One of the most important organizational developments in recent years has been the significant growth in project work across different sectors and industries. Academic research confirms this development and recent industry reports also highlight the growing importance of project, programme and portfolio management practices to organizations. Moreover, whilst different industry surveys continue to highlight the familiar problems of product quality, missed deadlines and budget overruns, the same surveys also highlight the need for a more strategic approach towards the management of projects and a greater focus on the value and benefits that projects and programmes contribute to organizations. Within the project management literature however, the product creation view of projects still prevails and there is now a need to augment this view with other relevant perspectives linked to the developing world of 21st century projects. Against this background, this paper presents a new perspective on projects and programmes as value creation processes, a much broader perspective than the classical view of temporary production. Based on the work of the late Richard Normann, the core ideas are presented in the form of a conceptual framework and these are then illustrated in relation to recent practice within a large integrated food group in the UK. A number of conclusions are then drawn including some practical suggestions on how the framework might be used in practice.

Although companies manage project portfolios concordantly with project portfolio theory, they may experience problems in the form of delayed projects, resource struggles, stress, and a lack of overview. Based on a research project compromised of 128 in-depth interviews in 30 companies, we propose that a key reason why companies do not do well in relation to project portfolio management (PPM) is that PPM often only covers a subset of on-going projects, while projects that are not subject to PPM tie up resources that initially were dedicated to PPM projects. We address and discuss the dilemma of wanting to include all projects in PPM, and aiming at keeping the resource and cognitive burden of doing PPM at a reasonable level.

Purpose – The aim of the paper is to share the recipe that enables a team-builder to build in the workplace, out of any group of individuals, a high-performing team in four hours.

Design/methodology/approach – After a period of research and testing, the recipe was formulated and successfully implemented over a 15-year period with more than 1,000 groups.

Findings – The recipe confirmed the research findings by A.J. Romiszowski that the effective team improves the intellectual and creative thinking skills, as well as the sociability, of the individual.

Practical implications – The recipe enables radical improvement in individual, team and organisational performance.

Originality/value – The recipe is unique and is the only methodology to enable a high-performing team to be built rapidly, delivering to any organisation a quantum leap in individual and team performance.