This book is about “managing projects for value” and about the very important need for business and organizational involvement with projects. The really successful project managers understand that projects only exist to promote and benefit the organization at large. The point of this book and a motivation for writing it is to emphasize and recognize that accomplishing business objectives is the source of value for projects. Understanding where value comes from is critical to satisfying those who charter and fund projects. Projects are valuable because they are an important means to extract value from opportunity by managed application of resources.

CHAPTER 2: THE SOURCES OF VALUE FOR PROJECTS
“Value increases when the satisfaction of the customer’s need augments and the expenditure of resources diminishes.”
-Robert Tassinari
Le rapport qualite´/prix, 1985

In simplest form, value is a need to be satisfied for which someone is willing to pay or exchange other resources. To project managers, wants, needs, value, and quality are “requirements”. As stewards of value and quality, project managers are customer-focused and outward oriented. Unmet need is the source of requirements; unmet need is the opportunity.

Opportunity is the container for all things needed. Investing to satisfy identified need leads to reward. Mission provides the compelling call for action to exploit opportunity. Vision inspires and provides motivation. Vision coupled with mission exposes opportunity, unleashes innovation, and creates value. To effectively and wisely choose among opportunities requires goal setting and strategic planning. Proposed projects are the likely outcomes of this process. Projects developed in this way are instruments of strategy. As strategy is the means to goals, so by extension are projects are a means to goals.

CHAPTER 3 BALANCING INVESTMENT, RETURNS, AND RISK
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
-Aldous Huxley

In this chapter, we introduce a tool we call the project balance sheet that is helpful in organizing investment, capability, and risk. Selecting projects requires a decision framework in which to work. A decision framework consists of:
¨ A process for decision-making,
¨ Tools for gathering and analyzing data required by the process, and
¨ A decision policy for applying the data to the selection decision.
Once a project are selected, the project balance sheet holds the information the project manager uses to charter the project and negotiate scope, time, and resources with the project investors and sponsors.

CHAPTER 4 ESTIMATING THE FUTURE
“There is likely no factor that would contribute more to the success of any project than having a good and complete definition of the project’s scope of work.”
Quentin Fleming and Joel Koppelman,
Earned Value Project Management, 2000

There are no facts in the future. It’s that simple. We can only estimate events, tasks, activities, and outcomes in the future. Of course, the task of project managers is to deliver value to the stakeholders of their projects, and that delivery will be in the future, so what can project managers say and do about the value those stakeholders will receive?

How project managers define scope is a critical first step to filling in the left side of the project balance sheet and setting expectations with project sponsors. Second, how the project manager plans the delivery of value and accommodates changing gaps that arise in the future is the next most critical step. Then we address identifying risks in project plans and mitigating their effects.

CHAPTER 5 DELIVERING VALUE
“Value increases when the satisfaction of the Customer’s need augments and the expenditure of resources diminishes.”
Robert Tassinari, 1985

In the final analysis, the projects are chartered to deliver value to the business and its stakeholders. Successful achievement of business value depends upon measuring progress along the way. There are two categories of measurements:
¨ The first measurement category addresses how well implementation resources are being employed to acquire and make operational the outcomes of the project in the timeframe desired. This measurement is about progressive project accomplishment according to a baseline plan. The project management name for this measurement system is “earned value”. Earned value systems have been around a long time, going by many different names, and they have been a part of project management since the 1960’s.
¨ The second measurement category addresses how well the deliverables are being employed operationally to achieve the benefits and returns in the business case. We coin this measurement “value attainment”. Achievement of business goals may require measurements to be made throughout the lifecycle of the endeavor from project implementation through deliverables retirement and salvage.

CHAPTER 6 SCHEDULE RISK AND VALUE ATTAINMENT
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils, for time is the greatest innovator.”
Francis Bacon

Among the many risks to assess and track, risks to the schedule are paramount. Schedule impacts cost, opportunity, and resources. Schedule delay may compromise quality, and may impact other project schedules. Controlling cost, exploiting opportunity, delivering quality, and maximizing the employment of resources have their roots in managing time. Thus, schedule management closely couples both project implementation success and subsequent value attainment through operations or product sale. For this reason, schedule risk management and value attainment are presented together in this chapter.

All too often value and benefit attainment must be managed. For this management task, there is a need for a “benefits manager”, typically the project sponsor. Recall that project value is derived from goals and benefits are the means to recovery project investment. Value attainment and benefits may not be identical. The benefit manager employs benefits measurement and reporting tools appropriate to measuring investment recovery and invokes Key Performance Indicators [KPI’s] to track value attainment.