Contents
Preface to the Fourth Edition by Ian Livingston
Part One: Challenges To Be Faced
Initiatives fail, are cancelled or never get started – why?
2 Advice the Best Organisations Give Us
The lessons and their implications
But we’re different! – organisational context
Part Two: A Walk Through a Project
3 The Project Framework: An Overview of its Gates and Stages
Projects as vehicles of change
Internal and customer-facing projects
How can I apply the framework?
5 The Proposal: Identify the Need!
6 The Initial Investigation Stage: Have a Quick Look at It!
7 The Detailed Investigation Stage: Promising … Let’s Have a Closer Look
8 The Develop and Test Stage: Do It!
10 The Release Stage: Let’s Get Going!
11 The Post-Implementation Review: How Did We Do?
12 Applying the Staged Framework
Fitting into the staged framework
Small stuff, or ‘simple’ projects
‘Just do it’ projects – loose cannons
Big stuff, or projects and subprojects
The extended project life cycle
13 A Few Related Projects: Simple Programmes
Sharing projects – interdependencies
Part Three: Dealing With Many Projects
What’s different about Business Programme management?
Prerequisites for effective portfolio management
15 There are Too Many Projects to Do!
Principles for selecting projects
Conditions for total resource planning
White space – the freedom to change
How can I meet the three conditions?
How detailed does resource forecasting need to be?
17 An Environment for Managing Your Portfolio
The tools to help it work – systems
Lists – keeping tabs on your projects
What would such a system look like?
Part Four: Making Projects Work For You
Culture – the way we do things around here
I thought you were doing that! – accountability
Define your project organisation
Summary and detailed schedule plan
Tracking progress toward your objectives
Reports used when drafting a plan
Report used to update the forecast
Reports used for progress reporting
So why are we nearly always late?
Recording actual costs and committed costs
23 Managing What Might Go Wrong (or Right): Risks and Opportunities
Considering possible risks and opportunities
Addressing risk at the start of the project
Addressing opportunities at the start of the project
Monitoring once the project is in progress
Tips on using the risk and opportunity log
More sophisticated risk evaluation techniques
24 Managing What Has Gone Wrong (or Right!): Issues
25 Let’s Do It Differently!: Change Control
Accountabilities for change decisions
Keeping sight of the objectives
Review when a proposal is raised
Review at the Detailed Investigation Gate
Recording agreement – quality reviews
Part Five: Implementing the Framework
Advice from other organisations
Finding help in implementing a project’s approach
Justifiably different – tailoring