What I concluded is that on the software implementation / project management level, there are no shortages of books, classes and experts. The tools and methodologies follow the industry standards for certification – which are comprehensive. What I found missing was two-fold: first there are no widely adopted standards for project quality assurance and second there are even less methodologies geared towards the human side or the psychology of software implementations. I realized these missing factors were part of the reasons my project teams have been delivering projects on-time and on-budget.

Last February as I began writing, I formalized the project oversight processes that I have been using for the last 15 years into the project assurance methodology known as collaborative intervention. To describe the concepts of collaborative intervention, I wrote the book:  “No Wishing Required: The Business Case for Project Assurance.” Unlike other books on similar topics, I wrote “No Wishing Required” as a story to describe the need for project assurance and the concepts of collaborative intervention using characters and situations that will be easily recognizable to anybody that has been part of a large software implementation project team.