Project Management Discipline Research Articles

Theory Use in Project Management Research: An Exploratory Content Analysis Approach.

The frequency and richness of the theories developed, tested, and used by researchers in an academic discipline exemplify several pertinent factors, namely, the growth, the maturity, the independence, the legitimacy, and the influence of the discipline. Although organizations have been working on projects for centuries, Project Management (PM) is a considerably new academic discipline with emerging research themes, models, methodologies, frameworks, and paradigms. These PM concepts are anchored on or reinforced by new or existing theories. This exploratory study aims to add to the existing PM body of knowledge by investigating the prevalence of theory use in PM research. A systematic content analysis of 9200 PM research articles published from 2000 to 2019 (20years) in the leading PM journals identified 248 unique theories. These results reveal that the PM discipline is increasingly embracing the use of theories with game theory, fuzzy theory, agency theory, contingency theory, and stakeholder theory emerging as the most dominant theories in the reviewed research articles. Also, although PM is developing its theories, the results revealed that PM researchers continue to heavily use theories borrowed from other academic disciplines such as psychology, sociology, mathematics, and economics.

Key Factors Affecting the Success of Construction Multi Project Management

Simultaneous management of multiple projects has become a trend in the field of energy, oil and gas construction project management over the past decade. This situation is driven by the high market demand and need for fossil fuels, which also stresses project management discipline to improve its performance and efficiency in managing multiple projects simultaneously. Nevertheless, concurrent execution of multiple construction projects often leads to stretched the project durations and cost due to suboptimal resource management, which may become a boomerang and increase project costs. The objective of this study is to identify factors and indicators that contribute to the successful management of multiple projects. Although multi-project management has been extensively studied, there is still a dearth of studies analyzing the elements that make construction multi-project management successful, particularly in the energy, oil, and gas sectors. This research is a case study of an EPCIC company that uses multi-project management and operates in the oil and gas sector. Through purposive sampling techniques, a total of 58 executives from national oil and gas contractors with significant work experience participated in this study through a questionnaire survey. The PLS-SEM approach has revealed that the positive predictor factors influencing the success/performance of multi-project management are resource allocation, teamwork quality, multi-project management competency, and project manager assignment. Flexible and intelligent resource allocation management in multi-project cycles affected by uncertainty is a critical factor.

Boosting entrepreneurial competences beyond business and management–related disciplines. The case of engineering programs

PurposeThis study addresses the challenge of integrating entrepreneurial competences development into the traditionally structured engineering curriculum, recognizing its potential contribution to job creation. Specifically, this study proposes a course design that intersects project management and entrepreneurial disciplines, adopting a challenge-based learning approach.Design/methodology/approachConsidering a list of common features that entrepreneurs and engineers—in the role of project managers—should excel at, and building upon the principles of experiential learning, this study proposes and describes a course design that is expected to help engineering students develop entrepreneurial competences. Through a series of assessment instruments and descriptive statistics, the study evaluates its implementation in a pilot test applied in a Project Management course at a Spanish university.FindingsThe results demonstrate a significant improvement in students' entrepreneurial competences after completing the course. Noteworthy variations in receptiveness to skill development among different personality profiles are observed. Gender differences are minimal, with the exception of women exhibiting heightened self-perception in the autonomy dimension.Originality/valueThis study explores the common features shared by two often-disconnected disciplines, namely engineering and entrepreneurship. It suggests that integrating both perspectives through a challenge-based course design can enhance entrepreneurial competences among engineering students without compromising the specific knowledge gained from engineering programs. Engaging students in such pedagogical experiences not only fosters entrepreneurial competences but also contributes to their professional and personal growth.

Development Of Micro Credential Design For Project Management To Improve The Quality Of Engineering Practices

The integration of engineering practices with project management responsibilities is commonplace in the field, offering an effective solution for executing engineering projects. However, the unique discipline of project management poses a challenge, revealing a limitation in the quality of human resources with expertise in both engineering and project management. This study aims to address this gap by developing a Project Management Micro-Credential Design to formally recognize engineers possessing project management competencies. Employing the Rapid Assessment Process (RAP) integrated with the Regional Model Competency Standard (RMCS), the research outlines a comprehensive design for the development of a micro-credential in engineering project management. Key components of the design include a competency-based skill set development model, an instructional design system for quality assurance, an outcome-based learning and teaching delivery structure (OBLT), a competency-based assessment (CBA) development framework, and an operational structure for micro-credential implementation. This designed framework is adaptable for application within Professional Organizations and Professional Education of Engineers, accommodating both integrated and packaged formats, such as the Indonesian Student Micro-Credential (KMMI). The study contributes to bridging the gap in project management expertise among engineers, presenting a structured approach to enhance their competencies and recognition within the engineering profession.

High-Performance Project Teams: Analysis from the Stoic Approach

Nowadays, any consideration regarding project management implies an all-encompassing approach constituted by three perspectives: organizational, human, and engineering. In this sense, it is necessary for the project manager to reflect on various issues, such as ethics, the understanding of the environment, leadership, teamwork, achieving results, change in management, the adoption of new technologies, and knowledge management, among many others, all this with the intention of ensuring success through value creation, consistent and aligned with the expectations of the different stakeholders. Because of the adoption of a comprehensive vision of project management, disciplines such as philosophy have become logical within the reasoning of organizational management. Classic postulates such as those of the Stoic school have become references for modern leader-managers because of their approach associated with personal development, self-discipline, self-control, logic, balance with the environment, and the creation of social value. The research analyzed how the postulates of the Stoic philosophy can determine the high performance of project teams. To achieve this, 70 project managers from different small and medium enterprises (SMEs) located in Bogotá, Colombia, were surveyed about the seven main thoughts of Stoicism and the possible relationship with the performance of their project teams. Based on their answers, a correlational model of structural equations was applied to obtain the conclusions of this study. The results obtained in this investigation are intended to contribute significantly to the maturity and modernization of the project management discipline.

Identifying and Addressing Problems in the Estimation Process: a Case Study Applying Action Research

Literature shows that a large part of software projects exceeds the amount of effort and estimation duration, even though we currently witness an evolution of software project management discipline. Through its best practices, software engineering tries to reduce the flaws in software development. Several techniques and resources have been presented to help to reduce this problem. This paper aims to propose an approach based on action research to improve the estimation process in software development tasks by identifying problems. A case study is carried out to show the effectiveness of our approach. The results show an improvement of 50% accuracy over the baseline estimation process.

Project Management Methodologies in the Organizations of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Abstract The history has shown us over time that each way of managing an activity can lead to a different result, which has given rise to multiple approaches to the project management discipline through diverse models and methodologies, each one coming with a number of advantages and disadvantages. The software engineering branch is a climate where projects have a lot of room for flexibility, change and adaptability. However, this scientific paper aims to highlight the characteristics of these techniques, provided by experts in the field through the scientific literature, along with an original point of view regarding their future improvement. Project management is a complex, diverse and encompassing discipline, so each new model or methodology has come to supplement the shortcomings of the previous one. Starting from these, there are a number of factors that must be taken into account when determining how a project should be managed, such as: industry, size, resources, etc., and this paper presents the areas of applicability for each methodology in part, as well as data in which several approaches intertwine resulting in hybrid project management approaches. In the end, some conclusions and predictions about the methodologies in the field of software development industry are presented.

Progressing and Discipline and Profession of Projects

This essay reflects on Peter Morris’s concerns about the the way that project management has been articulated through the advocacy of those institutions and associations that were formed to recognise project management as a distinct area of activity. The essay considers how project management has wrestled with the challenge of being recoginised as both a discipline and a profession and how there has been both progress and concern at how our understanding and practice of project management has evolved. The essay concludes with a recognition that the developments in both the understanding of the discipline of project management and the profession of project management have been in directions that Peter Morris was recommending for many years but, as he also made clear, we cannot rest on our laurels as there is still more to be done.

Project management and system dynamics modelling: Time to connect with innovation and sustainability

AbstractThis paper argues that there is a requirement to connect project management (PM) with innovation and sustainability to address new societal needs. Societal demands have facilitated further complexity and uncertainty within the PM discipline and have led to both theoretical and practical evolutions. Key evolutions are identified, which suggests that PM is becoming more holistic and interdisciplinary in nature so it can successfully deal with this complexity and uncertainty. Furthermore, holistic thinking naturally connects with systemic thinking, which justifies the selection of system dynamics (SD) to support PM decision‐making. An extensive critical review of SD modelling with respect to identified evolutions within the PM discipline is undertaken. The contribution of this paper connects innovation and sustainability to the PM discipline by the initial development of a causal loop diagram (CLD).

The mediating role of Stakeholder Engagement on the relationship between Entrepreneurial Orientation and Agricultural Project Performance in Developing Countries

The purpose of the paper is to develop a theoretical model that orchestrates the relationship between stakeholder engagement, entrepreneurial orientation, and agricultural project performance in developing countries. The paper adopts the Med Graph and Sobel tests of mediation effect to develop a mediation model of agricultural project performance. The study draws on quantitative and crosssectional research approaches. Random sampling technique was used to select the agricultural projects and purposive sampling was applied to select the respondents. The results reveal that stakeholder engagement and entrepreneurial orientation are invaluable resources that significantly affect agricultural project performance. The study empirically shows that stakeholder engagement and entrepreneurial orientation are significant predictors of project performance for agricultural projects in developing countries. This study makes a contribution to knowledge through the provision of relevant information that fills the practical gaps of agricultural projects in developing countries and makes a theoretical contribution to the project management discipline. This enables practitioners and scholars to comprehend and legitimize decisions that foster sustainable agricultural project performance in developing countries.

Sustainable Development and Value Creation, an Approach from the Perspective of Project Management

The discipline of project management has been maturing over time, integrating positively with some organizational approaches, such as strategy and sustainable development, to meet current needs without risking future capabilities. In this sense, it is observed that measuring the success of a project only from the classic mechanistic perspective of the triple constraint: scope, time, and budget, is insufficient; this opens a space for a new variable of social progress: the creation of value. Thus, the objective of this study is to identify the degree of relationship between the success of the projects and the sustainable development approach, managing to determine through the results obtained some opportunities for improvement in light of the economic and organizational context. As a starting point for this research, a review of the literature associated with topics, such as sustainable development, value creation, and modern trends in project management, was carried out. The second step was to design and apply a structured survey to 148 Colombian companies that develop projects in different sectors, such as technology, infrastructure, and services. With the information collected, a structural equation modeling—SEM model was applied to determine the relationship between the selected variables. Finally, the results of this research showed that the success of a project that is carried out under a sustainable development approach has a positive tendency toward the creation of value. In conclusion, it is found that the four dimensions studied: impact, relevance, effectiveness, and efficiency, allow us to explain to a greater or lesser extent the success of the projects through their approach to sustainable development and value creation.

An Exploration on The Construction Management Failures in Ongoing Projects of The Kabul City

The construction industry is known for its chronic problems of fragmentation, low productivity, time and cost overruns, poor safety, inferior working conditions, and insufficient quality which ultimately led to project failure and poor construction images. A project becomes a failure when it does not deliver what was required within the agreed-upon budget and time. The majority of projects are temporary efforts to create value through a unique product, service, or result. Almost all projects have a beginning and an end. They have a team, a budget, a schedule, and a set of expectations the team needs to meet. Each project is unique and differs from routine operations and the ongoing activities of the organization. The project of an organization reaches a conclusion once the goal is achieved. The purpose of construction project management is to control a project's time delivery, cost, and quality, and it requires professional management to decrease failure factors. This study covers the construction project management failures and their causes during and after the construction and focuses most on the critical factors that cause the failure of construction projects in Kabul city. Two types of methodologies have been used which will allow the researchers to dive deep and get more information regarding flaws and failure causes, especially with the help of root cause analysis that has made the research more effective. Cost control, scheduling, procurement, and risk assessment have been reported as significant issues that must be addressed in the complicated discipline of construction project management. Keywords: Construction management failure, Budget, Fragmentation, Project delivery

Implementing Agile Testing Methodologies in Banking Software Project

Agile software development has been increasingly popular in a number of sectors in recent years. Financial businesses are used to this tendency since it requires them to respond to changes in their business environments more swiftly. Agile approaches have emerged to address the limitations of old ones. In response to the ever-changing and dynamic nature of the business environment, software development businesses are increasingly implementing agile methodologies. The word "Agile" originally arose in the disciplines of software development and project management around thirty years ago. It is used to research with wide-ranging implications, and it is utilized at different levels and in different circumstances. Scrum, kanban, large-scale scrum (LeSS), spotify model, continuous integration, Scaled Agile Lean Development (SCALeD), and many more variations of the agile methodology have emerged. Initially implemented at the individual software development and team level, agile has developed into projects, programs, solutions, and portfolios over time, ultimately reaching full-service growth into an enterprise level framework. In order to examine agile methodologies, models, and practices in a less researched area of the banking and financial services industry—from software development and modelling to large-scale case study organization levels—a unique methodology to surveying the literature has been presented in this paper. The study's conclusion outlines the contributing variables, best practices, advantages, and lessons that professionals in the banking and financial services industries may apply to create a simplified, agile deployment.

Digitalization of project management: Opportunities in research and practice

The fast growth of digital technologies as well as the amount of data that devices and applications collect daily, increasingly drive organisations to radically transform their business models. The impact of digitalization on Information technology (IT) projects are evident through the adoption of agile approaches and DevOps. What is not clear, is how digitalization is impacting the larger project management discipline. A bibliometric analysis of 478 articles provides insights into the state of project management digitalization. At a high level, project management is not yet digitalized but technologies are used as tools to optimise project management processes. The results also highlight the need for continuous learning to adapt to the transformation introduced by digitalization. The introduction of the Project Management Digitalization Research Agenda Cube can be used to guide practitioners and academia to facilitate the digitalization of project management.

It’s About Time: A Systematic Review of the Study of Time in Project Management

Time is one of the most important aspects of project management practice. Timely delivery of projects is one of the main success criteria for projects. Every year nearly half of all projects that start then fail to complete on time or miss their initial deadlines. Many project underperformances and failures are associated with time-related issues. Despite its acknowledged importance in project management practice, time-related phenomena are not often at the forefront of project management research. This paper takes stock of time-related research in project management discipline. We report how time is conceived and applied in project management research. First, we review time-related scholarship appearing in all issues of three leading project management journals. Then we review scholarship on time-related phenomena in project management published outside of three journals. Analysis of 165 articles reveals time-related research in project management is scarce and scattered, addressed in background or supporting positions rather than focal point of investigation. We identify gaps in seven themes of temporal research and present a research agenda for each to bring time-related phenomena to the forefront of project management research, which will prove beneficial in project management practice. We propose a shift in focus to studying time-related phenomena in project management to address some of the costly time-related issues.

Artificial Intelligence, Analytics and Agile: Transforming Project Management in the 21st Century

With the advent of intricate and advanced technologies, methods, and automation, several challenges have emerged that need to be addressed. Artificial Intelligent Technology, Agile and Analytics holistically improve the project management discipline through continuous improvement and consistent execution. This paper builds upon this discussion and establishes how project management is using the AI supported tools, extensive use of data analytics and the Agile approach for improvement. Technology is revolutionizing the project management, yet the role of project managers cannot be undermined since they are the primary drivers of the project and deliver value.

THE PROBLEM OF DEFINING STAKEHOLDERS IN A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL CONTEXT, EXAMINED VIA THE ANALYSIS OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION PROJECTS.

There has been to date only limited consideration within the project management discipline of nonhuman actors as primordial stakeholders in projects. However, the inclusion of the roles of nonhuman actors is essential, when we consider that many projects in many areas, both within and outside the field of environmental conservation itself, such as for example in the fields of business and management, depend on natural resources for the development of their products. Despite this, natural resources tend to be overlooked in the stakeholder maps of projects in this wider context. Environmental Conservation projects are themselves especially interesting to study with regards to their stakeholder context and have been used as the experimental setting for the empirical work of this study. The primordial stakeholders of these projects are not social objects and therefore go beyond what are currently generally regarded as the limits of stakeholder theory. The study that has been used to analyse this concept is a marine conservation project based in Spain, whose primordial actor is not human. Unfortunately, these stakeholders being non-human are therefore not able to express themselves, and therefore are rarely purposely included in stakeholder analysis and management approaches, thus limiting comprehensive stakeholder mapping analyses ab initio, and handicapping realistic consideration of nonhuman actors. This study may be extrapolated and applied to the United Nation´s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17, “Partnership for the goals”, with reference to SDG 14, which deals with marine conservation.

Unlocking Temporal Leadership to Handle Project Team Performance under Team Conflict

It is discussed in different studies that the performance of any team is directly or indirectly dependent on the leadership of that team. But there are always some circumstances which affect the performance of a team on various points. These circumstances may include team conflict and its three sub-level conflicts which include task conflicts, relationship conflicts, and process conflicts. The proposed article will be a joint venture of Information Technology and Project Management discipline in which quantitative research method is used. Given the relationship between team temporal leadership and project team performance, it is obligatory for a leader of the technical team to be well aware of managing the conflicts that arise among a team and also be well aware of resources provided by higher-ups. The research will highlight 1) the negative effect of team conflict on the performance of a team, 2) the influence of temporal leadership on team performance and 3) the role of temporal leadership to overcome negative impact of conflicts to improve project team performance.

A Review and Classification of the Uncertainties in Projects: The Way Forward

This article aims to summarize existing research on various sources of uncertainty and to classify them based on the determinants and antecedents addressed in projects. A systematic review is conducted using a total of 140 research published in peer-reviewed scientific journals during the last three decades. We classify various uncertainty based on their individual, relational, group, organizational, project-oriented, and managerial characteristics. Additionally, we uncovered a few gaps such as, how uncertainties differ based on the size of the organization, the need for exploring uncertainty from a more cross-disciplinary perspective, differentiating the concept of complexity and risk with uncertainty and the role of chaos theory, that require future study. By leveraging significant findings, this is study contributes from the perspective of theory and practice to academic, project, and industrial management discipline.

Case Method in the Study of Information Technologies and IT Project Management

The paper shows the features of the application of the case method in the study of the discipline of IT project management for students majoring in the field of Information Technology. This work analyzes some of the difficulties associated with the limited use of case studies in the field of IT. An original solution to the problem of combining flexible technologies for the development of the project itself on the basis of a case study and methods of studying and applying special software for IT project management presented by authors. The conceptual scheme of the main stages of work with a case, interrelations and content from an initial acquaintance, discussion in groups and acceptance of intermediate decisions, to planning of operations, calendar planning of works and resources were shown. However, the role of special software for visualization of separate stages of project execution management in the MS Project environment at all stages of the life cycle was explained. The combination of individual analytical work of the students, acquisition of teem job skills, the study of MS Project tools, IT project management methods at different stages allows to achieve the planned learning outcomes and develop interdisciplinary competencies.