Description
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 (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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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: project portfolio with its objectives; individual projects with each other; and 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. 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.
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