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The objective of any organization is to create value for its stockholders. Given that sophistication in project management will lead to efficiency in operations, which in turn leads to better profits, enlightened enterprises are sensitive to project management sophistication and the definitive way of measuring it and improving it. Although in many organizations, projects are initiated in isolation of each other, and based on ad hoc urgencies, sophisticated enterprises have a formalized, logical, and consistent, structure for organizing, and managing, their projects. Project management sophistication is the state of enterprise practices in which success of projects is predictable and that the definitive measure of project management success continually improves with time. Conducting a full assessment of the organizational project management sophistication is relatively time consuming and costly. Thus, many organizations have a need and desire for instruments that would provide a rough estimate of the project management maturity of the organization without a major expenditure of funds. This book includes instruments that should help in that regard.

The perception of failure and success of projects is usually based on unspoken and personal indices. Therefore, it is not uncommon tha two different people, usually with two different sets of experiences and values, would assess the success of the same project differently. There is a need for a set of performance indices that formalize the process and make explicit what is implicit in these seemingly subjective evaluations. This paper introduces tools that would allow team members and client personnel to formalize the way they evaluate projects. The primary advantage of such formalization is the consistency in evaluation procedures, and the potential project-to-project transferability of the resulting values.

It is generally recognized by project management professionals that the work breakdown structure (WBS) is the foundation of planning, estimating, scheduling, and monitoring activities. Although the lower-level elements of a WBS need to be schedule-oriented, the upper levels can (and should) be deliverable-oriented. The upper levels of a WBS are often either resource-oriented or schedule-oriented, primarily because they are somewhat more convenient to create. Schedule- or resource-oriented structures are not as efficient in project monitoring, evaluation, and plan modification when compared to work breakdown structures that are created with a deliverable structure in mind. The rationale and methods for modifying the traditional breakdown structure philosophy are presented in order to obtain a WBS that is focused on deliverables. A deliverable-oriented structure has the added advantage of providing project historical information that can be useful when planning future projects.

This article is about a study that focused on top management support provided to project managers. Project management literature has identified top management support as highly valuable to project success. This article identifies the top management support processes and ranks them according to their contribution to project success. Data collected from 275 projects in Israel pointed to the top management support factors. These factors include communication, quality management, advanced project management techniques, project manager assignment, project success measurement, and an organizational knowledge management system. Based on these results, a maturity model is introduced to assist organizations with measuring their current situation, identifying their strengths and weaknesses, as well as to help in directing them in improving the level of top management support. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

It has been a long standing tradition of the AACE International Annual Meeting that one of the presentation tracks is dedicated to the basic principles of cost engineering. The Skills & Knowledge track is designed for young professionals who are just entering the field, or seasoned professionals who want a refresher. Every year the Education Board invites the top experts of the cost engineering field to speak on specific subjects of their specialty.

Many professional meetings have short courses on various subjects before and after the event AACE International has dedicated one track of the Annual Meeting technical program to presentation of selected topics in cost engineering. These presentations, called the Skills & Knowledge Track, provide in-depth, advanced cost engineering topics.

Distance education and cyber-campus concepts are creating new and challenging paradigms in education. The prospective students find this concept attractive because participation in an educational experience is no longer bound by the constraints of time and place. Distance education is not appropriate for courses that are heavily dependent on experiential teaching, laboratory exercises, role-playing, group dynamics, body language, and other educational objectives that involve interaction-based observations. The major elements of a university course are: lectures, discussions, handouts, texts, instructions, homework, team projects, written reports, report presentation, and exams. A listing of the characteristics of these elements in the traditional campus mode and the distance mode is provided.

A project portfolio management (PPM) system is an essential part of an enlightened organization, although all organizations would benefit from some form of such a function. PPM involves a logical and formalized selection of projects and a methodical execution of these projects to their logical and successful conclusion. The objective of PPM is to select and prioritize projects to deliver the highest value in accordance with the pre-established portfolio management business decisions and priority criteria. The primary benefit of a PPM system is that only the right projects will be selected and/or continued. The projects in the pipeline will be fully aligned with the strategic business goals of the enterprise. However, to some people, PPM might appear to add a level of complexity to managing projects. This paper makes a distinction between the indices that describe the deliverable and indices that describe the organizational business case that created the project, and will ultimately benefit from the project deliverable.