Preface

One of the biggest wastes occurring today in private and public organizations is the high percentage of failed projects and programs. Billions of dollars are flushed down the drain and millions of employee hours are wasted that should be directed toward improving our culture, environment, and advancements in science. Redeploying 25 percent of these wasted resources to medical research could result in huge gains in decreasing death rates and extending life expectancy.

There are many reasons why so many of our projects/programs have failed to deliver desired results. Some of them include

• Selecting the wrong projects
• Not staffing projects with the right personnel
• Lack of proper management attention
• Lack of a good sponsor
• Project resource overruns
• Greatly expanded scopes
• Poor project management
• Lack of coordination between projects
• Inadequate funding
• Projects are completed late, missing the window of opportunity
• Poor organizational change management
• Not providing adequate training
• Poor use of technology
• Not defining the best solution
• Setting wrong priorities
• Poorly defined goals and objectives
• Lack of understanding customer needs

This is just a partial list of things that can cause projects/programs to fail. I’m sure we could go on extending the list, but you should have the idea by now. Three of the biggest unresolved problems that organizations face are how to reduce the cycle time, the costs, and the failure rates of projects that have started, but do not produce an acceptable level of value added to the organization.

The processes and systems that we present in this book will not address all of the things that can cause projects/programs to fail; however, they will provide you with some guidance on how to select the right projects and programs. Also they will address how to apply the available resources to maximize results and potential success rates. The book will provide you as well with guidance on how to use Portfolio leaders to maximize the use of resources, minimize project overruns, and remove potentially failing projects early in the project/program cycle.