Vision Realized!: How top executives bridge vision to achievement through project management

Copyright © 2025 by Mounir A. Ajam

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Mounir A. Ajam

[email protected]

https://urukpm.com/

Vision Realized!, Mounir A. Ajam—1st ed.

Testimonials and Endorsements

Ms. Barbara Carkenord

IIBA Board of Directors and Carkenord Consulting

"Mounir is a thought leader in project management and corporate solutions. He has a deep understanding of how organizations need to manage projects, large and small, to solve problems and continue a successful growth strategy in their market. He analyzes situations carefully and recommends solutions that bring business value."

Mr. Ahmad Y. Alkhiary

Deputy Chairman of Arabian Information Technology Co. (ARCOM)

"When I took my project management course in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, Mounir was the instructor. His deep and comprehensive experience was reflected in class and made it alive. I am grateful to him and wish to take more courses with him."

Mr. Amr Maraie

Project Management Practitioner

"Mounir is the kind of person who always offers revolutionary perspectives on things. He transformed my approach to project management, encouraging a more advanced and critical mindset."

Mr. Mark Moore

Executive Consultant at M2 Project Consulting Corporation

"I’ve been connected to Mounir Ajam as a cyber colleague for many years. Over that span of time, we have interacted many times, and I have found him to be a fantastic source of knowledge and experience, especially when considering large capital projects. Mounir is a creative and collaborative thinker who is always searching for ways to expand his sphere of influence and incorporate other points of view. His writing on project management is in the top tier of what is available today. His global reputation is well-earned, and I am happy to consider him a valued colleague."

Mr. Navaid Jamal

Founder, IMG Advisors LLC

"Mounir is a leader in project management and capital projects. He has a distinctive leadership style that believes in knowledge sharing. As such, he has written books and created opportunities to teach and promote project management.

He is currently pursuing the launch of a comprehensive project management platform, Uruk, that will be used to manage projects with clarity."

Dedication

To the future generations of project executives and managers. Those who dare to explore and travel the rugged roads to reach the beauty of nature and life. Those with the will and determination to break the status quo and aspire for a better future!

Contents

Testimonials and Endorsements

Dedication

Acknowledgment

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Mindsets and Alternative Reality

Executive Summary

Figure No 2.1: University of California Berkeley, Process Management - Maturity

Figure No 2.2: The Impact of Project Management Maturity on Project Performance

Part A: THE CURRENT STATE

Introduction to Part A

Inhibitors To Project Performance

Project Management

Figure No 4.1: Some Practitioners View of the Project Life Cycle

Project Management Office

Figure No 5.1: The UrukPM PMO Continuum

Project Management in Industries

Project Management and the C-Suite

Part B: THE ENVISIONED FUTURE

Introduction to Part B

The Case for Change

Figure No 8.1: Project Management Maturity and Performance

Project Management As A Function

Figure No 9.1: The Envisioned Project Management Division

Table 1: Comparing Different PMOs to the Project Management Division (PMD)

Visualize the Future

Integrations To Deliver Value

Figure No 11.1: Integrations to Deliver Value, Vertical Integrations

Value Delivery

Figure No 12.1: A Typical Product Life Cycle

Figure No 12.2: The UrukPM Value Delivery Methodology

Figure No 12.3: How to Select the Development Approach?

Figure No 12.4: Integration of Project Management Across the Project Life Cycle with the Various Organizational Functions

Project Success

Figure No 13.1: D1, Technical Success

Figure No 13.2: D2, Project Management Success

Figure No 13.3: D3, Product Delivery Success

Figure No 13.4: D4, Objectives Success

Closing

Final Reflections

Realizing the Vision

Back Matter

Bibliography

About the Author

About UrukPM

The Uruk Way

The Uruk Platform

Acknowledgment

I want to extend my gratitude to everyone who has supported this project. Your invaluable contributions, through ideas and content reviews, have brought this work to fruition.

First, I want to acknowledge the reviewers and those who offered content, strategy comments, and suggestions, including comments on the various related LinkedIn posts. Your constructive feedback and suggestions have greatly improved the quality of this work. This group includes my executive advisor/coach, Ms. Andrea Nicholas, and colleagues, Mr. Bill Duncan, Mr. Trevor K. Nelson, Ms. Sandra Hoskins, Mr. Mahdi AlKhatib, Mr. Thomas Walenta, Dr. Waffa Adam, Mr. Robert McMartin, Mr. Stephen W. Mass, Mr. Amr Maraie, Mr. Kiron D Bondale, Ms. Becky Winston, Mr. Jean-Charles Savornin, Dr. Ian Heptinstall, and Dr. Mihail Sadeanu. Your insights and feedback have been incredibly helpful.

Further, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Mr. Nah Wee Yang, for illustrating the organizational culture I used in the book.

I am grateful to others who have contributed in various ways, notably in publishing the book. Your efforts have added significant value to this project. This group includes Mr. Steve Gordon and his team.

I also want to thank those who provided testimonies or endorsements. I appreciate your trust and value in our relationship.

Finally, I cannot close this acknowledgment without offering my sincere appreciation to a thought leader whom I highly respect, Mr. Adrian Dooley, who graciously agreed to write the Foreword for this book.

Thank you all for your unwavering support and dedication.

Foreword

Projects and their management have a long history of contributing to the progress of mankind. Of course, for centuries, they weren’t recognised as ‘projects’ and the discipline of project management wasn’t formalised. Those in charge simply did what they needed to do to get the job done.

In the mid-20th Century, ideas about how to manage projects became more formalised and documented. Up until that point most projects concerned with ‘visible’ infrastructure – you could see their end results emerging as the work was done. As we entered the information age, projects became less tangible and much more complex to manage.

Information projects and change projects have quickly become integral to implementing the strategies of public and private organisations. Project management as a discipline needs to adapt to these new demands, as do those who apply it – the ‘profession’.

To some extent this adaptation has happened but the effect has been to create divisions and compartments. The battle of Agile vs Waterfall has been disruptive and the current trend to paper over the resulting cracks with ‘Hybrid’ is not the solution.

While project management has been trying to deal with this rapid technological change, another cultural change has been taking place. Since the 1990s we have seen an inexorable rise in the importance placed on certifications. These mostly focus on learning a narrow range of knowledge with the primary objective of passing an exam and have accelerated the compartmentalization of the discipline and profession.

Numerous pundits cite (often dubious) statistics that demonstrate how the success rate of projects is not improving. Whether or not these statistics are robust, there is no doubt that too many projects fail. The same pundits often propose simple solutions. Of course, there are no quick fixes.

I believe we need to take a deep breath and put fads and fashions behind us. We need something of a reset that will not come from learning project management from social media posts or a multiple-choice exam.

‘Back to basics’ is an overused, and often abused, term but we do need to get back to the underlying principles and accept that those principles can be adapted to all domains and levels of complexity.

Mounir has a long career and great depth of experience, I believe that books like this will rebuild the edifice of the discipline rather than paper over the cracks. It promotes an holistic view and focuses on what’s important.

I believe it will contribute to a reset in the way we regard and practice project management.

Adrian Dooley

Honorary Fellow of the Association for Project Management

Founder of Praxis Framework,

Surrey, United Kingdom.

Preface

The Book Purpose

What is the purpose of this book? Here are the quick answers:

Why: We¹ aim to enable organizations to optimize their capital deployment and deliver excellent shareholder and stakeholder value. It is about enabling and supporting them toward the Vision Realized!²

In business, we often measure value in revenues, profit, return on investment, and other financial metrics. However, in not-for-profit organizations and government work, the value might not be about commercial gain; instead, we could define it using other variables.³

What: Provide these organizations with the mechanism and ability to achieve impactful strategy implementation where they do the right projects⁴ (e.g., project selection) and deliver value through successful projects and programs (e.g., project performance). In other words, it is vital to ensure that organizations maintain focus across the entire innovation pipeline and value stream, from project selection to benefitsrealizations.

How: We advocate shifting paradigms so that executives do not have to tolerate projects and project management failures and seek a vision where they can predetermine success. This would require understanding, recognizing, and accepting the strategic value of projectmanagement.

Therefore,

The How is our proposal to formalize the project management function and establish a centralized project management organizational unit.

Beginning with the end in mind, Vision Realized requires effective and impactful strategy implementation.

Impactful Strategy Implementation

Impactful strategy implementation starts by linking strategy formulation with strategy implementation, which we can achieve through strategic project management and a portfolio perspective. This partnership is between the project management function, represented by a chief officer, the chief strategy officer, and other executives. This link and partnership are essential, as we explain later.

Once an organization defines its portfolio, it uses project management principles and systems to effectively lead the change initiatives to success (see the text box Change Initiatives).

Sadly, we realize that project management performance is currently questionable. Many inhibitors to performance exist, and our current state is not where it should be, which is disappointing and might be discouraging. However, despite these issues, competent project management is essential for success. We emphasize that the competence of people and the maturity of the project management systems are vital. Therefore, organizations must transform project management to deliver on strategies and achieve the vision.⁵

Transforming Project Management

We will be direct and straight to the point: The project management domain has a problem. On the surface, it is an image problem. However, the image problem is a symptom of profound challenges, failures, and other issues we must identify and understand to resolve. We explain these various issues and challenges in Part A of this book.

The project management community (individuals, consultants, thought leaders, associations, and vendors) has failed in multiple aspects. We know that many organizations have project management centers of excellence and do remarkable things. Further, individuals, associations, and organizations offer valuable content, standards, and guides.

On the other hand, many organizations are still struggling. Some have not adopted formal or systematic project management practices. Some do not have any project management systems or methods. Further, it is unfortunate that some organizations have lost trust in project management if they had trust in it to begin with.

The above is true in the private sector, government, and semi-government entities, for small and large organizations, and in all verticals.

Project management is the mechanism for achieving impactful strategy implementation and maximizing shareholders’ value. Therefore, we decided to keep this book focused on the strategic aspects at the executive level. This aim also aligns with Uruk Project Management’s (UrukPM)⁶ purpose, which is:

To enable organizations to elevate performance,