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 for up leveling their project management skills.
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.
If you want to know how to reduce financial wastage and cost overrun on projects and the applied best practices to enable project success, then this book is for you. This book reveals the many challenges of project control in practice and then provides practical good practices to overcome them. This is done by presenting a robust project control framework that includes several good practices to mitigate project control inhibitors and enhance the entire project control process. The core project control techniques and methods in practice and how to design an enabling environment for effective project control are also explained. The aim of this book is to expose the readers to several good practices which they can then apply confidently to enhance the success of their projects.
This book provides a simple explanatory guide for the layman that clarifies the ‘big picture’ of the PMBOK. The Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), published by the Project Management Institute, provides a roadmap of performance domains designed to support project managers in all phases of project management. The sheer number of models, methods, and artifacts may leave project managers in a quandary about where to start and how to apply the many components. This book provides a simple explanatory guide for the layman that clarifies the ‘big picture’ of the PMBOK.
Project Profitability explains why opportunities are not realized and offers a framework that will guarantee your teams identify projects that align with your strategy, calculate cash savings appropriately, and realize these cash savings upon implementation. Consultants and internal project teams often make substantial claims about the savings opportunities resulting from their projects. Most of the time, these claims do not come true. Project Profitability explains why these opportunities are not realized and offers a framework that will guarantee your teams identify projects that align with your strategy, calculate cash savings appropriately, and realize these cash savings upon implementation. Customers of consulting organizations can use this book to keep their consultants honest when savings are promised. Consulting organizations can use this book to help document the value their solutions bring, how much of that value can be realized, and what’s necessary to achieve it. If you are a consultant, you do not want to risk having your customer know the content of this book and challenge the value promise!
The demand for cybersecurity expertise is growing phenomenally; enhancing cybersecurity project skills will boost technology professionals’ careers and improve organizational cybersecurity readiness. Shields Up: Cybersecurity Project Management provides an end-to-end framework tuned for cybersecurity projects. More experienced cybersecurity professionals will appreciate the innovative and lean elements of this approach. The reader is guided through the delivery, management, and optimization approach that increases the probability of cybersecurity project success. Cybersecurity project management in Shields Up brings together international frameworks such as the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, the National Institute of Standards and Technology Cybersecurity Framework, ITIL 4 Service Management, the ISO 27001 Information Security Management, ISO 31000 Risk Management, and ISO 9000 Quality Management. A key benefit of this book is the reader can quickly apply the hybrid project management approach since it combines global frameworks already followed by cybersecurity professionals leading to successful projects. Never before has cybersecurity project management been so important.
What They Didn’t Teach You in School: Lessons for STEM Students and Professionals Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math education has been described as, “drinking from a firehose.” STEM students are required to absorb an overwhelming amount of technical information before they can earn their undergraduate degrees. But it takes more than a thorough understanding of math, science, and engineering concepts to become successful in today’s job market. NASA’s former Chief Knowledge Officer, Roger Forsgren, was responsible for training the agency’s technical workforce and provides critical lessons learned for STEM students and graduates to build successful careers as they compete in today’s workplace. Being an introvert in an extroverts’ world: You may certainly be the smartest person in the room but that may not be enough to convince a client, make a persuasive presentation, or effectively manage others. Learn how to remain in your comfort zone yet still make a compelling impact by becoming an ambivert. Communication Skills: How to get your point across and express yourself in a cogent, concise manner. How to make yourself heard, and respected, in a group of experienced professionals. Critical Thinking: Avoid jumping to conclusions by training yourself to look beyond the obvious for the real clues to a problem or situation. Ethics: STEM professionals possess unique skills, but such technical expertise also requires a sense of personal responsibility ensuring your talents are being put to the best use for yourself and for society. Case studies have proven to be valuable learning tools and Roger Forsgren includes twelve compelling historical case studies that demonstrate the critical knowledge needed for STEM students as they progress through their careers.
Agile is the ability to quickly and naturally adapt to respond to changes. Most companies are inherently fragile and not agile – when they are hit by new developments, shifting consumer behavior or fast-moving competition, they struggle and even cease to exist! Inner Building Blocks is a novel about Neil Frost, a Director of Digital Transformation and Agile Centre of Excellence at Walkers Mart. The company is already grappling with a failing transformation and on the verge of bankruptcy when COVID-19 strikes! Sid, the Coach instils constructive discomfort through a series of probing questions to: Rethink agility and reimagine the future of work with hybrid operating models. Launch a series of experiments to reinvent the Building Blocks (e.g., strategy, talent, culture, structures, practices and digital technologies). Discover twenty-six solutions to embrace lean-agile mindset for strategic agility. Could the company survive amid the global pandemic and ensuing supply chain challenges? A compelling storytelling approach and provocative dialogues provide relatable context to adopt the concepts. The principles and techniques are delicately camouflaged within the underlying characters, their conversations and situations.
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.
