The Programme and Portfolio Workout is launched

The Programme and Portfolio Workout has been launched. Together with its companion, The Project Workout, this book aims to help you run your organization in a structured, yet agile way so you can meet your strategic goals and make sure all parts of your organization are aligned.

I have made three short videos introducing the books:

1. The first video shows how these books have grown out of the original ‘Project Workout’, first published in 1997 and how they now give you the knowledge and thinking to make your organization succeed.
2. The second video describes The Project Workout and how you can direct and manage one project at a time.
3. The third video describes The Programme and Portfolio Workout, and how you can direct the tens, hundreds or even thousands of piece of work in your organization.

You can see these videos on Robert’s web site

Lessons from history

If you read about the history of “project management” you will usually be told how it emerged in the early twentieth century in response to particular needs (blah blah blah).

However, at an ISO meeting last week, in Sweden, the South Korean delegate, Young Min Park,  brought us all to heel by showing a video. Basically, he took ISO 21500 (Guidance on project management) and mapped it against the historical records of the construction of Hwaseong Fortress in Korea . . . and he found that most of the processes described in ISO21500 were practiced all those years ago . . and there is documentary evidence to support this (have you done your post-project review yet?).

His video is a delight and shows that it is the practices that matter, not what we call them (although as you all know, having consistent words does help communication!). So sit back and enjoy the video; it’s only four minutes long, but is derived from the detailed project management records still held in the Royal archives in Korea.

Video: Historical project tells about project management

My thoughts:

• It would seem my Korean edition of Project Workout is a few hundred years late!
• If you want to see my cartoons on Roman project management (fictional, of course) and learn more about ISO21500 see the “Community” pages in my Project Workout web site.