Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Much of the coverage is incomplete and misleading. Souder, in his 1984 work entitled Project Selection and Economic Analysis provides a much more useful, cogent and useable account of selecting and rating projects; if ROI is to be used as the key selection tool! The book touts the benefits of Critical Chain with zeal; but with limited if any defensible evidence. For those new to professional project management, the book provides much cheerleading but little value related to delivery of projects within the context of a viable well managed, competitive business environment. The book's reference list is anemic. Assessment of the broad scope and depth of information related to PMOs and Portfolio Management is questionable. While somewhat dated, PACE by McGrath and Portfolio Management by Kleinschmidt et.al. provide far more definitive, proven, actionable, and valuable insight and direction.

Outstanding, comprehensive and refreshing capture of ideas and an actionable approach to the imperative of reversing the documented failure of four of five projects to achieve cost, schedule or content objectives. Just one of the techniques emphasized-Critical Chain-has demonstrated powerful leverage and consistent project management success in literally 100s of well-documented implementations across myriad private industry, non-profit & government settings here in the US and around the world. These successes are reinforced by my personal dissertation research and results of successful Critical Chain applications in major Defense Department weapon system acquisition development and production programs run by giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as weapons system sustainment programs run at US Navy/Marine maintenance depots. I totally agree with Dr. Harold Kerzner, highly respected educator and widely read author of books on project management, who recommends that this book "become the standard for PMO development for years to come."

This book really helped me to sell the concept of a PMO, made easier by the chapter with the executive proposal set out as to what senior execs can expect and how the PMO and its projects are linked to the strategy of the organization.
The absolute clarity on what the PMO should do, the road map and the roles & responsibilities of participants was 'eye' opening to say the least, saved me so much time.
Who ever thought of the PMO getting involved in Marketing, to provide the balance between supply side and market side projects ? The indentification / development of the Unique Selling Proposition and the Compelling Marketing Offer as projects that the PMO would permanently carry out, whow !!!
Last but not least a list of questions at the end of each chapter to ensure I learnt the subject, great idea. Thanks guys.

This book is great.
It provides a comprehensive, step by step approach to project management.
It gave us some outstanding tips and insights that enabled our projects to deliver more with less and have greater impact on our business. Reading this book provided us with a robust governance structure, tools, processes and frameworks which followed through to the bottom line. The benefit of implementing the concepts of this book blew us away.
It is a must read for project managers and project management executives.

If you are struggling with selling the value of portfolio project management, establishing a project management office or implementing project management at the tactical level in your organization get this book in the hands of your decision-makers. Too often strategic plans remain plans. This book provides the direction to execute those plans into desired outcomes. Change is now the norm and this book provides the steps to develop project management competencies to ensure the right change is executed in the right way. If you do nothing else give this book to your leadership team to educate and make them aware of the value of project management.

I help corporations build PMOs. This book does a great job of covering some of latest and most effective thinking, tools and techniques in the business.
The author does a great job covering many of the project management approaches available today. He especially does a great job explaining the use of Lean, Critical Chain and Scrum techniques.

A must for every professionals bookshelf.

I really liked this book for it's "advanced" nature. I think that if you're just starting out on the path towards a PMO it might be a bit much but for anyone serious about managing their project portfolio in a way that adds value, it hits the mark.