Connecting the Dots: Aligning Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times FROM THE PUBLISHER
Organizations are struggling for greater return on their multibillion-dollar technology and project-related investments. Individual projects may be useful, but when examined collectively, they often work at cross-purposes, duplicate each other's efforts, or aim for obsolescing business objectives. And all are competing for scarce resources. In today's earnings-driven business environment, companies must look to their portfolios to better deliver on objectives and propel the organization forward.
Based on their experience with a variety of companies, authors Cathleen Benko and distinguished professor F. Warren McFarlan have developed an alignment approach that better connects an organization's project portfolio to its corporate objectives in a manner responsive to today's unpredictable environment.
Connecting the Dots provides a scalable framework and practical tools for better aligning a company's: (1) project portfolio with its objectives; (2) individual projects with each other; and (3) portfolio and objectives with the volatile environment. Better-aligned companies enhance business/technology performance by increasing shareholder value and confidence and improving the portfolio's return on investment. This in-the-trenches guidebook helps companies capture this latent value while building a more adaptive organization.
Author Biography: Cathleen Benko is Braxton's Global e-Business Leader. F. Warren McFarlan is the Senior Associate Dean and Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
SYNOPSIS
The central goal of this guide is to teach managers to consider the relationship between all their company's projects and bring them into a complementary order, a process the authors call alignment. The need to match the objectives of a company's projects, seen as a group, to the company's overall strategy is formulated in terms of a challenging economic atmosphere. Frequent stories of individual companies are used for illustration. McFarlan teaches business administration at the Harvard Business School. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
For consultant Benko and Harvard business professor McFarlan, the problem with many corporations today is their alignment. Different projects within the same company often compete, overlap or contradict, squandering valuable resources in a time when companies can't afford to waste a nickel. Instead, say Benko and McFarlan, a firm's project portfolio should be like geese flying in formation-that is, in perfect alignment. The book's guiding metaphor is that of "frontier living," in which a group of pioneers comes together to focus on a specific goal. Today's information frontier demands the same kind of discipline, write the authors. The traits workers will need for this journey include being agile (in order to respond to the unforeseen) and having an "outside-in" perspective (taking a hard look at your own business practices). More so than most other management tomes, the authors try to inject this book with a little thematic verve. The result is an unusually readable and skillfully packaged take on corporate retooling. But it's a tad too fond of trendy buzzwords (e.g., "project chunking") and struggles a bit to make the case that alignment, above all else, is what ails American business. (Mar. 5) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Soundview Executive Book Summaries
In Connecting the Dots, Benko, Braxton's global e-business leader, and McFarlan, a professor and dean at Harvard, argue that a project portfolio is your organization's future currency, and is the single most important asset for delivering on strategic and operational objectives. They write that the best way to leverage this currency is through greater alignment. They also show business leaders how they can increase portfolio economics and apply tools to reduce portfolio risk and improve efficiency. Copyright © 2003 Soundview Executive Book Summaries
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