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The Manager’s Dilemma: How to set "game rules" that will make all participants work for the project Kindle Edition

4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 40 ratings

85% OF PROJECTS IN THE WORLD EXCEED THEIR ALLOTTED BUDGET AND TIME. THIS HAPPENS BECAUSE IT IS BENEFICIAL TO THE PARTIES INVOLVED.

Every one of the parties working on a project has their own interests, which many times are conflicted with the interests of the project itself. Nothing affects the progression of projects more than this conflict of interests, and yet, the theory of project management disregards it entirely.

The Manager’s Dilemma is a groundbreaking project management book. It explains why the Critical Path and the Critical Chain methods fail time and time again, and paves a new road to project efficiency improvement, through the Theory of Constraints and Game Theory.

“The Manager’s Dilemma” does to project management what “The Goal” did to production management and “The Critical Chain” did to schedule management.

Eric is a chief engineer in a contractor company, who switches sides and begins to work for government’s Ministry of Transportation. On his first day at work, he discovers that a third of all the office’s efforts are focused on protection from lawsuits by contractors whose services they have hired. In addition, he sees that even the project managers and plannershired by the office, work more in their own interest than in that of their projects. Together with an extravagant lawyer, and the brilliant members of his family, he utilizes his knowledge of the contractors world to understand why these things happen. Together, they devise an extraordinary way to change the rules of the game and make the project’s success the personal interest of each and every one of its participants.

Asaf Morag is the founder of ACTech, a provider of the information & collaborations platform necessary for projects. ACTech’s eco-system, which was built upon the principles displayed in this book, enable the implementation of the book’s insights in every infrastructure and construction project. It helps changing the conflicts-of-interests environment of most projects into a win-win environment.

For more info – www.actechway.com


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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The manager's dilemma by Asaf Morag, is an important book.
The author is an expert in the area of large infrastructure projects and he clearly maps the colliding interests of the various project participants and the reasons they tend to fight and sue each other so often.
Morag proposes both suitable strategy as well as practical tools to reach the common goal of all project parties.
"The manager's dilemma" shows that it is possible to do much, much better.
Read and learn." -
Dr. Alex Klarman, Ph.D - CEO - Goldratt Institute (Israel)

From the Author

Projects can be managed efficiently, without lawsuits, and with timely decision-making. They can be completed on time and within budget, garnering profits for all involved. All you have to do is change the disc. This book will show you how.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08HM5MVJG
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 22, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1550 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 40 ratings

About the author

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Asaf Morag
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Asaf Morag is an expert in civil engineering contracts management. His experience includes heavy infrastructure projects (roads, highways, airports, land development, utilities), public buildings, and big residential projects. He has worked as scheduler, project manager and claims manager for both sides - contractor and owner. He is the owner of Rakia - an Israeli company that deals with contract management and change management, and the founder of ACTech (Aligned Contracts Technologies) - a startup that develops a collaborative ecosystem for project design and execution management. ACTech implements the ideas expressed in this book and transforms them into a cloud service. It supplies a full collaborative environment, on which the different project's participants (owner, designers, consultants, contractor, subcontractor, managing firm) manage all their contractual communication. ACTech is the first AI-oriented project management system in the world.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
40 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2021
    This was an excellent book! I got this book for free, but I went back to the store and looked for other books by the author to purchase. Asaf has done for me and my management thoughts what Vital Smarts or Arbinger Institute has done for my conversation abilities!
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2021
    The storyline is a large multi-million-dollar construction project of building a road using public funds. The project is way behind the schedule due to several unforeseeable issues that are not captured in the project plan. Contractors, project managers, design engineers, lawyers, finance people, environmentalists, and government agencies pass the blame, but things came to a standstill. It even becomes a political issue to complete construction by a certain date. Everybody is hard pressed to come up with a quick solution.
    In parallel to the main storyline there is a more academic discussion how to resolve those kinds of problems once and for all. The approach is to combine inadequate Goldratt’s theory of constraints, and Game Theory’s Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. There are two most challenging problems. First, how to convert qualitative goals, such as contractor’s performance, or schedule in time units, into quantitative monetary value. Second, how to combine multiple non-quantifiable metrics into a single one that reflects overall project goal. Just minimizing cost or completion time is not sufficient.

    I want to critique this approach, because few important assumptions that are missing. The book mentions “one day to install the 3’rd party software, and one week to resolve all the data integration issues”. From my personal experience with similar systems, it could easily take a year to install the software on different computers, tablets, smartphones, adjust configuration for a given project requirements, and train the personnel to use and administer the software. But all that occurs only after there is a tender to purchase the software, convincing multitude of contractors and government agencies to use it, resolving all the security issues and getting approvals of storing sensitive data on the cloud, and relying on a fledgling foreign startup to manage all that. By the time all the purchasing decisions go through the pipes, that startup might be gone.

    So, it’s easier said than done. Technically, there is no problem to develop such a system. However, cloud-based project management platform, algorithm that can do scheduling and resolve conflicts of interest, managing work data in a single work environment, and providing absolute transparency to all the participants: it’s all sounds good in theory, but wishful thinking in reality.

    The book provides a glimpse into the world of managing large construction projects using public funds. But it’s fascinating to compare it with more familiar software and hardware development. Both worlds suffer from frequent budget overruns and missed schedules, and deal with multitude of parties, misaligned goals, and conflict of interest. In both words, project management is more art than science, deeply rooted into personal relationships, and prior experiences.
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020
    Would have been a better read if more time was spent on the business side and less time and details on his personal life. Content could have been extended to provide details on implementing and executing the change required to make the new system and processes successful.
    3 people found this helpful
    Report
  • Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2020
    Project management is a term that in some respects appears ubiquitous, yet in practice, it seems to still be relatively confined to big business. While this may be the case, the underpinnings of project management are actually quite simple and can be adapted by virtually anyone.

    The Manager’s Dilemma by Asaf Morag is a groundbreaking project management book that explains ‘why the Critical Path and the Critical Chain methods fail time and time again, and paves a new road to project efficiency improvement, through the Theory of Constraints and Game Theory.

    A well-written and well-presented book, no doubt it will be an invaluable resource for all project managers. Highly recommended. I voluntarily reviewed a complimentary copy of this book.
  • Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2020
    Book covered a lot of interesting topics around project management. And how different actors / biases / goals affect the outcome.

    I'm a manager with no formal training, and much of what I've learned through experiences in my career were highlighted through construction company analogies.

    It also helped me identify why the software project I've been working on for my company keeps missing the deadlines. And have me a solid reasonable explanation of why I don't like scrum. It favors the team, but the project and the company suffer for it.
  • Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2020
    The Manager's Dilemna is an insightful and practical read. It is clear that the auhtor is very knowledgable on the topic, and yet the book manages to stay easy to read and bogged down by techincal details. I'd highly recommend this book to anyone new to managing, as this is a brilliant introduction to subject.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2020
    Upon looking at the headline, I thought the book will be full of dry explanations and such. I do like definitions, as I'm always searching for ways to improve my business and life. But this book caught me by surprise. Everything is based on an example! How wonderful!
    This guy is working on a construction site, there are some problems and he's making solutions as he goes. He makes it look so simple.
    As for definitions, I found one too: "While the prisoner's dilemma shows us how bad rules make for bad outcomes, the manager's dilemma is about how to make good rules. Rules that will make all of the manager's employees make good decisions. In an organization where an employee stands to suffer personal loss by making decisions which are good for the organization, he would prefer to make not-so-good decisions, but ones that won't hurt him personally. In such an organization, the manager would have to intervene again and again to correct his employees' decisions. On the other hand, if he manages to create a better framework in which employees are personally rewarded for making decisions for the good of the organization, then management becomes easier because it is in everyone's best interest to pull the cart in the same direction."
  • Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2020
    This book combines knowledge from the Theory of constraints, Game theory and contract management and pours it into the construction management world.
    This book provides insights into the way we could and should manage our projects in order to provide the best value.
    Also, the way this book is written, like a novel, is fun and fluent to read.
    Highly reccomended.

Top reviews from other countries

  • Avid Reader
    5.0 out of 5 stars Curiosity
    Reviewed in Canada on March 17, 2021
    I read this book out of curiosity. My youngest son, now 6 years into his working life is an enginer who recently started a job in project management. I thought the book might help me understand what he does.

    I found the storytelling superb. Maybe I understand now from a much broader point of view than I anticipated when I started reading.

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