Portfolio and Project Management

Design: A Business Case challenges you to stimulate innovation in your own organization as an ongoing and integral dialogue between complementary skills—to bridge mind and matter, image and identity. Design thinking is a framework developed to ensure C-suite endorsement of the pursuit of design excellence in all actions undertaken by the organization. Design management is a rigorous and strategically anchored mechanism to capitalize on the investment in design as intellectual capital. And design — as we've always known it — is the skills, methods and creative capabilities needed to embody ideas and direction. Design thinking inspires, design management enables, design embodies. This book aims to build the bridges needed to reconcile the three, and to encourage organizational and professional environments in which their combined forces can thrive and reverberate.

The global economy and free market philosophy have resulted in higher global competition and increased expectations from customers. It is obvious that new approaches are needed to satisfy demands and many of them fall under a broad umbrella called agile. To capitalize fully on the benefits of agile, one must first understand the concepts that underpin it. In this book, we first identify many concepts that various approaches advocate for agile and group them into three areas forming a simple, robust system. Then, we describe the most useful agile methods in savage summaries regardless of the approach that promotes them, grouping them logically and showing how to use them. We have an agnostic agile model that can be useful to anyone using any form of agile. Both concepts for being agile and techniques for doing agile are summarized in this book and there are several ways to use this book. To understand the concepts of agile, consult Chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 will help you learn and perform agile tools and techniques.

Strategic management is very well documented in business books and in the literature, but that does not make the task any easier. Because formulating and implementing strategy is so taxing, and the environmental signals are so intangible, strategic planning is a responsibility that is easy to avoid. The solution proposed in this book is a project management framework to advance organizational strategy. In this book, you'll find not only a description of how use the project management framework to advance strategic management, but also a case study that illustrates the positive impact.

This book explores the nuances of different aspects of agility on a personal level. Agility brings personal value, leadership navigation, managing the tides of knowledge, and putting on the captain's hat of resilience. As the winds change and the tides swell high, the Personal Agility Lighthouse (PALH™) model in this book will guide you to safe shores. Navigating through the seven colors of agility such as education, change, emotional, political, cerebral, learning, and outcomes agilities, the anchor is dropped effortlessly. It is built on these seven competencies, and by using the Individual Personal Agility self-analysis assessment (see Appendix), swaying personal visions leading them up to organizational goals. Taking personal agility as the future competency with an agile mindset is a crucial starting point to transform yourself. Focusing your personal agility journey on outcomes and end-to-end customer experiences ensures value delivery. Especially within the elements of the VUCA environment where revised goals are the norm. Driving changes in the right direction leads you to the stable grounds of your personal vision. It prepares you to tread the long roads of transitions/transformations, which is a vital requisite for changes in any organization. Measuring performance metrics aptly is the rudder of strategy management and stability. Organizational goals and personal development are the strong pillars that will steer you to your organizational agility, getting you ready for opportunities and changes when your company trademark needs it. Agile practices and perspectives cut through impact and quality of personal and group knowledge. Take a journey on a Personal Agility Boat to visualize options, alternatives, and opportunities. Visualization is the way to your shore's lighthouse.

This book provides a stakeholder-centered analysis of projects and explains which identification, analysis, communication, and engagement models are relevant to different types of projects. If stakeholders matter, then they must make a difference in the way we plan structure and execute projects. Do they matter on your projects? This book provides a stakeholder-centered analysis of projects and explains which identification, analysis, communication, and engagement models are relevant to different types of projects: from an office move to IT enterprise change to transformational business change and complex social change. Using case studies from around the world, it illustrates what goes wrong when stakeholders are not engaged successfully and what lessons we can learn from these examples. In this second edition, we also look at the impact of Agile practices on the stakeholder management process. What changes in approach can we anticipate, and what practices must continue regardless of the product development life cycle adopted? Key models introduced include: Role-based and agenda-based stakeholders; The stakeholder-neutral to stakeholder-led project continuum; The extended stakeholder management process; Purposeful communication-the six whys model for communication; The principles of stakeholder engagement; Stakeholder engagement in an agile world.

In Workplace Jazz, the author raises a battle cry for individual and corporate responsibility in building cultures that are healthier and more productive for those working in them. What should leaders do to address this workforce engagement and productivity gap? Should companies keep implementing culture improvement processes and procedures that do not address the emotional connection that teams need? Workplace Jazz offers a step-by-step process, enhanced with stories, neuroscience research, case studies, metaphors, and a strategic blueprint for developing connected and high-performing project teams based on the author's experiences as a professional musician, certified conversational intelligence coach, and certified business consultant.

Compared to a few decades ago, companies today are faced with a much more challenging environment providing successful products and solutions for their customers. They are dealing with global competition, very rapid change in technologies, and tremendous volatility in economic conditions. As project managers, we are helping our companies survive in this difficult landscape. We are "agents of change" and "drivers of change." The most important project management methodology today that will help us deal with this change and this volatility is Agile. However, no one process or project management methodology fits all situations! Agile is not a panacea for all projects. Many times, our projects are large enough and complex enough that some parts of the project are best suited to using a predictive planning approach, and other parts are more suited to using Agile. Therefore, a hybrid approach that mixes the traditional, waterfall approach with Agile is really required in many situations today. The agile community oftentimes has quite a negative view of hybrid approaches. Key writers on Agile often say that attempting to use hybrid will corrupt all attempts to use Agile, and will result in failure. In this book, the argument is made that integrating these methodologies can be done if approached the right way, and in fact, this is necessary today.

Certifications in project management are like birthdays: everybody has one. You need something more to distinguish yourself in this profession. This book is a practical guide for project and program managers who want to increase their skills by incorporating relevant theory, formulas, and tools from Master of Business Administration (MBA) curriculum. The book provides an overview of core classes taught in most MBA programs, but in a way that makes the material practical for project practitioners. Readers will learn new tools to improve critical decision making, formulas and techniques for making recommendations to leadership, and an assortment of theories and techniques for up leveling their project management skills. The book concludes with a fresh and honest look at whether the reader would benefit from pursuing and MBA themselves.