Project Management Theory - Assignment Example

PROJECT MANAGEMENT THEORY By Student’s Name Code + Course Name Professor’s Name University/College Name City, State, Date Introduction For quite a long period, project management has been defined as an academic field used to plan oriented techniques, and an application of optimization theory and engineering science. A lot of research has also been directed at establishing the generic factors that determine the success of a project. Nevertheless, there has been an interests in project management from other disciplines over the past decade. With the rapid expansion of the field, there is an equal increase in the need to engage in internal debate and discussions concerning project management research. Project organization and project management remain a highly complex subject that ought to be examined from various perspectives. Project management's future is reliant on how well the perspectives upheld by the other academic disciplines will be integrated into the project management field and profession. It is clear that most of the current research has been targeted at explaining the reasons for the success or failure of projects while giving less value to other essential research questions that ought to be explored to increase the existing knowledge on project management and to offer new insights into the future of project management. This paper reviews the emerging perspectives in project management, including why projects exist, their behaviours, and their differences, with the intention of providing insight into factors that can be considered across project management approaches to facilitate proper management of projects in the future. The current project management state The current field of professional project management is multifaceted, diverse, and contradictory in various respects. One of the areas involves the increased development of different professional organizations, including the "International Project Management Association (IPMA)" and the "Project Management Institute (PMI)" (Blomquist et al. 2010, p.7). Such associations are recognized for both organizing conferences and also promoting project management standardization and project managers’ certification programs. With the expansion of project management as a profession, more individuals are attracted to it, thus calling for techniques, standards, and certification programs to facilitate their professional development (Blomquist et al. 2010, p. 7). The increased interest among professionals in project management could be demonstrated by the increase in organization of various business activities within organizations into projects. Besides, such has been documented in product development research as well as company research in various industrial sectors. The general rationale based on which most of the articles and texts that have been published, including the “Project Management Journal”, involves the embracement of project management as nothing else but a “method” through which complex problems within the organization are solved (Hald et al. 2012, p. 434). This viewpoint identifies project management as a way among many, through which organizational activity can be handled. Various related standpoint and arguments have been included in various research texts in the field of project management. Besides the practice of project management, there has been a surge in the development of networks whose primary focus has been on sharing findings and knowledge obtained through project-oriented research (Shaltry 2008, p. 111). The "International Research Network for Organizing by Projects (IRNOP)", is one of these networks. Since its launch back in 1994, this network has many research conferences attended by close to a hundred participants during each of them (Biedenbach & Müller 2011, p. 87). One of the major issues discussed during these conferences has involved combining the various inquiry disciplines, an aspect that clearly shows the project management research’s cross-disciplinary character. The participants of these conferences are from different disciplines including pedagogy, psychology, organization theory, business administration, sociology, and industrial engineering. As such, project management has been viewed as a research field that brings together various disciplines and allows them to focus one central phenomenon of study, which is the projects (Morris 2010, p. 141). Nevertheless, this paper argues that as much as such a perspective’s breadth is interesting and challenging, it ought to be accompanied by an in-depth discussion of the basics of research in project management. As such, the content and identity of research in project management should be elaborately discussed. As much as one may argue that both the theoretical and practical parts of the field of project management have experienced rapid development over the recent past, some researchers believe that there has been too much narrowing of the focus. It is clear that as much as there has been a growing interest across different disciplines in the field, there has been less development of research. Most of the research has been focused only on the success factors and factors that contribute to failures in project management as opposed to the general concept and theory of project management (Whitehead 2005, p. 526). In most of the current research in project management, projects are portrayed as tools while project management is portrayed as a group of techniques and models used in the control and planning of complex undertakings. Intellectual roots of research in project management Various researchers refer the intellectual roots of knowledge and research in project management back to the different techniques used in project planning, including PERT and CPM. Some of the researchers even insist that project management was invented by Gantt, who created the Gantt chart that has become a common tool in the practice of project management (Söderlund & Geraldi 2012, p. 563). If such a take continues, then project management would be viewed as a certain method for solving problems, which involves grouping and delimiting activities through the employment of various methods and techniques. This means that project management and research in project management would fall close to applied mathematics, optimization theory, and the curriculum in engineering school. Other researchers would trace such roots to completely different fronts, an aspect that may lead to the conclusion that project management research is guided by two major theoretical traditions. On one hand is the applied mathematics and engineering science theoretical tradition, which is majorly concerned with methods and techniques used in planning project management. On the other hand is the theoretical tradition that has its intellectual roots in social sciences including organization theory, sociology, and psychology, with its main interest being in the behavioural and organizational issues of project management (Pasian 2015, p. 117). Major assumptions in research The assumptions that researchers make direct their interests and even research findings. From the perspective of a research, one could view a project as a concept used for analytical purposes. For instance, a social process has a beginning that is well defined and an end that is clear. This is developed through practice and remodified or recreated by the researcher who embarks on studying the project. It is evident that in most cases a project single actor’s social construction may be different from the researcher’s established social construction (Kidd 2009, p. 56). As such, what is defined as the project by the practitioner, may lack relevance to the researcher. On a general note, researchers in project management consider all projects as similar since they have labelled certain phenomena as projects. Nevertheless, such researchers also adopt the assumption that all the projects differ. Thus, one of the essential areas of empirical social research involves a review of phenomenon versus perspective (Morris et al. 2010, p. 221). Case in point, one could claim that projects are only a way through organizational and industrial activity is looked at. In this respect, it is less important whether there is actual existence of projects. This is similar to the argument stated earlier, which insisted that the perception of the researcher and actors of a single project do not have to be in correspondence. Project research could be thus said to involve more of trying and looking to capture the time-limited, complex, and unique processes of management, interaction, and organization (Curlee & Gordon 2011, p. 43). Thus, on one hand, one may identify a research titled “project research” to be a metaphor or a perspective of studying a whole firm or the entire industry as the key unit of analysis. Similarly, one may possibly identify research that notes the importance of establishing theories and knowledge concerning the management and organization of projects. Based on this perspective, one may note that research about “management by projects”, in which case are researches that take on firms but direct their focus on the dimensions of the project, upholds the take that a perspective is provided by projects through which corporate activity can be analysed (Curlee & Gordon 2011, p. 43). In the context of a project, the common universal elements include uniqueness, time-limitedness, and task complexity, which in most cases are the same characteristics that are insisted in the project management books, especially within the first chapters. In this case, this paper maintains that in as much as there is need to explicate projects’ universal dimensions, it is important to conduct a thorough analysis of the various variations that occur among projects. In the recent past, both organization scholars and practitioners have increasingly used the term “project theory” (Mateo 2015, p. 32). As much as most of these individuals do not have a clear understanding of the meaning of the term “project theory”, the application of the concept brings out various important constituents. Sometimes, there is strict reference to project theory as practical knowledge, whereas sometimes researchers refer to it as “normative tradition” that includes the checklists, the textbook, and the research of critical success factors and optimization (Mateo 2015, p. 93). Such a research tradition is common among project management scholars. Nevertheless, for those researchers who intend to use empirical data to build theories, such research does not offer them much regarding theory. One would claim that projects are interesting and important phenomena based on which interesting and strong theories can be built to contribute towards the existing knowledge of various areas of social life. These theories would be directed towards “temporariness” and “action” (Blomquist et al. 2010, p. 9). It is critical noting that project organization is a key corporate process and an important industrial activity, and thus any management that does not have proper knowledge of projects lacks awareness of all that it takes to manage contemporary and future firms. Such a take has been emphasized by authors on time-paced strategies, boundary-less careers, and project-based firms, who insist that there is need for new approaches to reasoning about organizations and how they are managed (Kidd 2009, p. 178). As such, this paper suggests that it is important for project research to be embraced as a way through which the modern and future firm can be understood as it is only through such an understanding that the function of project management can be well executed in their context. The increase in the use of projects within modern day organizations is a major force behind the search for influences of project success. As much as much research has been carried out in the recent past, researchers still fail to agree on the major factors that determine project success. A major reason for such a disagreement is the upheld assumption that one universal project management theory can apply to each project (Curlee & Gordon 2011, p. 201). Engaging in a search for such a theory may lack a foundation as it is clear that different projects have various significant differences. The major contention does not involve the similarity between all projects, but the existence of a generic form that could be referred to as project management. The point stated here is that there is a level of incompatibility between the tradition of social science and the engineering tradition on issues of importance, given that for one to achieve determinateness, it avoids uncertainty, whereas the other assumes indeterminateness by assuming uncertainty (Whitehead 2005, p. 525). This paper argues that there is need for various types of theorizing, such that as some focus on the universal facet of a project, the rest look at the specific factors of the project. The theories that focus on the specifics of a project could either be within a given firm or industry or be linked with a certain category of projects. However, to facilitate efficient project management in futuristic firms, it is vital to continuously criticize the established dimensions, develop new ones, and to strike a balance between the general and specific project management aspects[Söd12]. As such, unlike the observed generic mechanisms available everywhere within the field of projects, it is necessary for researchers to differentiate between theoretical and empirical research. Developing project management theories The major argument brought up in this paper is that various openings exist for further empirical studies and additional perspectives. The field of project management still lacks studies of processes, in-depth case studies, and real-time studies, all of which would be important in establishing theories that would allow for the understanding of key issues of project organizations and project management. Such an understanding is important as a framework for guiding future project management practices. In most cases of project writing, the reason behind the existence of projects has been explained by mainly highlighting the task at hand, in most cases adopting the “contingency theory” or “transaction cost theory” (Lapunka & Pisz 2014, p. 70). Thus, arguments that are fairly rationalistic would be used to explain a project. For instance, it would be explained that the reason behind the existence of project organizations is the presence of a certain complex task that has certain characteristics and needs to be performed. Nevertheless, other explanations could be given to the same assertion as well, including the notion that “the task” at hand is a social construction in itself (Hald et al. 2012, p. 434). There is need to develop a better understanding of such issues as this would allow researchers to have a more succint picture as to why there is an increase in reliance on project-based firms in the current society. Apart from adopting a contingency framework, it is clear that there is need for more dynamic elaboration to facilitate an understanding of project organizations’ behaviours. The project life cycle is an important aspect in this case. Case in point, there is a dramatic variation of activities across the project’s life, ranging from feasibility studies, conceptualization, detailed engineering, to commissioning and testing (Lapunka & Pisz 2014, p. 70). One might assume that a different system of authority is required for each of the activities. Matters of commitment and motivation for the project organizations may also change over a project’s lifetime, with the various hurdles that are faced by the members of the project in the course of the project providing possible explanations and facilitating knowledge increase on the project organization’s behavioural dimensions. The traditional project management research has not paid enough attention to the performance and the actual work of the project management unit and the project manager. As such, to promote efficiency in future project management, there is need for more in-depth studies to be conducted on the function, role and style of the project management unit (Kidd 2009, p. 49). Also, such studies should also be conducted on the role of the project managers. It is important to note that project management research is vital not only to the development of an understanding of projects, but also to the general purpose of improving the understanding of the function of management within organizations. In-depth research would allow researchers to understand both the behaviour of the managers and the organizations in the course of projects and hence, predict changes in such behaviour on exposure to different contexts and conditions, an aspect that could enhance project management approaches in future (Morris 2010, p. 142). It is salient for research to be inclusive of not only the generic aspects but also consider the points of differences between the projects as this would allow for an understanding of the factors that make projects different and the measures that can be put in place to ensure that such projects are well handled through manipulation of such factors. Conclusion It is evident that the issue of project management is one that has received much yet shallow research in the recent past. Most of the researchers fail to acknowledge the differences between the researches and hence embrace generic theories that only address the general concepts of project management while leaving the specifics that make each project unique unattended. It is important for researchers to ensure that they clearly understand the basis of projects in order to probe the subject and reveal information that could be far-reaching and dense enough to change the course of project management and organization in the future. This paper has insisted on the importance of viewing projects as organizations and studying how they behave and differ. This is important in view of establishing a knowledge base, based on which theories could be established to guide future project management approaches. References Söd12: , (Söderlund & Geraldi, 2012, p. 574), Read More