Extend your knowledge

Müller, R., Drouin, N., & Sankaran, S. (2019). Modeling organizational project management. Project Management Journal50(4), 499–513.

Read this innovative paper by Müller, Drouin, and Sankaran where you can learn about how one can model Organizational Project Management (OPM). It models this in a model that includes 22 OPM elements and may provide a good tool for managing in project-based organizations.

Browning, T. R. (2019). Planning, tracking, and reducing a complex project’s value at risk. Project Management Journal50(1), 71–85.

Uncertainty and risk are project planning’s’ nemesis. Uncertainty and risk and the rework often required make it extremely challenging to meet goals and deliver anticipated value in complex projects, and conventional techniques for planning and tracking earned value do not account for these phenomena. Here you get a presentation of a methodology for planning and tracking cost, schedule, and technical performance (or quality) in terms of a project’s key value attributes and threats to them. It distinguishes four types of value and two general types of risks.

Butler, C. W., Vijayasarathy, L. R., & Roberts, N. (2019). Managing software development projects for success: Aligning plan-and agility-based approaches to project complexity and project dynamism. Project Management Journal, XX(X), 1–16.

Given the two dominant paradigms for managing projects (i.e., plan-based project approach and agility-based project approach), there is less agreement as to which one is better. Read the article that researches the moderating influence of the two project management approaches on the relationship between project complexity and project dynamism on project outcomes.

McGivern, G., Dopson, S., Ferlie, E., Fischer, M., Fitzgerald, L., Ledger, J., & Bennett, C. (2018). The silent politics of temporal work: A case study of a management consultancy project to redesign public health care. Organization Studies39(8), 1007–1030.

Read this to learn more about how to handle the different actors’ time horizons in projects and thus there are challenges in coordinating their work. Unarticulated temporal interests and orientations can shape the construction of problems, which, in turn, legitimate tasks and time frames.