• Book Name: Project Life Cycle Economics Cost Estimation, Management and Effectiveness in Construction Projects
• Pages: 438
• Size: 3 MB

Project Life Cycle Economics Pdf Free Download

A good navigator does not suffice to a ship if on-board instruments are not in a good order to assist him.

Francesco Guicciardini (Florence, 1483–1540) – ‘Political and Civil Memories’

The meaning of this historical sentence, in the current project management language, can be seen to refer to the problems that may arise from the adoption of project management practices which are thereafter found inadequate to the characteristics of the project organization, whereas they were intended for use by the project manager to improve process performance and cost-effectiveness in projects.

As part of project management policies, significant follow-up benefits in an organization, in terms of performance and cost-effectiveness through the life cycle of projects, can also derive from an efficient adoption of software tools or – more generally – some modelling technique, provided that the selected tool/technique is really appropriate to the characteristics of the organization. If this is not true, negative consequences will inevitably result, so that – as a minimum – the new tool will be discarded and all revenues expected from this investment will turn into costs, which are sometimes quite far from being negligible.

Project Life Cycle Economics Pdf Free Download

The impact could also be even more negative if the organization – assumed as being in itself less mature in managing projects – sees this new software tool as a solution to enable the development of project management practices; in this case, it is likely that the deficiencies of the tool will be considered as deficiencies of the method. This may eventually lead to discontinuing both the software tool and the ensuing project management practices; this situation might even deteriorate after the software tool is introduced, as a result of any attempt to select different options for the software tool. This choice is, indeed, highly critical, and moreover complex in a number of cases requiring special attention: complexity essentially derives from the extreme multiplicity of available solutions and from the large number of different variables that have to be considered.

On the other hand, as will be noted again in this volume, the fact that ‘all significant innovations are achieved through projects’ has been emphasized by Russell D. Archibald and Shane C. Archibald, two worldwide recognized experts in the project management field, in their book Leading & Managing Innovation. This, in turn, reflects the inscription on the Nobel Medal for Physics and Chemistry:

Which means ‘those who enhanced life on earth by the art of their inventions’, a quotation taken from the poem Aeneid, a masterpiece of Latin literature written near the end of the first century BC by Publius Vergilius Maro.

Project life cycle economics pdf free download.