Projects With A Purpose

Projects with a Purpose is divided into seven chapters, the first six chapters look at six key principles that are found in healthy project.  I strongly believe that applying these six elements will help develop healthier projects for the Glory of God in churches and Christian organizations.  The last chapter of the book looks at the interesting project managment case study of Nehemiah.

 Below is a brief outline of each chapter and the important topics of each chapter.

Chapter 1 – To the Glory of God
Centering your project around the glory of God.

This chapter of the book looks at the blessings when God’s glory becomes the consuming focus of every project and the consequences of when something else is placed ahead of God’s glory. If a project in the church ignores this critical point, teams will find that certain pitfalls and challenges often occur in a project. This chapter in the book seeks to help diagnose these issues and present a clear directive to place God’s glory as first in any project.
 
Chapter 2 – Defining the Project
Creating a clear direction and scope for the project.

This chapter of the books seeks to understand the role and impact of the “Define Statement” on a project. Amazingly, 60% of failed projects can be traced back to a poor project definition as their downfall. Defining a project involves creating a clear concise statement of direction, understanding the scope of the work, and determining roles of the team members. Defining a project frames the project and shapes thinking on future actions and decisions that need to be made.  This chapter lays out a method of developing well defined project statements, and looks at common errors that are made when defining and scoping a project.

Chapter 3 – Generating a Plan
Analyzing a plan and creating a path to follow.

This chapter of the book looks at how the projects main issue should be analyzed and then how to create an actionable plan to reach the defined goals. The chapter presents an approach that helps eliminate less productive plans and helps identify the most effective plan. The chapter introduces methods of generating ideas as a team, methods of making choices when there appears to be more than one good option, and ways of down-selecting ideas to a single plan.

Chapter 4 – Measuring the Effort: Interpreting Results
Measuring the project effort quantitatively vs. qualitatively.  Leaving Success to God.

This chapter of the book is the most difficult to digest as it seeks to balance measurable personal /team effort with God given results.  Before a project executes it’s plan, a project needs to create ways of evaluating the project at it’s various stages/steps.  This chapter looks at how personal and team efforts can and should be quantified to ensure efficient execution of the project as well as provide a method of gathering project feedback .  The chapter also seeks to reinforce the absolute neccesity of ulitmately leaving the project’s success in the hands of God.  With this said, the book also looks at what project results can show, and looks at how these results should be interpreted. 
This chapter seeks to walk the fine line between incorrectly forcing quantification onto God’s response to man’s efforts and allowing projects to be ill defined and vaguely actionable.

Chapter 5 – Execution
Putting the plan into action with order and control

This chapter of the book looks at how to execute a project.  Once a project has been well defined, analyzed for the best solution, and has had measurable elements applied, it is then ready for execution.  While it may seem simple to “just do it”, there are several key factors to keep in mind during the implementation of the project.  In this chapter we describe the various steps in project execution including how to divide the project into the individual subtasks, how to identify risk associated with each task, how best to allocate resources to minimize risk, and how to determine what order the tasks should be completed.  While this chapter may seem very intuitive to the reader, providing a framework around the execution phase provides a way of systematically ordering and completing each task of the project. 

Chapter 6 - Control
Maintaining the effects of the projec long after the project ends

This chapter of the book looks at the final stage of a project where control methods are established to maintain the desired effects.  Most projects are designed to have a lasting effect and yet maintaining this effect after a project ends is often challenging.  In this chapter we examine methods of ending projects without losing their desired effects over the next weeks/months/years.  This chapter also proposes methods of monitoring a project after it has been completed to maintain the benefits that it set out to accomplish.  

Chapter 7 - Case Study - Nehemiah
Nehemiah’s project management during the rebuilding of Jerusalem

The bible is full of examples of huge projects undertaken by people, from Noah building the ark, to David/Solomon building the temple, to Joseph preparing for a famine in Egypt, to the early church caring for the widows. This final chapter in the book examines one of the most detailed projects the Bible. The book of Nehemiah tells the story of the return of the people of Israelfrom captivity to Jerusalem for purpose of completing the immense project of rebuilding the city of Jerusalem as well as the temple. This chapter of the book follows Nehemiah through the project as he defines the goal of the project, evaluates the appropriate methods of completing the tasks, quantifies the projects effort, executes on the project, and then sets up control methods to assure that the city of Jerusalem and the temple will be operating as God had planned for years to come.