Radical Project Management

Radical Project Management

by Rob Thomsett
Released April 2002
Publisher(s): Pearson
ISBN: 0130094862

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Book description

Project management for today's complex, chaotic business environments.

  • XPM: the first radically new approach to project management in decades!

  • Designed from the ground up for today's high-speed, fast-changing projects

  • Refocusing project management focused on people, relationships, and adding value!

  • Innovative new XPM tools: how to make them work in your organization

Traditional project management doesn't work any more: it's inward-looking, static, and just can't respond to rapid, constant change. Radical Project Management looks outward to stakeholders, management, and clients—and thoroughly involves them from start to finish. Moreover, it assumes that everything will change—and defines a flexible, ongoing project management process that encompasses both project development and support. In this book, Rob Thomsett, one of the world's leading project management consultants, presents XPM from start to finish—and introduces every tool and technique you need to make it work in your organization.

  • Refocusing project management on what matters most: people, relationships, and adding value

  • 11 radically new rules for project managers to live by

  • Innovative new XPM tools, and how to use them

  • "Open Planning" and stakeholder ownership: the heart of successful project management

  • New XPM metrics and project-tracking techniques

  • Why project managers don't need to know the gory technical details

  • Detailed case studies: how XPM is enabling creative people to do truly great work

If you've always suspected there's a more agile, flexible, intelligent way to manage projects, you're right—and XPM is it. Discover for yourself, with the most authoritative, complete, useful XPM guide ever written: Radical Project Management by Rob Thomsett.

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Preface
  3. Acknowledgments
  4. Introduction
  5. eXtreme Concepts
    1. The New Project Environment
      1. Forces Driving Change
    2. Project Management Evolution
      1. The Four Waves of Project Management
    3. eXtreme Concepts
      1. Project Management Versus Technical Management
      2. Context and Content
      3. Whole-of-Life Project Management
      4. Project Manager as Facilitator
      5. Sponsors as Executive Project Managers
      6. Scenario Planning
      7. Rapid Planning
      8. Virtual Teams
      9. It's the Context, Stupid
  6. eXtreme Tools
    1. eXtreme Project Management Context
      1. Two Very Different Types of Work
      2. The Categories of Project Work
    2. The eXtreme Project Management Model
      1. Project Management Processes
      2. The Project Charter or Business Case
    3. The RAP Process
      1. Why Should We Run RAP Sessions?
      2. The RAP Structure
    4. Analyze Project Success
      1. What Are Expectations?
      2. The Seven Success Criteria
      3. eXtreme Tool 1: Success Sliders
    5. Define Scope, Objectives, and Stakeholders
      1. What Is the Difference between Scope and Objectives?
      2. Stakeholders and Related Projects
      3. Related Projects—A Special Case of Stakeholder
    6. Analyze Added Value
      1. The State of the Art
      2. Added-Value Analysis
      3. Benefits Realization
      4. Cost-Effectiveness Model
    7. Define Quality
      1. Project Quality Deployment
      2. What Is a Quality?
      3. Toward an Effective Quality Plan: PQD in Action
      4. Quality in Action
      5. Quality, Estimates, Costs, and Risks
    8. Select a Development Strategy
      1. Strategy Ain't Methodology
      2. The Four Development Strategies
      3. Rapid Application Development (RAD), Agile, and Other Variations
      4. Partitioning Guidelines
      5. Strategy Selection
      6. Strategy and Risk Assessment
    9. Analyze Risk
      1. Project Risk Assessment Overview
      2. Project Risk Management
      3. Risk Containment or Reduction
      4. Shooting the Messenger
    10. Develop Task Lists
      1. Develop Project Task Lists
      2. A Moral Dilemma
      3. Scenario and Real-Time Planning
    11. Estimate Tasks
      1. Causes of Estimation Error
      2. Estimation Principles
      3. The Detailed Estimation Process
    12. Develop Schedule
      1. Develop Project Execution Plan
      2. Scenario Planning Revisited
      3. Develop Project Staffing Agreements
    13. Develop Return on Investment
      1. Develop Cost and ROI Scenarios
      2. Analyzing Project Costs
      3. Developing Your ROI
    14. Project Tracking and Reporting
      1. Project Tracking
      2. Project Reporting
      3. The Project Change Control Process
      4. Maintaining the Project Management File
    15. Postimplementation Reviews
      1. The Postimplementation Review
      2. The Learning Loop Concept
      3. The System Support Review
      4. Benefits Realization Planning
    16. Support
      1. The Support Problem
      2. The Production Support Portfolio
      3. Passages: The Life Cycle of Production Systems
      4. Conclusion
  7. Additional Resources
    1. Getting the Sponsor You Deserve
      1. Rule 1: The Bag of Money and the Baseball Bat
      2. Rule 2: The Passive Conduit
      3. Rule 3: You Generally Get the Sponsor You Deserve
      4. Rule 4: In the Absence of Information, Executives Still Make Decisions
      5. Rule 5: Educate as Well as Inform
      6. Rule 6: The Level of Help You Get Is Inversely Proportional to Your Delay in Asking
      7. Rule 7: Show Them the Money
      8. Rule 8: “Beam Us Up, Scotty”
      9. Rule 9: No Sponsor, No Start
    2. Getting the Stakeholders You Deserve
      1. Rob's Corporate Mathematics
      2. Why You Need Your Stakeholders
      3. How to Win Stakeholders Over
      4. How to Get the Project You All Want
    3. A Question of Ethics
      1. Situation 1
      2. Situation 2
      3. Situation 3
      4. Situation 4
      5. Situation 5
      6. Best Practice and Best Behavior
      7. Organizational and Individual Impact
      8. Drawing the Line—An Extreme Project Management Responsibility
      9. A Draft Code of Ethical Behavior for eXtreme Project People
    4. The Success Sliders Redux
      1. Requirements Are Not the Same as Expectations
      2. So, What Are Expectations?
      3. The Swiss Army Knife
      4. Other Tips for Understanding Expectations
    5. In Case of Emergencies
      1. The Dark Side
      2. The Good Side
      3. Come to the Dark Side, Luke
    6. The Secret of Great Project Managers
    7. References

Product information

  • Title: Radical Project Management
  • Author(s): Rob Thomsett
  • Release date: April 2002
  • Publisher(s): Pearson
  • ISBN: 0130094862