J. Kent Crawford and Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin
© 2006, hardback, 424pp., Auerbach Publications/Center for Business Practices
Optimizing Human Capital with a Strategic Project Office explores the SPO's potential to transform an enterprise by making the most of people within an organization. This volume provides an exhaustive review of topics such as the hiring, retention, measurement, training, and professional development of knowledge workers in project management. This book's chapters summarize the latest thinking regarding these issues and offer a model of how the best aspirations of workers can become reality through the medium of the SPO.
The authors explore the best practices of project-savvy organizations and offer detailed information on proven models for assessing and developing competency, building inspired teams, and creating a working environment in which motivation thrives. The book includes a set of model role descriptions for staffing the project office - on a divisional or enterprise level - based on original research by the authors.
The book opens by focusing on the business case for reorganizing companies around the managing-by-projects model, the roles of executives in implementing project management change initiatives, and the nuts-and-bolts topics of project personnel management, such as competency, recruiting, and rewards. The final section reviews current developments and trends, identifying the "people management" issues that generate the greatest organizational changes. Appendices provide examples of tools for establishing project-friendly HR practices under the auspices of a Strategic Project Office.
