Thursday, November 24, 2011

The project sentence

Richard Feynman is a renown theoretical physicist (deceased 1988).

He once said that if he had to summarize modern science in one sentence he would choose: "The world is made of atoms".

Brian Greene, also a theoretical physicist, has written of Feynman's choice: "When we recognize that so much of our understanding of the universe relies on the properties and interactions of atoms......we can well appreciate Feynman's choice for encapsulating our scientific legacy."

And, there are other sentences. Many have said: "The business of business is business", meaning customers are swell, but shareholder value is better!

So, what about a project sentence? It would be great it would unify the three great values of project management:
  1. Customer value (value as experienced by the customer)
  2. Business value (value returned to the business as a consequence of project activity), and
  3. Earned value (a measure of the effective utilization of the business resources committed to the project)
And, it would be neutral on plan driven vs outcome driven (agile)

So, how about this?

The business of projects is to effectively invest business assets to return to stakeholders value from the affirmative vote of customers

Brian Greene: "The Fabric of the Cosmos"
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