The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management, 5th Edition

Chapter 18Enterprise Project Management: Coordinate All Projects and Project Resources in Your Organization

Introduction

Project management techniques have been practiced for more than 50 years on projects around the world, but until the 1990s, they focused primarily on individual projects. With few exceptions, projects have been treated as organizational anomalies—each one was looked on as so unique that there seemed to be little value in changing organizational practices or policies to accommodate the special needs of managing them. Even the giant construction and engineering firms that worked exclusively on projects simply hired good project managers for each individual project instead of developing a corporate approach to managing projects.

A dramatic change has taken place since the mid-1990s. As companies restructure to strengthen their competitiveness, projects have become the focus, whether they are developing new products or delivering better service. Project-focused companies can't be dependent on heroes to pull off a miracle each time; the heroes get tired and there just aren't enough of them. These firms need a new paradigm. The frontier in modern project management is to take the lessons learned at the project level and apply them to the enterprise—whether the enterprise is a department or an entire corporation.

This chapter explores the most current questions and practices for institutionalizing the use of project management principles—what is becoming known as ...