How to make consultants work for you
To get the optimal results from your projects and programs you need to understand how your brain works and how to best work with it
Written by an executive, for all executives who want to be on top of their project investments.
When projects define the true business measures of success - the desired business outcomes, benefits, and value to be produced, it becomes simple to achieve project success.
Most organizations today are doing projects they should not be doing, and not doing projects they should be doing.
You commission projects to realize the benefits. The business case is, therefore, THE most important document in the project delivery process.
This handbook contains comprehensive notes and detailed instructions to support the TOP Value Equation Practitioner Certification.
Is strategy execution, project and value delivery inherently complex or have we just made it so?
Consistently, the research into strategy execution finds that around 70% of strategies are not successfully delivered.
Project portfolio prioritization is critical to the implementation of your strategy and your organization’s future. You need to know the questions to ask
You commission projects to deliver the benefits. Benefits Management should be an integral part of project delivery processes, not add-on steps or separate parallel stream.
Compare two projects - real live ones in the same organization - of similar size, complexity and cost. Why was one an utter failure and the other a resounding success?
How well you do change determines how much change you can do
Your project is only as good as the people you put on it - and this includes the governance team. A key role of executive management is to ensure you have the right resources on every project.
Most projects miss, lose or destroy more value than they deliver. But most of the waste incurred is invisible, and so it is neither measured nor managed.
Only the top 5% of firms are capable of effectively delivering their strategies, projects and business value in full. The other 95% waste expenditure, lose value and miss opportunities on a massive scale.
What if there was one simple thing that everyone could do to dramatically improve the business results from projects? What is the magical 'holy grail' for projects?
Most projects fail to deliver all of their available business value. This is not incompetence or each individual project’s failing - it is a systemic problem.
Being a consultant is a very different role from being in a line management role or even being a contractor. Over 30 practical guidelines on the do’s and don’ts of consulting.
What you don’t know can kill your project (and your reputation)
TOP is specifically designed to enable (and measure) the successful delivery of projects.
How to move beyond the orthodox ‘on time, on budget’ measures, to define the true business measures of project success — outcomes, benefits and value
The current measures of project success - “on-time, on-budget, to-specification" - are absurd because they measure success by the inputs used, rather than by the value to be created.
It is time to re-state what true ‘project success’ is and identify what tools, techniques and processes you need to have in place to ensure you deliver each project successfully.
The TOP IT Value Pyramid™ explains which IT roles and services are valued and why, and which are not valued and why.
Taking a business strategy perspective reveals the eight ‘Self-Evident Truths’ about projects.
Your organization runs on processes. Systems are merely ‘automated processes’. Managing and simplifying your processes is a critical success factor.
Here we make it all quite clear - what is ‘value’, what are ‘benefits’ and what needs to be taken into account when measuring the ‘value’ of a project.
The half-life of a Portfolio Management Office is around two years. See how you can survive in the long term by evolving into a Strategy Execution Office.
Measures of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ first need to be defined.
“Outcomes” are clear, specific, measurable descriptions of your primary measures of project success. They are the most critical element of any project, yet are too rarely clearly defined and delivered.
Although you commission projects to realize the benefits, there are 26 major obstacles to successful benefits management.
As a business executive, you are both accountable for the value of your project investments and you have to live with the results.
Successful project, program and portfolio delivery is undermined by a set of commonly held myths, erroneous beliefs, and false solutions.
To improve your operations and profits, you will have to cut costs, downsize, outsource, or use the six sigma. But there is one last bastion of unseen waste – excessive waste - projects.
Understand why organizations need to have objective and consistent means by which competing ideas and proposals can be evaluated, and their relative priority determined.
Your organization’s Value Delivery Capability determines the results you generate from your strategy and project investments, and over time, your long-term competitive advantage.
To understand and improve your organization, you need to understand processes. Yet, many executives and even project practitioners do not fully and correctly understand what a process is (and isn’t), or how it can be improved.
Your value equation determines how you maximize, optimize, manage, deliver and measure your business benefits.
Successful strategy execution and value delivery requires four perspectives or ‘lenses’
The Value Equation is the most powerful tool in any project delivery toolbox — but is missing in most organizations
Project governance is more not understood than misunderstood. Here we explain what each dimension is and the risks of not executing each dimension effectively.
With the potential to easily execute your strategy and double your returns, at no extra cost you can adopt a value delivery approach to eliminate the current levels of waste on your projects, while dramatically increasing the business outcomes, benefits and value - and future profits - delivered from your project investments. This is the last profit frontier.
Worldwide unknowingly organizations have made a choice - a choice that is costing them millions each year. This book spells out the nature of this choice and the need to consciously choose 'value delivery'.
Board members and executives are often bemused by IT projects. While they can understand 'normal' projects, they just don't understand IT project investments. Are they different or is this a myth?
The Project Governance role is not well understood. Poor Project Governance by Sponsors and Steering Committees can destroy enormous project value.
Generating the value from projects is a challenge - not least because 'value' is not well understood.
Just when is a project 'successful'? Even this question would get a variety of answers in most circles. Here we define project success from a business point of view.
Learn how successful (and unsuccessful) project sponsors do their jobs by reading these true stories of triumph and failure.
Novella expose of the cost of deficient investment management processes, and the need to uplift your organization's 'value delivery capability'
“Solving the benefits puzzle” spells out the problems in measuring benefits in a story format and presents the solution by outlining a scientific approach to benefits management.
This entertaining exposé uses true stories to show how consultants work, and how you, as a client, must manage them to get the maximum value.
What is the promise of totally optimized projects? That you can increase project value and deliver in less time and for less cost .