Developments in Program and Project Management
The project management abilities of an organization are rapidly becoming one of its most important competitive differentiators, and crucial for the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of its operations. Many organizations are now placing greater emphasis on project management as a core organizational activity and in turn demanding greater accountability of this function and evidence of the benefits and values it generates.
Conventional approaches to project management, which focused on delivering projects against, time, cost and scope parameters, are inadequate in this new context. High performing organizations are aligning their project management with business strategy, implementing Project Management Offices to facilitate this, and using program and portfolio management to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their project management activity. But the research evidence indicates that there is a big gap between expectations of the project management function and the reality in many organizations, and that continuing high rates of project failure are having significant negative impacts on firms.
A substantial body of research evidence indicates that a high proportion of project failures are due to people-related factors rather than any shortcoming in the application of project planning and implementation tools and techniques. Schroeder & Schroeder’s Art and Science of Transformation? framework recognizes the importance of combining best practice standards, methods, tools and techniques (the science) with the more intangible skills and attributes that are essential for understanding the business- and people-related aspects of project management (the art). It is also a holistic and systematic approach, which recognizes and addresses the inter-relationships between the organization’s people, culture, systems and processes and the need to address all these factors in order to improve project management performance. Overall, getting the right balance of art and science is critical in achieving project management maturity in any organizational context.
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