBN-13: 978-1932159028 | Publication Date: April 2003

This comprehensive book covers the strategy, tactics, and processes needed for successful project portfolio management. It outlines a road map to unprecedented project management improvement and includes a detailed implementation plan for both strategic planning and a PMO that gives you measurable results in weeks. The authors delineate four processes that get a PMO off the ground much faster, driving bottom-line value almost immediately. It includes real PMO case studies, provides a way to evaluate your PMO, illustrates how Six Sigma and the PMO can support each other and be used to drive bottom-line value and presents the new Theory of Constraints 4x4 method of strategic planning and the Critical Chain Multi-Project Management approach. . This book shows you how to turn a PMO into a value machine.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 434 pages
• Publisher: J. Ross Publishing (April 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932159029
• ISBN-13: 978-1932159028
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #408,362 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Packed with content, but some questionable assumptions, January 3, 2004

By 

Robert B. Towry "Bob" (CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO: Multiplying ROI at Warp Speed (Hardcover)

There is enough good content in this book to fill several books. However, the authors make some foundational assumptions that one must keep in mind when interpreting or applying the practices the author's propose in this book:
Assertion #1: The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is applicable to project management. This is a questionable and unsupported assertion. Projects may have several constraints at different times and across different projects. The TOC model is from manufacturing, implies a single bottleneck, and may not apply to dynamic projects.
Assertion #2: Critical Chain Project Management theory is applicable and valuable in project management. CCPM is unproven, is based on questionable assumptions, is supported by only a few PM tools, and is not known by PMI-trained PM's. For more on this, see "A Critical Look at Critical Chain Project Management", authors Raz, Barnes and Dvir: Project Management Journal, December 2003.

Still, this is a useful book for a person marketing, proposing or implementing a project management office. The book is good at pointing out that the PMO must deliver value to executives by aligning projects with enterprise strategy and by increasing the number of completed projects in a given time period.

The book is stronger in application of the practices (and especially metrics) to business than not-for-profit enterprises, but is still useful to people in not-for-profit organizations.

Recommendation: Employ the author's suggestions to select and prioritize projects based on strategic impact, but, in the main, use proven project management practices (not CCPM or TOC) to ensure project completion.

36 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Lots of fluff, no real substance, June 20, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO: Multiplying ROI at Warp Speed (Hardcover)

The majority of this book touts the advantages of a PMO without providing much substance on how to create one. It also assumes that the PMO has authority over the sales and marketing; hence spends a big portion talking about the supply-side and the market-side projects. This book also has too many questionable "surveys" done by the authors and assumptions that are derived from those surveys. Statement such as "From our survey of xxxxx, x% of CIOs believe xxxx" are frequent throughtout the book.

This book seems to have been written to promote the authors' consulting business. Throughout the book, there are "examples" of how companies who implemented the "4x4" process made major improvements and the executives that implemented the process got promoted. Obviously, the book does not describe the "4x4" process; you have to bring the authors to implement it in your organization.

This book has so much reference to Goldratt (author of "The goal" and "Critical Chain") that you are better off just reading Goldratt's books.

If I had been completely new to Project Management and PMO, I may have learned a little bit about a PMO after reading this book's 400+ pages, but for someone who has some knowledge of Project Management, this book was a total waste of my time and money.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for project-based organizations, August 14, 2004

By 

D. Laffineuse "David" (Parkland, FL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO: Multiplying ROI at Warp Speed (Hardcover)

A very complete book on the subject of project management offices (PMO). It presents a complete and practical how-to guide to selling, establishing, running, and controlling PMOs in organizations, with a constant eye on the business value (ROI).

The section on strategic planning was an eye opener for me in terms of the value that a PMO can bring to the organization in supporting the selection of the `right' projects, i.e. a well balanced project mix that maximizes the return on investment of the portfolio. It is my experience that few organizations think in those terms and it often results in project selections being made based on the clout of their `champions' or by simply jumping from emergency to emergency, strategic projects becoming more the exception than the rule, with the negative bottom line impacts that it implies. Obviously there lies also the greatest challenge of the PMOs given that they have to carve a role for themselves in the high spheres of management where those decisions are made. They also need to instill in management the rigor of project selection, above and beyond mere intuition or customer pressures. This is truly where the strategic value of the PMO is.

Another compelling aspect of the book is the incorporation of the principles of the theory of constraints (TOC). For the organizations that are interested in reaping the benefits of critical chain project management (CCPM) for instance and applying TOC to maximize project flow in their organization, this is a plus. This is one of the rare books that addresses PMO in the context of TOC. The readers should quickly be able to envision the bottom line impact that an efficient and strategic PMO (at the portfolio level) combined with the well documented results of CCPM implementations at the project level could have in their organizations.