Managing projects with distributed and embedded knowledge through interactions

In project-based industries studies show difficulties in extracting, distributing and applying embedded and practice knowledge across structural and organisational boundaries. We focus on interorganisational projects consisting of distributed and embedded knowledge. Interaction becomes important in order to cooperate and share interorganisational and distributed knowledge. The aim of the research is to explore how sharing and generating practice based and distributed knowledge occurs through interaction in interorganisational projects and how this is managed. The study focuses on the design phase and relates traditional design practices to concurrent design practices. In the study we observed six cases of design meetings in the construction and oil and gas industry and performed 31 interviews. The paper contributes with the following: (1) understanding and visualisation of interaction patterns, (2) insight in use of various forms of interaction, and (3) ways of managing distributed and embedded knowledge through interaction.     

Managing customer relationship management projects: The case of a large French telecommunications company

Customer relationship management (CRM) implementation projects reflect a growing conceptual shift from the traditional engineering view of projects. Such projects are complex and risky because they call for both organisational and technological changes. This requires effective project management across various phases of the implementation process. However, few empirical researches have dealt with these project management issues. The aim of this research is to investigate how a “project team” manages CRM implementation projects successfully, across the different phases of the implementation process. We conducted an in-depth case study of the “Firm-Clients Branch” of a large telecommunications company in France. The findings show that, to manage CRM implementation projects successfully, an integrated and balanced approach is required. This involves appropriate system selection, effective process re-engineering and further development of organizational structures. We highlight the need for a “technochange approach” to achieve successful organisational transition and effective CRM implementation. The study reveals that the project team plays a central role throughout the implementation phases. Furthermore the effectiveness of technochange depends on project team performance, technology efficiency and close coordination with stakeholders.     

Projects as the content and process of change: The case of the health and safety laboratory

The relationship between managing change, and managing projects and programmes has been a matter of recent debate. This paper will contribute to this debate by exploring two dimensions — projects as the content of change, and projects as the process of change. Projects form the process of change when the organisational changes are managed as a project, and projects form the content of change when the intent of the change process is a managing by projects form of organisation. This exploration will be conducted through a single rich case, using Pettigrew's well-established context, content, process model of organisational change. In presenting the case we will identify the paradox that the organisational change towards managing projects is not itself managed as a project, and we suggest that this paradox provides a good opportunity for stimulating novel lines of enquiry in research on project organising.     

Project complexity and systems integration: Constructing the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Games

Our study of the London Olympics 2012 construction programme showed that systems integration is one of the major challenges involved in delivery of a complex – “system of systems” or array – project. Organizations cope with complexity by decomposing a project into different levels of systems integration with clearly-defined interfaces and buffers between levels and individual component subsystems. At the “meta systems integration” level, an organization has to be established with the capabilities to understand the total system of systems, manage external interfaces with the multiple stakeholder sand coordinate the integration of its component parts. At the “system integration” level, efforts are made to manage each individual system as a loosely-coupled, relatively self-contained subsystem with defined interfaces to coordinate interdependencies with other parts of overall array. Establishing processes to maintain stability whilst responding dynamically to uncertain and changing conditions is one of the most challenging aspects of systems integration.     

Profiling work motivation of project workers

The purpose of this study is to understand the constructs of work motivation in project-based organizations. We first juxtapose work motivation in traditional and project-based organizations to put forward an operational definition of work motivation for our study. We then present the research methodology where we profile work motivation as perceived by project workers using principal component analysis. We obtain a five factor structure of work motivation. Finally, we discuss these results by putting them within the project management perspective and suggest managerial implications.     

Predicting final cost for competitively bid construction projects using regression models

This paper studies the relationship between the low bid and completed cost for competitively bid highway projects. Data are analyzed from several agencies managing highway and dredging projects. A natural log transformation of the low bid and final cost was found to produce regression models for each agency that had high R and R² values. These models can predict completed project cost using only the project low bid as input. A separate regression model was determined for each agency. Based on the form of the calculated models it appears that highway agencies construct projects where the final cost increases as an increasing percentage of the low bid price as the project magnitude increases. The dredging projects appear to follow different mechanisms of cost increase than the highway projects and were not predicted as well by the regression models. The regression models can also be used for budgeting purposes by submitting the sum of the low bids for a group of projects as input. The regression models output a prediction of the cost of the group of projects that was found to be highly accurate.     

大型工程项目管理与组织若干问题的思考

该文结合在广州大学城、珠海大学园区等大型工程项目建设实践体会,对政府和业主管理模式、管理层次、集权与分权、招投标与标后管理、施工总承包管理和劳务管理等方面存在的问题进行探讨,并提出一种分权自组织管理模式及一些启发性建议。     

Impact of organisational climate and demographics on project specific risks in context to Indian software industry

Software development in an organisation is often delimited with a number of risks at both macro and micro level. Numerous researchers have focused on abrogating these risks by advocating various mitigation strategies at organisational and technological levels. However, the understanding of how demographics and organisation climate factors can reduce the software risks is largely anecdotal. It is a well known fact, that organisation climate influences the individual's ability in perceiving the risks affecting the software projects. The present study conducted on 300 software practitioners, aims to identify organisational climate dimensions and risk dimensions in Indian software industry through factor analysis. It also establishes empirical relations between the two dimensions with the help of regression analysis. This research is useful for both academicians and practitioners who are struggling to ensure success of the project by developing novel approaches for mitigating risks in software projects.     

The project manager and the organisation's long-term competence goal

This paper presents empirical results from a study that aims to increase our understanding of the project manager's involvement in competence management in larger Swedish project-oriented organisations. Projects are today the predominant way of performing work. Organisations are also paying more attention to competence as competitive advantage. However, the logical interrelated connection between these two fields is still not understood.     

Getting it done: Critical success factors for project managers in virtual work settings

What conditions do project managers perceive as the most important to get the work done when working in fully dispersed settings? Rather than focusing on problems that managers experience when working in dispersed settings, our study highlights the conditions that are important for successful task accomplishment. We applied a Means-End-Chain (MEC) method to investigate the links between task accomplishment and relevant conditions that are attributes, benefits and values among a sample of experienced project managers (N = 30). Our results show that important conditions for successful project execution in a dispersed setting include rules of communication and its clarity; project management style and goal-setting; and managers' competences and trust in a team. In addition to these internal conditions, project managers also stress the importance of both corporate and technology support. These four conditions are all perceived as vital for task accomplishment in global dispersed projects.     

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.     

A performance-based approach to project assignment and performance evaluation

Project assignment and performance evaluation have been addressed as two important and separate research issues in project management. This paper develops a new performance-based approach for integrating the project assignment and the performance evaluation processes in a project-based organization. An objective-oriented preference-based assignment process is developed to assign a project to a project manager. An optimal project assignment model is developed to maximize the total weighted contribution value of all new projects to the organizational objectives. An efficiency-based evaluation process is developed using data envelopment analysis to measure the relative performance efficiency of the completed projects and of the project managers. The approach provides a proactive mechanism for facilitating objective-focused management of projects. The outcomes of an empirical study conducted provide managerial insights in assigning projects to project managers and in evaluating the performance efficiency of both projects and project managers.     

Applying institutional theories to managing megaprojects

This paper contributes to Rodney Turner's initiative to develop a theory of project management from practice. Organizational scholars studying strategy suggest that more attention needs to be paid to practices involved in organizing, as well as the institutional contexts in which these practices are embedded. Taking a cue from strategy-in-practice approaches, it is proposed that institutional theories can be used to address some questions that have not been answered adequately regarding megaprojects. Institutional theories also seem to be gaining the attention of scholars investigating large, global, infrastructure projects as reported in engineering, management and construction journals. Increasingly, it is evident that the problem areas attached to these projects stretch beyond technical issues: they must be considered as socio-technical endeavours embedded in complex institutional frames. The authors suggest that studying how to deal with institutional differences in the environment of megaprojects has both theoretical and practical implications.     

Evaluation of Chinese projects and comparison with Norwegian projects

Project work in developing and emerging economies is complicated and unpredictable. It would be of great help to equip project managers with an easily applicable tool to assess whether the project is on the right track or not. A Project Evaluation Scheme (PEVS) has earlier been used on Norwegian projects. Data from 89 Chinese projects has been collected using the scheme. This article analyses the Chinese data and compares them to the Norwegian findings. The Chinese projects are scoring higher in all areas investigated, except on informal contacts. Particularly high were goal setting, overall planning and control execution. The Chinese projects achieve their goals and are regarded as a success by all participants. They should improve in project closeout work. The article discusses the reasons for differences between Chinese and Norwegian projects, ranging from differences in perception regarding the questionnaire, to the possibility that Chinese projects in fact are better. The qualities of activity execution are found to be the most important factor in predicting project success. PEVS is proven to be applicable to Chinese projects, yet further customisation is needed.     

The role of monitoring and shirking in information systems project management

Agency theory offers a foundation for explaining the impact of project monitoring on project success. This study applied agency theory to survey 428 information systems project managers concerning their project monitoring, shirking by systems developers, and project success. Greater project monitoring via planning and meetings predicted less shirking, while greater monitoring via responsibilities and comparison did not. Less shirking via poor focus predicted increased project success, while less shirking via loafing did not. These findings have implications for project managers and project management researchers.     

The effects of construction delays on project delivery in Nigerian construction industry

Construction delay has become endemic in Nigeria. It is imperative to create awareness of the extent to which delays can adversely affect project delivery. This paper identifies, by questionnaire evaluates and through empirical method assesses the effects of construction delays. The findings showed that time and cost overruns were frequent effects of delay. Delay had significant effect on completion cost and time of 61 building projects studied. Client-related delay is significant in Nigeria. Acceleration of site activities coupled with improved clients' project management procedure and inclusion of appropriate contingency allowance in precontract estimate should assuage the adverse effect of construction delays.     

Applying Actor–Network Theory as a sensemaking framework for complex organisational change programs

The implementation of a Project Management Information System (PMIS) in three public sector agencies is examined using Actor–Network Theory, an infrequently applied approach to project management research. Use of the PMIS focused on practitioner capability, without acting as a mechanism of project control. This is different to how a PMIS is generally portrayed in the literature, suggesting a need to rethink the ways a PMIS can support project management.     

The impact of value diversity on information system development projects

Diversity of personal values among participants in an information system project is typically considered to create harmful team conflict, as do other forms of personal diversity. However, recent research establishes that information and knowledge diversity among project team members contribute to project success, leading one to question accepted thought regarding diversity of values. We model the impact of value diversity on project performance through theoretical layers of diversity, conflict, and teamwork quality. An empirical test supports hypotheses that value diversity adds to both beneficial and detrimental conflict. Project managers should compose teams with diverse project values but must control for potential detrimental effects.     

Improving project outcomes through operational reliability: A conceptual model

The work reported here is part of an on-going research effort concerned with developing a methodology to improve the outcomes of projects involving complex information systems. To facilitate the study, previous research concerned with high reliability organisations (HRO) is examined. An analysis of this literature is used to develop a conceptual model that explains how highly reliable operational capabilities are achieved and maintained. Cases of catastrophic failures are evaluated using this paradigm to illustrate its utility as an analytical research tool and its potential as a systemic framework for evaluating the operational capability of organisations prior to project initiation.