Project Management Mechanisms Research Articles

A Study of the Functional Mechanism of Petrochemical Engineering Construction Project Management

A Study of the Functional Mechanism of Petrochemical Engineering Construction Project Management

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The main task of country economy modernizing aimed to improve its competitiveness and sustainability is the corresponding infrastructure creation. This problem solution is possible only through the joint efforts of state and private business. In this article the common and specific factors that affect the transport infrastructure project management are revealed on the basis of infrastructural project managing experience analysis, the principles of public-private partnership (PPP) as the format of such projects� realization are systematized and developed taking into account their characteristics. The offers directed on improvement of organizational and economic mechanism of infrastructural project management in the railway infrastructure sphere in the PPP model (the life-cycle contract) are developed.

Research on the Role of Project Stakeholder in Sustainable Construction of Chinese Mainland

Project stakeholders play an important role in the implementation process of sustainable construction. Due to different attributes of each stakeholder in the project, their importance level is different. This paper firstly identifies 13 project stakeholders based on Chinese construction project management mechanism and then a questionnaire survey was conducted to investigate their importance. This finding indicates that client and government play extremely important role in the sustainable construction; all the project stakeholders are important in the three aspects and the importance level order of project stakeholders in the three aspects is different.

Communication-Centered Project Management for Requirements Definition Phase

Requirements definition, which determines a project baseline, has a strong impact on the success of a project. However, since in-depth requirements are gradually revealed through the requirements definition process, the requirements definition is not a straight forward process and often falls into disorder. Thus project management standpoints are critical for the success of the requirements definition. In this paper, we present a framework and mechanisms of communication-centered project management, which controls the requirements definition process based on the situation of communication-oriented activities among stakeholders. In addition, we present a communication-centered project plan with a planning method. The project plan, which represents a time schedule of requirements definition activities, is made by a simulation-optimization algorithm using a stakeholder matrix showing the relations of requirements domains and relevant stakeholders. The effectiveness and the significance of communication-centered project management at the requirements definition phase are demonstrated by numerical examples.

Study on the Implementation of Agent Construction System in Forestation Project with Government Investment in China

As the nation pays more and more attention to ecological construction, the government investment in forestation projects increases every year. The project management of afforestation project with government investment is a complex systematic project which needs well coordinate of the relationship of various subjects to find a reasonable combination of every interest subjects by appropriate design of the system, so it is necessary to introduce reasonable project management mechanism. This paper points out the problems exist in the current project management of forestation project with government investment and analyses the reasons; then agent construction system is proposed to improve the management mechanism of the forestation project with government investment; finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the system were analyzed.

Conditionally-mediated effects of scale in collaborative R&D

This paper reports the results of an empirical investigation into the role of project scale, as reflected in consortium size, on the impacts obtained by partners participating in publicly-funded collaborative R&D projects. I argue in this study that scale may affect performance indirectly rather than directly. Specifically, I model the influence of scale as being mediated by a set of intervening variables that may be said to “transmit” both positive and negative effects through (i) complementarity of resources, (ii) learning, and (iii) transaction costs in project implementation. Moreover, I hypothesize that these indirect effects are conditional on certain moderators that include resources committed, project management mechanisms, and project uncertainty and scope. The results offered in this study largely confirm the proposition of conditionally-mediated effects of scale on performance. They indicate that a number of conditional indirect effects are indeed significant, and surprisingly, that these effects are mostly negative.

Contingency estimation using a real options approach

In construction projects, contingency is the budget which is made available to cope with uncertainties that would incur schedule and cost overruns. Contingency estimation requires considering project cost, schedule and technology variability. The effect of dynamic project management of the decision maker should also be taken into account. Accordingly a real options approach for estimating contingency from the owner’s point of view is presented. This approach not only explicitly recognizes the uncertainty in the life cycle of a construction project, but also incorporates a dynamic project management mechanism into contingency estimation. The contingency is valued by minimizing the expected project cost via a multi‐stage stochastic model that accounts for the variability of project cost and schedule and the exercise of dynamic project crashing. The numerical results indicate that the value of the decision maker’s dynamic project management makes up an important portion of the contingency.

The mechanisms of project management of software development

The changing environments of software development such as component-based, distributed and outsourced software development require matching changes by project managers to monitor, control and coordinate their projects. While the objectives of project management may be well established, the mechanisms with which those objectives are achieved are less well known. An empirical study was undertaken to investigate which mechanisms were used by practising project managers to monitor, control and coordinate software development projects. First, the types of mechanisms are discussed so that the mechanisms can be classified usefully. Then, the design of the empirical study is described. The data were collected through structured interview, which provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The data are analysed for each mechanism separately and the findings presented. The study found that project managers use multiple mechanisms to achieve project management objectives and use the same mechanism to serve multiple objectives. Further research is suggested to investigate project management from the opposite orientation, that is, which objectives are served by specific project management mechanisms.

Quality within software developments: Research in the financial service sector

This paper is based on research carried out through a series of five case studies within the financial service sector. The role of information technology within the financial service sector is introduced and the requirement for quality software developments established. The paper describes the contribution quality standards IS09001 & BS 5750 make towards establishing ' Best Practice' , and the software developments studied review the quality management, control and assurance mechanisms found within the casestudy organisations. From this work one organisation was selected for an in-depth study of quality issues throughout the software development lifecycle. An analysis of the type of software projects undertaken is made considering the software development lifecycle and project management mechanisms. A model introducing the quality control techniques on top of the development lifecycle is presented. The paper concludes with a summary of the research findings and identification of further work required in the area.