Harvard Business Review Press Reinventing Project Management: The Diamond Approach To Successful Growth And Innovation

Shenhar (management, Stevens Institute of Technology) and Dvir (management, Ben Gurion University, Israel) introduce a model for managing projects. The model is built around the novelty of the product, the project's level of technological uncertainty, the complexity of the product or organization, and the timeframe. It is based on investment benefit analysis, and considers the strategic as well as the tactical aspects of project performance in the short and long term. The authors illustrate concepts and strategies of the model with examples from real life, including the creation of the movie Toy Story, NASA's space shuttle program, and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Projects are the engines that drive innovation from idea to commercialization. In fact, the number of projects in most organizations today is expanding while operations is shrinking. Yet, since many companies still focus on operational excellence and efficiency, most projects fail--largely because conventional project management concepts cannot adapt to a dynamic business environment. Moreover, top managers neglect their company's project activity, and line managers treat all their projects alike--as part of operations. Based on an unprecedented study of more than 600 projects in a variety of businesses and organizations around the globe, "Reinventing Project Management" provides a new and highly adaptive model for planning and managing projects to achieve superior business results. Autorid: Aaron J. Shenhar, Dov Dvir