This article develops a framework for applying organizational narrative theory to understand project narratives that potentially perform and change the future. Project narratives are temporal but ...often get repeated throughout the project life cycle to stabilize meaning, and could be about project mission, vision, identity, value creation, and so forth. Project narratives have important implications for organizational identity and image crafting. This article differentiates among different types of project narratives in relation to a project life cycle, providing case studies of project narratives on three major UK rail projects. We then set out the future research agenda into project narrative work.
Agile practices present one approach for firms to adapt to an increasingly dynamic and competitive environment. Although prior studies have investigated performance outcomes of agile projects, agile ...practices' consequences on a project team's collaborative processes have not yet been thoroughly analyzed. It also remains unclear whether practices on a higher organizational level, such as project portfolio management (PPM), support or constrain agile practices' benefits, especially if a firm simultaneously conducts traditionally managed and agile projects. Therefore, this article investigates the role of agile practices for a project's teamwork quality (TWQ) and project success and examines the influence of organizational contingencies. Specifically, we conceptually and empirically analyze the moderating impact of PPM practices on the relationship between agile practices, TWQ, and project success. A multi-informant analysis of 378 projects nested in 100 portfolios shows that agile practices positively relate to project success through TWQ. We find that traditional PPM practices such as business case existence, strategic clarity, and operational control constrain this relationship. Our article contributes to the literature on project teams and portfolio management by providing empirical insights on the interaction between project and portfolio management practices.
Temporary organizing is introduced as process, form and perspective. Then key challenges and opportunities in the study of temporary organizing are discussed, including methodological issues, how to ...theorize time, and how to relate the temporary to the more permanent. This introductory article concludes with an overview of the special issue.
As diverse as software project stakeholders are, so are their project needs and interests. Furthermore, the criteria to measure project success are based on the stakeholder groups’ various needs. It ...is on the basis of these diverse measurement criteria that project success has become an elusive moving target. Despite this, the measurement and achievement of project success remains a critical milestone in project management for the satisfaction of stakeholders, including software project teams (SPTs). Several research studies have reported project success or failure from various stakeholders’ perspective. However, recent studies have projected SPTs as the most neglected key stakeholder group by software project managers and researchers in the project management field. Given this backdrop, conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) research study to determine if there are empirical studies that have evaluated software project success from SPTs’ perspective would be of interest to many in the field. According to the study's authors there is no study that has been conducted to determine this. The study found one (1) paper, which evaluated a project based on the SPTs’ success criteria, thus showing a research gap and indicating the neglect of this group of stakeholders when it comes to establishing whether software projects meet their needs or not. This study recommends that empirical studies be conducted to close this research gap.
The maturation of the project management discipline, coupled with collapsing project budgets, shortening of project deadlines and the increasing risk of costly project failure, has led industries and ...academia alike to investigate and identify sources of project success. This research focuses on investigating the human characteristics necessary to achieve such success, through identifying and rating preferred IT project management competencies across US industries. This 2-phased study first sampled IT recruiters nationwide to determine which characteristics were valued in the hiring of project managers. The resulting Hiring Criteria Index, a list of 15 of the most valued project management competencies, was then sent to IT executives nationwide, whereby they were asked to rank their preferences in terms of importance, on a 7 point Likert Scale. Results indicated that respondents were able to clearly identify six critical core competences: leadership, the ability to communicate at multiple levels, verbal and written skills, attitude and the ability to deal with ambiguity and change that were indicative of characteristics important to successful project management.
The project manager core competencies to project success Alvarenga, Jeferson Carvalho; Branco, Robson Rosa; Guedes, André Luis Azevedo ...
International journal of managing projects in business,
03/2020, Volume:
13, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Purpose
The past few decades have produced a number of investigations into the correlation between project managers’ competencies and project success. As a result, competencies lists have become ...extensive “shopping lists.” The purpose of this paper is to define the most important competencies to project success and investigate their correlations.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors surveyed project managers on the importance of 28 project manager competencies to project success. Data were analyzed using univariate and multivariate procedures.
Findings
Data show that communication, commitment and leadership appear as the three most relevant aspects. Multivariate analysis identified seven groups of competencies: leadership, self-management, interpersonal, communication, technical, productivity and managerial.
Practical implications
The results confirm a growing trend toward soft skills and reinforce the need for an update on project management education to fill the gap between theory and practice.
Originality/value
Project manager competencies lists have become too extensive, and the field is in constant change; therefore, this study updates the discussion and downsizes the number of competencies to fewer, more relevant items.
Collaboration and teamwork represent a unique form of human activity that involves interdependence and shared responsibility in achieving goals and completing tasks, as well as the ability to ...complete tasks efficiently and communicate effectively. Nowadays, the ability to collaborate in a team is one of the most desired social competences. This publication presents selected problems in the field of project team management. The paper deals with the selection of a project team, including a project manager based on the adopted profile of requirements and competences with the example of an international project. The publication is based on selected literature on the subject, a review of secondary research results, and the results of the author's research on the traits, skills, and competences that should characterize a project manager and project team members.
This study aims to conceptualize NPD (New Product Development) project uncertainty and investigate how the project uncertainty influences project performance through collaboration and opportunism. An ...empirical examination is conducted to test such relationships within the scope of Korean manufacturing firms, which are currently engaging in NPD projects with their key partner. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is performed to prove proposed hypotheses. The empirical findings suggested that higher level of project uncertainty leads to collaboration and opportunism and that these two factors come into play in project performance in an opposing way: collaboration serves as a driver of project performance whereas opportunism acts as a barrier against it.
•NPD project uncertainty is operationalized with three sources.•NPD project uncertainty facilitates collaboration and leads to the occurrence of a partnering firm's opportunism.•Concerning project performance, collaboration serves as a facilitator while opportunism serves as an inhibitor.
Open innovation has become a mainstream phenomenon in the current business landscape. However, despite the fact that innovation projects generally have different attributes (e.g., complexity and ...uncertainty), most studies on open innovation have only considered firm-level characteristics (e.g., firm size and firm openness) to determine how to manage open innovation successfully. Project-level studies on open innovation management are still scant-There are only a few conceptual and qualitative articles on the topic, and there is a lack of quantitative insights. Based on a survey designed to collect detailed data from 201 innovation projects undertaken by American firms, this article provides a quantitative cross-project analysis of how two, key innovation project attributes (i.e., complexity and uncertainty) are related to five factors for successful open innovation management: 1) openness level, 2) external partner choice, 3) open innovation mechanism choice, 4) collaboration process formalization, and 5) internal firm practices. This exploratory study contributes to the open innovation literature by highlighting the importance of microfoundations (i.e., innovation project attributes) in successful open innovation management. This article concludes by suggesting a number of relevant project-level future research opportunities in the field of open innovation management, and some methodological recommendations on how to address such opportunities.
This paper presents the results of a structured review of the rethinking project management (RPM) literature based on the classification and analysis of 74 contributions and in addition takes a ...critical look at this brave new world. Through the analysis, a total of 6 overarching categories emerged: contextualization, social and political aspects, rethinking practice, complexity and uncertainty, actuality of projects and broader conceptualization. These categories cover a broad range of different contributions with diverse and alternative perspectives on project management. The early RPM literature dates back to the 1980s, while the majority was published in 2006 onwards, and the research stream appears to be still active. A critical look at this brave new world exhibits the overall challenge for RPM to become much more diffused and accepted.
•We have reviewed and categorized the Rethinking Project Management (RPM) literature•Categories are contextualization, social & political aspects, rethinking practice•...complexity & uncertainty, actuality of projects, and broader conceptualization•RPM literature dates back to the 1980s, but majority was published in 2006 onwards•The overall challenge for RPM is to become much more diffused and accepted
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