Название: Managing Fuzzy Projects in 3D: A Proven, Multi-Faceted Blueprint for Overseeing Complex Projects
Автор: Lavagnon Ika, Jan Saint-Macary
Издательство: McGraw Hill
Год: 2023
Страниц: 541
Язык: английский
Формат: epub (true)
Размер: 10.1 MB

The first resource of its kind―a multi-disciplinary method for effectively managing the largest, most complex projects in business today.

All too often, we execute projects that come with high levels of complexity or uncertainty, along with conflicting or unstated expectations from stakeholders. The authors of this groundbreaking guide refer to them as “fuzzy projects,” and they are all-too-common today.

In Managing Fuzzy Projects in 3D, project management guru Lavagnon Ika and organizational strategy expert Jan Saint-Macary walk you through their proven three-pronged approach for successfully managing such projects. It’s all about planning and executing the project with three key factors in mind―reason and logic, psychosocial/human behavior considerations, and politics, such as power, influence, and hierarchy―to gain a complete picture of the project and the processes for getting it done. Drawing on copious examples, they shed light on why even well-managed projects can fail to meet business case and strategic expectations, and they show how their methods work in the real world.

Throughout, the authors provide illuminating case studies, including Boston’s “Big Dig,” the Golden Gate Bridge, the Ford Edsel, Olympic Games, Indian Tata Nano Car, Microsoft Campus Renovation Project, the U.S. moon mission, and Apple iPhone. In addition, they provide specific questions you can ask stakeholders in order to build clarity from the start of the project.

Project-based work occupies a unique setting within organizations, as this book points out. Project managers sit at the junction of strategic management activities, concerned with leading teams through turbulent, external challenges to identify and gain commercial success, global leadership, or other important benefits that the firm values. At the same time, projects directly affect the internal activities of organizations, proposed and managed to improve operations, reduce inefficiencies, and give the firm a competitive advantage over its rivals. In modern organizations, no idea is too big and no challenge is too difficult to conquer. Consider, for example, the current efforts by Meta Corporation to develop “metaverse” technology, offering a virtual reality internet. Initially budgeted at US$10 billion, Meta’s commitment to the ultimate in disruptive technology demonstrates a clear example of massive, complex project development to create and dominate a new market in which technological “reality” is being realized and reshaped on a recurring weekly basis. Alternatively, American automakers General Motors and Ford are spending billions on new tooling and manufacturing processes to support their transition to e-vehicles, using project management for car and component design and production. Big dreams require big, messy (or “fuzzy”) projects to find solutions when the opportunities themselves are difficult to clearly name.

With Managing Fuzzy Projects in 3D, you have everything you need to successfully guide the most complex, unclear projects beginning to end.

This excellent book provides a road map for implementing strategy. Full of examples and practical insights, it is essential reading for anyone dealing with complex problems, multiple stakeholders, and the pressures of imminent deadlines. - Anita McGahan, PhD (Harvard) former President of the Academy of Management; current Professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School of Management and at Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

Lavagnon Ika and Jan Saint-Macary provide in their new book a fresh look at projects. By adopting a multidisciplinary approach, they address three separate interrelated approaches to a project’s complexity: the triple constraint of time, cost, and quality; the multiple expectations of diverse stakeholders and parties associated; and the psychological intangible needs of the different groups involved inside and outside the project. Indeed, the multidisciplinary approach is a timely matter, whose time has come, and indeed, has long been missing. I welcome the introduction of this book to the market, and highly recommend it. - Aaron J. Shenhar, PhD coauthor of the first Harvard Business School bestseller on project management Reinventing Project Management and Professor of Projects, Innovation, and Leadership

Contents:
Foreword
CHAPTER 1 Introduction (Why This Book)
CHAPTER 2 Organizations & Projects
CHAPTER 3 Strategy and the Role of Project Management
CHAPTER 4 Projects and Management
CHAPTER 5 Project Success and Failure
CHAPTER 6 The Rational Perspective (in Vitro)
CHAPTER 7 The Political Perspective (in Situ)
CHAPTER 8 The Psychosocial Perspective (In Vivo)
CHAPTER 9 Project Management in 3D
CHAPTER 10 Conclusion
EPILOGUE Theoretical and Empirical Bases of Managing Projects in 3D
Afterword by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez
Appendices
Notes
Index