From Concept to Customer

From Concept to Customer: Portfolio, Pipeline, and Strategic Project Management gives a broad, comprehensive perspective of project management, covering the entire concept-to-customer cycle of complex strategic projects. Novice and seasoned project managers alike will gain insight into real-world, practical applications from the author's more than 40 years of hands-on experience with world-class multinational organizations. The techniques explained are proven, the approach sound, and the results measurable and significant. Case studies have been taken directly from the author's client files. They illustrate the application of various project management strategies, as well as strategic and tactical planning tools. A step-by-step approach, supported by tools, techniques, and examples, is used to illustrate each important aspect of project management. Readers will find thorough explanations of portfolio and pipeline management techniques, project planning tools, risk management tools, contingency planning, and trade-off analyses, leadership techniques, the project team, mistakes made by project managers and their teams, preparing an effective project proposal, the importance of 'under-committing and over-delivering', aligning project expectations with the project team's ability to deliver them, results-oriented performance metrics, and effective acquisitions planning. Readers will also find thorough explanations of budget planning and cost control, process control techniques, communications planning and the importance of documentation, quality management techniques, tactical project planning utilizing work breakdown structures (WBS), the critical path method (CPM), program evaluation and review technique (PERT), graphical evaluation and review technique (GERT), and Gantt charts, cycle time management techniques, concurrency to reduce project cycle time and costs, and the project management office (PMO).