Tackling grand challenges with projects: Five insights and a research agenda for project management theory and practice

The project management field has two blind spots: a focus on “run-of-the-mill” projects at the expense of pioneering “push-the-envelope” projects and a rigor-relevance gap in the research. There are simply too few scholarly works devoted to project management and grand challenges, those wicked, complex, uncertain, messy, boundary-crossing problems that confront the world. Drawing on the grand challenges of sustainable development and COVID-19 and the projects they provoke, this essay highlights five insights for theory and practice and suggests that selectionism and instructionism are worthwhile approaches, while collaborative rationality may trump linear rationality. We argue that project management for grand challenges is a promising land of “push-the-envelope” portfolios that can help overcome these two blind spots, regain relevance, avoid anomia, and revitalize theory and practice. To this end, we show that there is a concomitant need for a theory of grand challenge project behavior and offer an agenda for future research.     

Fluidity in project management teams across projects

Project management teams are often fluid, changing in composition over projects. Fluidity enables innovative project success, as it allows organizing social capital dynamically across projects. In this study, we argue for an optimum between fluidity and stability. We operationalize project management fluidity as the degree of intactness of the whole team from one project to the next. In a sample of 5370 projects of video game development over ten years using information obtained by web crawling on the internet, we find an inverted-U-shaped relation between intactness and project success, assessed as sales, expert reviews, and consumer reviews. We show that optimal intactness shifts according to project context; higher success occurs at lower levels of intactness when projects require more innovation. Finally, we replicate our findings using intactness of relations between project managers and their operational teams. We discuss the implications for project management, and potential future research.     

大体量体育场馆建筑群的施工总承包管理实践探析

建筑业作为国内传统的支柱产业,在国民经济快速健康发展的新形势下,也正在得到快速地发展,一大批大型基础设施和公共建设项目在各地区不断涌现。大型建设项目是一个复杂的系统性工程,对项目管理有着很高的要求。本文结合工程实例,论述项目部通过构建科学的组织架构,采取组合中建总公司专业化优势资源,加强人才队伍建设等措施,从项目进度工期、技术质量、安全文明施工管理等方面,加强项目施工总承包管理,提高项目管理效益。     

Effect of project complexity on cost and schedule performance in transportation projects

Project complexity is a contributing factor to project performance. Understanding how project complexity interacts with management actions and project performance is imperative. This study fills this knowledge gap by empirically exploring the relationship between construction project complexity and project performance and their interaction with resource allocation. Empirical data were collected from 79 transportation projects. Due to its capability to build several regression models by adding independent variables to previous models, moderated hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to identify the underlying effect of resource allocation on the project complexity and performance relationship. The results show that: (i) project complexity was significantly correlated with schedule growth (positive correlation) but not significantly correlated with cost growth; (ii) resource allocation was significantly correlated with schedule growth (negative correlation) but not with cost growth; and (iii) resource allocation had a buffering effect where increasing resource allocation significantly decreases the effect of project complexity on schedule growth. The findings from this study contribute to the extant literature on construction project complexity by empirically showing that the impact of project complexity on schedule performance interacts with the level of resource allocation. This understanding of the role of resource allocation may help construction managers and engineers to better administer and manage their complex transportation projects. The findings also imply that organizations should appropriately evaluate project complexity to allocate necessary resources to achieve project success.     

Governing technical and organizational complexity through supply chain integration: A dyadic perspective on performance in infrastructure projects

Despite its declared importance for governing complexity in projects, few empirical studies have studied how different types of supply chain integration (SCI) activities (e.g., coordinative and collaborative integration) interplay and affect performance. To address this gap, the purpose of this paper is to study how complexity can be governed through coordinative and collaborative SCI, and how their interplay affects performance in project-based buyer-supplier relationships. We apply structural equation modeling, using dyadic empirical data from 102 infrastructure projects. The overall results verify our developed model and illuminate how the interplay between contractual and relational governance, in terms of coordinative and collaborative SCI, mediates the effect of technical and organizational complexity on project performance. This study contributes to theory and practice by distinguishing between contractual governance based on formal coordinative SCI and relational governance based on emerged collaborative SCI, as well as showing how their interplay affects performance in project-based supply chains.     

管理理论在燃气工程施工项目中的应用

本文说明了管理理论在燃气工程施工项目管理中的 重要作用,并就其具体应用作了介绍。     

Formalization of project portfolio management: The moderating role of project portfolio complexity

Companies frequently implement formalization to improve success. Previous research has found supporting evidence for the performance-enhancing effects of formalization in both single project management and project portfolio management. However, there is no research on how formalization at the project level interacts with formalization at the portfolio level, or on how this interaction may impact success. This study investigates the interaction of formalization at both levels and examines the moderating effect of project portfolio complexity on formalization. Using a sample of 134 firms, this study shows that single project management formalization and, likewise, portfolio management formalization are directly connected to portfolio success. Simultaneous formalization at these two levels delivers a complementary effect, resulting in an increase in success that is more than additive. A contingency analysis confirms that the proposed positive effects become more prominent if complexity is high. Complexity measured as project interdependency has a stronger moderating effect than complexity measured as portfolio size.     

Fundamental uncertainties in projects and the scope of project management

This paper builds on discussions that took place over a series of meetings in the UK of the Rethinking Project Management Network. The management of uncertainty is seen as a necessary condition for effective project management. Sources of uncertainty are wide ranging and have a fundamental effect on projects and project management. These sources are not confined to potential events, and include lack of information, ambiguity, characteristics of project parties, tradeoffs between trust and control mechanisms, and varying agendas in different stages of the project life cycle. Common project management practice does not address many fundamental sources of uncertainty, particularly in ‘soft’ projects where flexibility and tolerance of vagueness are necessary. More sophisticated efforts to recognise and manage important sources of uncertainty are needed. Such efforts need to encompass organisational capabilities, including some aspects of organisation culture and learning.     

Toward a genealogy of project management: Sidewinder and the management of exploratory projects

This paper deals with the management of exploratory projects, i.e. projects where neither the goals nor the means to attain them can be defined at the beginning. It relies on the historical case study of the Sidewinder Air-to-Air missile, designed by the US Navy between 1947 and 1957. The case is interesting because it violated all the best practices of PM, yet involved a short and cheap development process that resulted in a best-seller in missile history. This case thus helps to analyze the inner working of an understudied skunkworks (project-level) and to discuss the governance of exploratory projects (firm-level), more specifically the limits of Stage-Gate processes for radical innovations.     

工程项目管理与工程监理的比较分析

从概念、工作方式及责任、工作性质及作用、工作范围、社会需求及从业要求几方面对工程项目管理和工程监理进行了比较分析,有助于深入理解和明晰二者的内涵,从而恰当承担应有的责任。最后指出工程监理向工程项目管理发展的趋势及注意事项。     

TOT项目系统复杂性分析与复杂性集成管理研究

TOT项目作为一种引导民间资本参与基础设施领域发展的有效方式,具有整体性、层次性、动态性和开放性等系统复杂性特征。在对TOT项目进行复杂性分析的基础上,提出了基于集成管理思想,包括管理对象、管理要素、管理目标和管理过程的集成管理模式,并且对实施复杂性集成管理的流程进行了分析。     

工程管理专业生产与管理实习教学与实践

工程管理专业生产与管理实习是一门非常重要的实践教学课程。文章从生产与管理实习准备、生产与管理实习动员、教师监督、指导与协调及实习成绩评定等方面对工程管理专业生产与管理实习教学与实践进行了深刻的剖析。实践证明,这种方法能使学生在技术管理、社会交往等各个方面的能力得到较大的发展和提高。     

工程风险项目管理理论的构建与实践

从我国工程项目管理实践中存在的不足入手,论述实施风险项目管理的可行性,建立了风险项目管理的流程,设计了风险库等管理工具,并以实际案例介绍了风险项目管理的应用。     

Perceptions of owners in German construction projects: congruence with project risk theory

The construction industry is a major user of formal project risk management practices, yet risk is often dealt with inadequately, which is a contributory factor to poor performance. Conceptual developments propose a holistic view of risk incorporating threats and opportunities and the management of uncertainty. To optimize a risk management process there needs to be a reflection of this holistic view in management practice. A key project participant is the owner and understanding the perceptions of project risk of construction owners is an important step in assessing the degree to which practices reflect theory. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with 10 practitioners in German construction owner organizations to explore their perceptions of project risk. The results showed no common definition of project risk and a general belief that risk equated to threat. Some owners did manage opportunities and saw a link between threats and opportunities, yet this practice seemed more the result of experience than an awareness that it was an integral part of a theoretical risk management framework. Most owners perceived risk to encompass uncertainty and the sources of uncertainty perceived as most important were those linked to a longer timescale, such as the ability to let out buildings.     

Competing management approaches in large engineering projects: The Dutch RandstadRail project

The management of large engineering projects is often a combination of the focus on planning and control, and the ambition to be flexible given the complexity and uncertainties that characterises these kinds of projects. However, control and flexibility impose contradictory requirements upon the management of these projects. The literature on project management reflects this contradiction. Some authors underline that projects require firm planning and control, thus downplaying the role of flexibility. Others emphasise that projects require flexibility and responsiveness, thus moving away from rigid planning and control. In this contribution, we suggest that in practice project managers acknowledge the weakness of both extremes and therefore strive to combine the two. Moreover, we argue that project success is at risk when project managers do not succeed in meeting the requirements of control and flexibility. To be able to investigate how these competing requirements are dealt with in practice, a framework is developed. The usefulness of the framework is explored by applying the framework to the large engineering project Randstadrail—a light rail project in The Netherlands.     

Knowledge entrainment and project management: The case of large-scale transformation projects

An increasing number of change processes and initiatives are organized and implemented as projects, often through the formation of ‘large-scale transformation projects’ (LST), involving a great number of specialists, departments, partners, development work, and knowledge bases. The theoretical foundation that supports the choice of managing change as projects and, in effect, the role of project management has received surprisingly little attention in the current literature. In this paper, we present a model where the success of change initiatives is explained by the quality of project management, which in turn is determined by the quality of knowledge integration. The outlined model highlights knowledge integration as a process determined by the scope and speed of change, which typically result in problems with synchronization of activities within an LST project. Our model draws on the idea of ‘knowledge entrainment’ to explain the fact that different parts (organizations, teams, individuals) tend to develop different time orientations and hence rely on different cycles of knowledge processes. This has important effects on the absorptive capacity of the involved parts of the project and the amount of information and knowledge that the project can digest. This paper discusses different knowledge-entrainment mechanisms and their effects on the role and practice of project management. Empirical data from an LST project in Posten, one of Northern Europe’s largest messaging and logistics operators, illustrate the model. The paper contributes to the analysis of the relationships between knowledge integration and time, particularly in LST projects.     

Development of project management systems for major projects

The use of top level management systems is considered, and their main features are compared with classic approaches. Factors affecting the development and use of such systems are highlighted.     

信息化管理系统应用于项目管理

在智能工地信息化建设中,研发了施工安全、工程质量、劳动力资源、远程视频监控等信息化管理系统,并在项目管理中得到了应用与推广。信息化管理系统的应用加强了集团本部、工程公司对项目的动态管理,提升了项目管理的能级。本文主要阐述七建集团视频指挥中心的应用实践。     

Grasping project complexity in large engineering projects: The TOE (Technical, Organizational and Environmental) framework

This paper presents a framework for characterising project complexity in large engineering projects, which can be used to adapt the front-end development phase of engineering projects to the particular complexity. Recently, a large number of project complexity related papers were published, demonstrating the evident importance of “complexity” in current project management research. However, no generally accepted framework is available to support the characterising and understanding of project complexity that appreciates the richness of project complexity in large engineering projects. Therefore the TOE (Technical, Organizational, and Environmental) framework was developed, based on a literature survey building upon existing work and on new empirical work consisting of eighteen interviews about six projects in the process engineering industry. As a result of an inductive approach, this framework presents the elements that contribute to project complexity from a theoretical as well as a practical perspective. The framework can be used to assess the complexity of engineering projects, and subsequently adapt the front-end development phase of projects in order to better manage the complexity of the project.     

项目管理理论及其架构

一种观点认为缺乏全面的理论是阻碍项目管理被认可为一门管理学科的因素,现存的被系统观点所统治的项目管理理论更多地被视做工程学的分支,而不是管理学.更进一步,现存的理论是建立在大量源自经验证据的假设基础上的,这使得最终产生的理论似乎仅仅是建立在假设基础上的经验证据.这些假设使用了复杂的需要进一步界定的概念,这又使得项目管理理论似乎仅仅是一些定义.在这篇文章中,作者提出一套建立在五个简单的、自然的前提之上的关于项目管理的理论.这些前提不需要假设,所使用的简单的、自然的概念也不需要进一步界定(或者,另外一种情况是概念是由前面的前提得出的).