The Business of Projects is a highly original book in what we have hitherto considered a crowded market.

Most books about projects deal with how to manage them ‘from the inside’ – what tools and techniques to apply in order to deliver the project ‘on time, in budget, to scope’. This is the reality faced by many thousands of project management practitioners who are tasked with doing just this. Increasingly, however, it is being recognised that such an orientation has its limits: there are whole areas which typically are barely addressed in many if not most of the traditional project management texts. Much of the early project developmental work for example is barely discussed. The linkage with enterprise strategy is hardly covered (nor indeed is the whole subject of project strategy itself). There is often scant information on dealing with commercial issues such as procurement (which may even be treated as separate and distinct from project management) and contract management. Technology issues – requirements management, testing, information management and configuration management – may similarly be seen as somehow not part of project management. The hugely important area of people – perhaps the most important area of all – is generally poorly handled. Little encouragement may be given to thinking about the benefits that the project is to deliver, or how to measure them or how to optimise the value that the project represents.