Undisputed Industry Thought Leaders

Anyone can claim to be at the leading edge of the industry or a thought leader, but how many people put themselves ‘out there’ and go into print as authors securing the backing of one of the world’s leading publishing companies like the TSO?

As evidence of our unique position, we have summarised below how we have contributed to the development of the programme and project management profession through leading the development and authorship of the following publications:
 

Managing Successful Programmes 2011

Aspire Europe Managing Director, Rod Sowden, was the lead author for this publication, supported by Geof Leigh, the Aspire Assess Director. Together they wrote both the 2007 and 2011 versions of the manual for the OGC and AXELOS and helped to establish MSP® as the de facto standard for programme management around the world.
 

MSP® Survival Guide for Business Change Managers

This was the first in the Survival Guide series and the first of the publications intended to enhance the MSP® body of knowledge by focusing on the roles, tasks and techniques of each of the roles. The author was Rod Sowden, supported by a number of the Aspire Europe team. The book was published in 2014 and fills in many of the gaps that link MSP® to business change and business architecture environments.
 

 MSP® Survival Guide for Senior Responsible Owners

This was jointly written by Rod Sowden and Nick Carter (one of our lead trainers) who had a significant track record as an SRO himself. It addresses the needs of new SROs who come into an intimidating environment and are expected to take full accountability for what is going on. The book is designed to help them keep their ship steady and navigate it safely to an acceptable destination.

MSP® Survival Guide for Programme Managers

This was jointly written by Rod Sowden and Geof Leigh with support from the internal team. Published in 2016, the book developed a number of the concepts around MSP® and rewrote them for the benefit of programme managers new to MSP®. It includes large amounts of new materials to help set up programme governance and programme offices.
 

A Practical Guide to Project Planning

This book was written by Rod Sowden, with support from Tom Ford. It started life as a set of guidance for one of Aspire Europe's customers, but later developed into a course and finally evolved into a book. It came as a result of P3M3® assessments and spotting a systematic problem in most organisations with their planning, which we found to be a global issue. The book helps to pull all the threadsand concepts together into one practical guide that extracts the best out of many of the bodies of knowledge from around the world.
 

Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model

Better known as P3M3®, this is the product that has changed the industry. From Version 1, the academic framework developed in 2005, to becoming a golbally recognised and internationally adopted standard for measuring performance by 2015. In 2008, Rod Sowden was appointed lead author of Version which significantly developed the model. In 2015, Rod Sowden and Andy Murray (Outperform and PRINCE2® lead author), as joint lead authors, enhanced the model, with Geof Leigh developing large sections of the model. Sam Jenkins was heavily involved in the reviewing and testing of the new model, Claire Rookes project managing, and most of the members of the Aspire Europe team being absorbed in some aspect of the review and/or development