Leading Complex Projects: A Data-Driven Approach to Mastering the Human Side of Project Management - Tapa dura

Acerca del autor

EDWARD W. MERROW is the founder and CEO of Independent Project Analysis, Inc. After starting his career as a professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Ed spent 15 years at the RAND Corporation, eventually directing RAND's Energy Research Program. In 1987 he founded IPA to be a unique benchmarking and research provider to the capital-intensive industries and infrastructure builders around the world. Ed has authored a number of studies and books, most recently Industrial Megaprojects (Wiley 2011). Ed's contributions to the industry have been recognized by a number of organizations and he is a member of the National Academy of Construction.

NEERAJ S. NANDURDIKAR is Director of IPA's global Exploration and Production (E&P) practice. In this capacity he acts as a partner and adviser to Fortune 100 Oil and Gas executives around the world in helping find savings and efficiencies across the entire oil and gas value chain and help lift capital productivity. He has delivered several keynotes and conference presentations and is a key thought leader in the industry, working to enhance the oil and gas industry's capital projects performance and make the industry stronger and more resilient. He has an MBA from The Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania and an MS in Petroleum Engineering from The University of Tulsa.

De la contraportada

A REVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO MEASURING AND MASTERING THE HUMAN SIDE OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Based on a groundbreaking study of complex industrial projects around the world conducted by authors Edward W. Merrow and Neeraj S. Nandurdikar, Leading Complex Projects describes a revolutionary new approach to project analysis that, for the first time, succinctly measures project outcomes in terms of project leadership and associated human factors. Unlike other project analysis methodologies which tend to conceptualize post-mortem analysis exclusively in terms of goals, schedules, budgets, and other traditionally quantifiable factors, the data-driven approach described in this book:

• Addresses a range of "intangible" factors, such as relationships, cultural alignment, and motivation
• Develops a rigorous framework and powerful tools for quantifying human factors and their impact on project outcomes
• Describes how to systematically link project leaders personalities, habits, and tasks to project outcomes to define areas for improvement
• Provides a vista into the life of some of the most successful leaders of complex projects through leader profiles
• Provides companies, human resources and executives a roadmap on how to identify future leaders, what to look for in them and how to provide curated experiences for the young leader's career so that they can become successful leaders of complex projects

Leadership is measured in terms of results. For project managers, this means taking responsibility for project outcomes as well as having a clear plan for delivering continuous improvement going forward. An indispensable professional resource for anyone in a project management role, Leading Complex Projects for the first time arms PMs charged with leading complex, large-scale projects with a rigorous framework and a set of sophisticated tools for measuring and mastering the human side of project management.

De la solapa interior

Traditional approaches to analyzing project outcomes tend to focus narrowly on quantifiable factors such as objectives, quality, cost, and schedules. While such approaches may provide valuable information on an individual project's strengths they provide very little in way of guidance and lessons on why some leaders are able to deliver a track record of superior projects while others, often in the same organization, cannot. This may explain why large, complex projects continue to fail at an alarming rate. While many contemporary authors on project analysis pay lip service to "intangible" factors, such as leadership, relationships, and cultural alignment, virtually all of them continue to focus doggedly on the aforementioned and traditional management processes to the exclusion of all else. Until now.

In Leading Complex Projects authors Edward W. Merrow and Neeraj S. Nandurdikar unveil a revolutionary, data-driven approach to quantifying the human side of project management. More importantly, they show PMs how to apply that original approach to virtually any complex, large-scale project for outstanding outcomes and continuous improvement.

In developing the approach, the authors drew upon data derived from the proprietary Independent Project Analysis, Inc. database, which includes crucial information on thousands of complex large-scale projects across a range of industries worldwide. They also conducted interviews--many of which are summarized in the interview section of this book--with hundreds of leaders of complex projects in various industries. With that information in hand, along with their decades of experience consulting executives and project leaders around the globe, they developed a rigorous framework and a set of metrics for quantifying project performance in terms of critical human factors as they relate to project leadership generally and to the personalities, habits and traits of the project leaders themselves.

Thanks to the revolutionary approach described in Leading Complex Projects, "intangible" human factors, and project leader's personalities, habits of mind, behaviors and traits can, for the first time, be quantitatively linked to project outcomes. More importantly, the approach provides PMs powerful insights into their individual strengths and weaknesses as leaders. By placing the authors' analyses alongside their own project data, PMs will more accurately zero in on recurring obstacles and identify project components in need of greater planning, oversight, or control. They will learn how to better inspire, motivate, and empower their teams. And they will dramatically boost their success profiles and more fully achieve every project manager's goal of continuous improvement.