Archive for August, 2008

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The impact of Puritan ideology on aspects of project management (Whitty & Schulz, 2007)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Puritan Ideology and Project Management

Whitty, Stephen Jonathan; Schulz, Mark Frederick: The impact of Puritan ideology on aspects of project management; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 25 (2007), pp. 10–20.

This paper roots today’s prevalent ethics in Western project management to classical Puritanism. [Max Weber anyone?] Whitty & Schulz see the doctrinal supremacy, work ethic, and depravity of puritanism as a direct predecessor of today’s project management. They argue that the Purtianism descendants of Liberalism, Newtonianism, and Taylorism are another major influence.

The authors conclude with the remark: „Through no fault of their own, scholars and practitioners like are being driven by powerful memes that not only rive their behaviour but create the very fabric of their society. We owe it to ourselves to break free of the tyranny of these Puritan memes. But first, we must acknowledge that our past and present actions have been determined by them.“ (p. 18).

Posted in Culture, Ethics | 3 Comments »

From Nobel Prize to Project Management – Getting Risks Right (Flyvbjerg, 2006)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Reference Class Forecasting

Flyvbjerg, Bent: From Nobel Prize to Project Management – Getting Risks Right; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 37 (2006), No. 3, pp. 5-15.

I was asked by some colleagues at work to look into reference class forecasting. Along with similarity based forecasting (which I know mostly form the work of Dan Lovallo) both techniques try to eliminate the various heuristics and biases projections of future values usually fall prey to, both methods try to bring an outside perspective into the forecast either by anchoring (similarity based) or by regression towards the mean (reference class).

Flyvbjerg proposes a 3-step approach. (1) Identify a relevant reference class of past, similar projects, (2) establish a probability distribution of the optimism bias for that class, and (3) compare the forecast at hand to the reference class.

The optimism bias is operationalised by populating the density function of historical cost overruns vs. initial budget. This function serves two purposes – framing the forecast with as much un-biased information as possible, and regressing the forecast to the mean. In order to do so, the author recommends to add an uplift to the estimate. The uplift is dependent on the risk the owner is willing to take and can be found by looking up the expected budget overrun for the percentile which corresponds to the risk/confidence level.

In this article Flyvbjerg shows his data on cost overrun distribution on Fixed Link, Roads and Rail projects. He also outlines the required uplifts and discusses first applications of this method.

[I tried to model the distribution for IT Software Development Projects, based on the only publicly available data I could find – the Standish Group’s Chaos Report. Although the data can be seen as flawed (see Jørgensen & Moløkken review of their first report), I modelled the density function anyway and derived the wonderful S-Curve y = e 0.0625–0.38689/x (with R²=99.8%). Following the method outlined in Flyvbjerg’s article the required uplift would be Uplift = 0.387/(0.063-ln(confidence level)), e.g., for 80% confidence the uplift needs to be 135.25% and for 50% confidence the uplift would be 51.18%.]

Posted in Reference Class Forecasting | No Comments »

Understanding the Value of Project Management: First Steps on an International Investigation in Search of Value (Thomas & Mullaly, 2008)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Value of Project Management

Thomas, Janice; Mullaly, Mark: Understanding the Value of Project Management – First Steps on an International Investigation in Search of Value; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 38 (2008), No. 3, pp. 74–89.

Thomas & Mullaly outline a conceptual model for investigating the value project management brings to an organisation. Their conceptual model assumes that three antecedents of value exist – (1) process criteria, (2) outcome criteria, and (3) fit of project management constructs with organisational context.

Furthermore they propose a 5 step evaluation of the value project management brings to the organisation in question

  1. Satisfaction – Is top management happy with project management?
  2. Aligned use of practices – Has project management implemented the processes it planned to do?
  3. Process outcomes – What process improvements have been achieved?
  4. Business outcomes – How did project management implementation impact business outcomes, e.g., customer satisfaction and retention, decreased time-to-market.
  5. ROI

[I am not sure about no. 2. This is quite a marketing/HR argument: ‚We can’t tell you if we achieved something, but we did, what we promised to do and we stayed in budget!‘. Still  I think that a better framework for the value created by project management is a value-oriented management approach.]

Posted in Value | 1 Comment »

Motivation in Project Management – The Project Manager’s Perspective (Schmid & Adams, 2008)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

Team Motivation on Projects - a Project Manager’s View

Schmid, Bernhard; Adams, Jonathan: Motivation in Project Management – The Project Manager’s Perspective; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 2, pp. 60–71.

What can a project manager do for the motivation of the project team? ‚A lot‘, say Schmid & Adams in this article. Among the powerful tools a project manager has are optimising energy, autonomy, feedback, and rewards & recognition. The authors find further that the most common factors lowering team motivation are the lack of top management support, personal conflicts on the team, and increases of the project scope. Schmid & Adams relate these factors to the project managers communication skills and thus to his/her ability to create a sub-culture under the organisational arch right from the beginning.

What should a project manager do to create intrinsic motivation? The authors conclude that the project manager should do three things – (1) involve the team early on, (2) understand the individual team members, and (3) motivate the team in the first stage of the project.

Posted in Motivation | No Comments »

An Empirical Assessment of IT Project Selection and Evaluation Methods in State Government (Rosacker & Olson, 2008)

Mittwoch, August 13th, 2008

IT Project Selection Tools

Rosacker, Kirsten M.; Olson, David L.: An Empirical Assessment of IT Project Selection and Evaluation Methods in State Government; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 1, pp. 49–58.

Do project selection tools have an impact on project success? In order to answer this question Rosacker & Olson look into the usage of different quantitative and qualitative selection tools. As second step they try to link the tools to different success criteria.
Within their sample of 144 public IT projects (all in different U.S. states) the authors can only show limited correlations, using the F-Value [I don’t know about the distribution of the success variables, but if it isn’t normally distributed, the F-Test might have been to conservative and some effects which exist in real life, a classical example for the Type-2 Error or β-error].

  • NPV/IIR selected projects perform better in cost adherence
  • Projects selected based on ‚probability of completion‘ have a better overall performance
  • Projects selected due to ‚mandatory requirements‘ have a better overall performance
  • Projects selected with ’subjective assessment‘ perform better on their impact but perform weaker

Posted in Project Selection | 1 Comment »

Flexibility at Different Stages in the Life Cycle of Projects: An Empirical Illustration of the “Freedom o Maneuver“ (Olsson & Magnussen, 2007)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

Flexibility and Funding in Projects

Olsson, Nils O. E.; Magnussen, Ole M.: Flexibility at Different Stages in the Life Cycle of Projects: An Empirical Illustration of the “Freedom o Maneuver“; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 38 (2007), No. 4, pp. 25-32.

The conceptual model, that uncertainty and degrees of freedom decrease during the life cycle of a project whilst the actual costs increase, is nothing new. New is the empirical proof. Olsson & Magnussen are the first to measure the degrees of freedom. They use the governmentally required reduction lists as a measure for the degrees of freedom in public projects.

Moreover they recommend a funding system which gives the project manager control over the basic budget and the expected additional costs (e.g. the value of the risk register). On top of this funding go the reserves or contingencies, which typically are about 8% of the total budget and which are managed by the agencies. Then comes the reduction list, which usually is 5.9% of the budget in the beginning of the project and reduces to 0.8% at half time. The authors argue that such a funding system has 85% probability of being kept.

Posted in Decision Making, PPP | No Comments »

Best Project Management and Systems Engineering Practices in the Preacquisition Phase for Federal Intelligence and Defense Agencies (Meier, 2008)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

 Best Project Management and SE Practices

Meier, Steven R.: Best Project Management and Systems Engineering Practices in the Preacquisition Phase for Federal Intelligence and Defense Agencies; in Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 1, pp. 59-71.

Scope Creep! Uncontrolled growth in programs, especially public acquisitions is nothing new. [I highly suspect that we only look down on public projects because private companies are much better in hiding their failures.] Meier analyses the root causes for scope creep in intelligence and defense projects and proposes counter actions to be taken.

The root causes for creeping scope are

  • overzealous advocacy
  • immature technology
  • lack of corporate technology road maps
  • requirements instability
  • ineffective acquisition strategies, i.e. no incentives to stick to the budget
  • unrealistic baselines and a high reliance on contractor baselines
  • inadequate systems engineering, e.g. no concept of operations, system requirements document, statement of work, request for proposal, contact data requirements list
  • workforce issues, e.g. high staff turnover, no PMO

Meier’s remedies for this predicament are quite obvious. Have a devil’s inquisitor or a third party review to get rid of the optimism bias. Wait until technology maturity is achieved or factor in higher contingencies. Set investment priorities. Put incentives into the contracts. Estimate own costs prior to RfP. Follow systems engineering standards, e.g. INCOSE’s. Manage your workforce.

Posted in Critical Success Factors, Megaprojects, PPP, Success Criteria | 1 Comment »

Public-Private Partnership – Elements for a Project-Based Management Typology (Mazouz et al., 2008)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

 PPP Typology

Mazouz, Bachir; Facal, Joseph; Viola, Jean-Michel: Public-Private Partnership – Elements for a Project-Based Management Typology; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 2, pp. 98-110.

In this article Mazouz et al. develop a typology for public-private-partnerships. They span a matrix along the two dimensions of proximity of target and capacity to generate projects. The proximity „refers to the position of the public organisation in relation to its target clientèle“.

  1. Situational Partnership (close distant, high capacity)
  2. Symbiotic Partnership (close distant, low capacity)
  3. Elementary Partnership (high distance, high capacity)
  4. Forward-looking Partnership (high distance, low capacity)

As the authors further point out a forward-looking partnership is most difficult to manage. This type is characterized by the public company being far away from my usual client base and a low capacity to generate future projects out of this PPP.
To manage these challenges Mazouz et al. recommend two distinct types of PPPs – contractual and relational PPP. A contractual PPP is best suited for well defined, measurable projects, based on management systems; whereas a relational PPP is best when tasks are continuously re-defined, the outcome is ambiguous, and the project is based on individuals.

Posted in Megaprojects, PPP | 1 Comment »

Motivation: How to Increase Project Team Performance (Peterson, 2007)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

Motivational mistakes and how to overcome them

Peterson, Tonya M.: Motivation – How to Increase Project Team Performance; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 38 (2007), No. 4, pp. 60-69.

Peterson explores the big DON’Ts of team motivation. Motivation she argues is best explained by five theories (1) Theory X, (2) Theory Y, (3) Herzberg’s KITA, (4) McClelland’s need for achievement, and (5) MBTI. Peterson then continues to outline the 8 DON’Ts of team motivation and what can be done to correct them

  • Whatever motivates me, will motivate others
  • People are primarily motivated by money
  • Team members love to receive formal awards
  • Give them a rally slogan
  • The best leader is a strong cheerleader
  • These people are professionals, they don’t need motivation
  • I’ll motivate them when there is a problem
  • I’ll treat everyone the same – people like that and it will motivate them

The remedies to all these points boil down to a couple of points

  • Do not withdraw from the team, involve yourself, guide, support the team
  • Acknowledge that people are different (from you and each other)
  • Leadership is about mentoring and individual problem solving

Posted in Motivation | 1 Comment »

Information Systems Project Management Decision Making – The Influence of Experience and Risk Propensity (Huff & Prybutok, 2008)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

Decision Making on IS Projects

Huff, Richard A.; Prybutok, Victor R.: Information Systems Project Management Decision Making – The Influence of Experience and Risk Propensity; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 2, pp. 34-47.

Huff & Prybutok analyse the antecedents of decision making of project managers in IT projects. Their hypothesis includes that knowledge and risk behaviour have an impact on decision-making. In both cases that can be empirically proven. Although knowledge is mostly driven by project management experience, whereas work experience has no influence on making decisions. The risk behaviour can be explained by the risk propensity, which are the „perceived psychological/emotional costs of the decision“.
In short this means continuation decisions (which were the subject of this research) are influenced by the managers project management experience and by his/her risk propensity.

Posted in Decision Making, IT Project | No Comments »

Formulation of Financial Valuation Methodologies for NASA’s Human Spaceflight Program (Hawes & Duffey, 2008)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

Real Option Modelling of Projects

Hawes, W. Michael; Duffey, Michael R.: Formulation of Financial Valuation Methodologies for NASA’s Human Spaceflight Program; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 1, pp. 85-94.

In this article Hawes & Duffey explore real option analysis as a financial management tool to evaluate projects. The basic idea behind that is management can make go/no-go decisions thus eliminating the downside variability of the value of the project. In short you can always kill a project gone bad of course with sinking some costs.
[Some might call again for Occam’s razor and argue that it is sufficient to model this into the cash flow, because for the option price you need a cash flow anyway. But the authors ]

To put the classical Black-Scholes formula to use the authors look for equivalents to the input variables. More specifically they analyse NASA’s space flight program and valuated projects in respect to their go/no-go decision after the conceptual design. The authors used as input variables

  • NPV of project cash flow = Asset-value (S)
  • Actual one-time development costs = Exercise cost of the option (X)
  • Time until go/no-go decision = Expiry time of the option (T)
  • 5% treasury bill rate of return = Risk-free rate of return (R(f))
  • Historical data on initial budget estimate vs. actual development costs = Distribution of underlying (σ²)

Hawes & Duffey then compare the Black-Scholes pricing to the NPV and find that projects with higher volatility and longer time until decisions are higher priced than short-term decisions with less volatility (i.e. history of cost overruns).

I do find the managerial implications quite counter-intuitive. I modelled some Black-Scholes pricing for a real life project I worked on. My project had a NPV of 48 Mio. EUR but only an option price of 17 Mio EUR since the company had a history of cost overruns and a lot of front-loaded costs, in fact 70% of total expenditures would be spend before the go/no-go decision.
That is all very well and I can clearly see how that improves the decision making, but if I look into the sensitivity analysis the longer the time to decision and the higher the volatility the higher is my option’s price. This is where I do not fully understand the managerial implication. Given that a similar judgement rule to a decision based on NPV comparison, I would favour a project where I decide later and I would favour projects from a department with higher variability in costs, because this gives me a higher degree of flexibility and higher variability can yield a higher gain. Surely not!?!?

Posted in Portfolio Management, Tools, Value | 4 Comments »

Can Project Management Learn Anything from Studies of Failure in Complex Systems? (Ivory & Alderman, 2005)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

Complex Systems and Local Interventionism

Ivory, Chris; Alderman, Neil: Can Project Management Learn Anything from Studies of Failure in Complex Systems?; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 36 (2005), No. 3, pp. 5-16.

This article is similar to the Cooke-Davis et al. from 2007. In this article Ivory & Alderman describe complex systems as being tightly coupled thus showing high degrees of interdependencies and creating complex interactions. The authors show that projects as Complex Systems have five distinctive characteristics

  1. Non-linear interactions – surprising/unexpected outputs, non-equilibrium states, tipped by small events
  2. Emergence – multiple causes for failures, sub-systems prevent system melt-down, unpredictability of failures
  3. Conflicting objectives – sub-systems with different and conflicting goals, dominance of trade-off decisions, short-term orientation
  4. Overly centralized management – more than one centre exist, tighter control does not solve problems
  5. Multi-Nodality – open-textured and multi-nodal technologies are managed uniformly despite their dispersed (and often not understood) contexts

To counter-act the shortcomings of classical project management which relies on tight control and standardised processes & policies, Ivory & Alderman recommend what they call „Interventionism“. Interventionism or interventions on the ground is the „flexibility to usurp the chain of command in favour for technical expertise in times of stress“. Especially slack engineered into plans and processes allows local ‚cells‘ to deal with dysfunctions of the central control authority.
If that slack is not used for these corrections it usually is used for self-improvement and learning. In order to make such a system work the authors recommend implementing local empowerment to fix errors and centrally embed processes for organisational learning from mistakes.

Furthermore Ivory & Alderman’s case study is set in an high reliability organisations, which has only few resource constraints, shows a procedure-driven top down management, learns from mistakes, and embraces a safety culture. In their case study complexity arises not from technology but from goal confusion among different customers and is further increased by inexperienced contractors. The project decomposed the final product so it could be build in mixed teams. This multi-nodality showed some major shortcomings, e.g., bad news were withheld, integration problems are created, management of change requests becomes more resource consuming.

In this setting the authors found Interventionism most helpful. They observed how vendor-client task forces were established as autonomous cells. These cells worked in advance of official decisions in order not to delay the plan due to central decision backlogs. They saw increased communication among leaders of cells. Furthermore they found most effective if the project sponsor forces the project to abandon it’s natural short-term view by carrying the concerns of operations and fulfilment of business needs.

Posted in Complexity | 1 Comment »

Project Management Practice, Generic or Contextual – Reality Check (Besner & Hobbs, 2008)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

Tool usage in different types of projects

Besner, Claude; Hobbs, Brian: Project Management Practice, Generic or Contextual – Reality Check; in: Project Management Journal, Vol. 39 (2008), No. 1, pp. 16-33.

Besner & Hobbs investigate the use of project management tools. In a broad survey among 750 practitioners, they try to find patterns when different tools are applied to manage a project. They authors show that tool usage depends on the factors

  • Organisational maturity level of project management
  • Project similarity and familiarity
  • Level of uncertainty in project definition
  • Internal customer vs. external customer
  • Project size and duration
  • Product type

Among these factors the last one is the most interesting. Besner & Hobbs grouped their sample into three legs according to product type a) engineering & construction, b) IT, and c) business services.
So where do IT projects fall short compared to their counterparts in Engineering and Construction?
One area is the vendor management (bidding documents, conferences, evaluations) which is a strong point in E&C but a weak one in IT. Another area is the cost planning (financial measurements, cost data bases, top-down/bottom-up estimation, software for estimating costs) and in execution IT projects show lesser usage of Earned Value Techniques and Value Analysis.
[Fair enough – I do think – the intangibility of IT projects makes it difficult to apply these concepts unbiased and meaningfully].

Posted in Actuality Research, IT Project, Megaprojects, Methodology, Tools | 2 Comments »

Nine Schools of Project Management (Bredillet, 2007-2008)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

 9 Schools of Project Management

In his series of editorials for the Journal of Project Management Bredillet outlines 9 different schools of project management thinking and when they were created. He also identifies research questions for each of them.

  1. Optimisation School (1950)
    Earned Value Management
  2. Modelling School (1960)
    Integrating hard-soft systems
  3. Governance School (1970)
    PMOs, portfolio management, project selection, regulatory compliance
  4. Behaviour School (1975)
    Virtual teams, HR management in project-oriented companies
  5. Success School (1985)
    Refinement of success criteria, stakeholder satisfaction, causes of failure
  6. Decision School (1990)
    Anchoring estimates, organisation strategy & impact on portfolio, portfolio management decisions
  7. Process School (1980)
    Project categorisation, refinement of processes, project audits & reviews, maturity models
  8. Contingency School (1995)
    Clarify differences in approaches, methods of adaptation, link to success criteria
  9. Marketing School (2000)
    Strategy/tactics for business success, linking projects and strategy, align senior level thinking to projects, CRM and PR on projects

Posted in Research, Theory | No Comments »

Judgment under Uncertainty – Heuristics and Biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1974)

Dienstag, August 12th, 2008

Judgment Heuristics and Biases

Tversky, Amos; Kahneman, Daniel: Judgment under Uncertainty – Heuristics and Biases; in: Science, Vol. 185 (1974), No. 4157, pp. 1124 – 1131.
DOI: 10.1126/science.185.4157.1124

Biases have evolved to lower our energy needed to make decisions, so they do have quite a natural place in our ape-sized world. Last time I checked wikipedia lists 100 biases, heuristics, and memory errors. Kahneman & Tversky published the first theorization in this article [also published as a part of this book].

Starting with the now classical example of the Gambler’s fallacy the authors explore three judgment heuristics commonly found in science and economic decision making (1) Adjustment & Anchoring, (2) Representativeness, and (3) Availability.

Anchoring & Adjustment (Decisions often rely on a single piece of information) – Kahneman & Tversky show that persons usually guess probabilities more accurately if they have been presented with an anchor. They show that students do overestimate their success when asked at the beginning of a term. This overestimation is slightly corrected if they were given or asked for an anchor, such as ‚what do you think was the grade distribution of your fellow students last term?‘.

Representativeness (Commonality is assumed for similar events or objects) – The authors describe several misconceptions of chance and insensitivities to prior probabilities, sample sizes, and predictability. They also describe the illusion of validity, but the the misconception of regression is the most important of these biases. It is also the reason why we have control groups in double-blind experimental studies.
Regression towards the mean means that in any given random process every sub-group will produce the same distribution [give or take effects of the sample size]. For example, assume that a group has been split into quartiles according to the results after the first run of the random process. The repetition of this process will automatically produce the same distribution in each sub-group, thus the bottom quartile will be better and the top quartile will perform much worse without any effect of a stimuli which has been applied.

Availability (Expected probabilities influenced by the ease of brining examples to mind) – In their classical example for the retrievability bias subjects have been asked to estimate the proportion of words in the English language that start with R or K and the proportion of words that have R or K as a third letter. This bias leads people to underestimate the number of words with R or K as a third letter.

Posted in Decision Making, Game Theory, Theory | 6 Comments »

Large-scale projects, self-organizing and meta-rules: towards new forms of management (Jolivet & Navarre, 1996)

Montag, August 11th, 2008

New Approach to Manage Large-Scale Projects

Jolivet, F.; Navarre, C.: Large-scale projects, self-organizing and meta-rules: towards new forms of management; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 14 (1996), No. 5, pp. 265-271.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0263-7863(96)84509-1

This is one of the few articles dealing with the specifics of large-scale projects. Jolivet & Navarre argue that the traditional approach of pyramidal organisation, centralised control, standardisation of procedures, and reactive management are not suited to successfully execute a large-scale project.

Instead the authors recommend a new approach of autonomy, subsidiarity, and cellular division which is characterized by

  • Maximal individualisation
  • Differentiation of management styles and use of central meta-rules
  • Use of autonomous, self-organising teams
  • Central performance audits

They argue that large scale projects can regain speed if decision power is shifted to people on the ground and is not centrally bundled which creates a bottleneck around the central management team.  All  (sub)-projects in their case study are conducted along a specific and limited set of 12 principles which are all correlated with project success. In all other areas small scale teams have full decisional autonomy.

Posted in Complexity, Megaprojects, Program Management, Temporary organisation | 2 Comments »

Interpreting an ERP-implementation Project from a Stakeholder Perspective (Boonstra, 2006)

Montag, August 11th, 2008

Stakeholder Salience Theory an Types of Stakeholders

Boonstra, Albert: Interpreting an ERP-implementation project from a stakeholder perspective; in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 24 (2006), No. 1, pp. 38-52.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2005.06.003

Boonstra analyses a case study from the stakeholders perspective using Stakeholder Salience Theory (Mitchell, Agle, Wood 1997). Stakeholder Salience Theory states that the prominence of a stakeholder (salience) is directly related to the cumulative attributes of power, legitimacy, and urgency.

Power (= exercise will against resistance) is explained with resource dependence theory, agency theory, and transaction cost theory. Resource dependence theory shows that managerial attentions is required if the project is depends on a critical resource owned by a stakeholder. Further managerial attention is required if opportunism can potentially occur in that relationship, as explained by agency and transaction cost theory.

Legitimacy (= compliance of activities and outputs with existing norms, beliefs, values is explained by population ecology and institutional theory. Population ecology states that projects not fulfilling stakeholders needs struggle to survive; whilst institutional theory observes that survival depends on legitimacy acquired from conformance or isomorphism. Thus legitimate stakeholders require managerial attention.

Urgency (= degree of need for immediate attention) is a general concept in several organisation theories but explicitly discussed in issue management and crisis management literature. Urgency has two distinctive attributes time sensitivity and criticality of the claim. Urgent stakeholders require managerial attention.

From Neville, Benjamin A.; Menguc, Bulent; Bell, Simon J.: Stakeholder Salience Reloaded – Operationalising Corporate Social Responsibility, in: ANZMAC 2003 Conference Proceedings, Adelaide 1-3, December 2003, pp. 1883-1889.

Based on these 3 attributes Boonstra identifies 8 types of stakeholders.
„1. Dormant stakeholders possess the power to impose their will on a firm but, by not having a legitimate relationship or an urgent claim, their power remains unused.
2. Discretionary stakeholders possess legitimacy, but have no power for influencing the firm and no urgent claims. There is no pressure to engage in a relationship with a stakeholder.
3. Demanding stakeholders exist where the sole stakeholder relationship attribute is urgency: those with urgent claims, but having neither legitimacy nor power.
4. Dominant stakeholders are both powerful and legitimate. Their influence in the relationship is assured, since by possessing power and legitimacy they form the dominant coalition.
5. Dependent stakeholders are characterised by a lack of power, but have urgent and legitimate claims. These stakeholders depend on others to carry out their will. Power in this relationship is not reciprocal and is advocated through the values of others.
6. Dangerous stakeholders possess urgency and power but not legitimacy and may be coercive or dangerous. The use of coercive power often accompanies illegitimate status.
7. Definitive stakeholders possess power legitimacy and urgency. Any stakeholder can become ‘definitive’ by acquiring the missing attributes.
8. Non-stakeholders possess none o f the attributes and, thus, do not have any type of relationship with the group, organisation or project.“ (Boonstra 2006, pp. 40-41).

Boonstra then identifies the different stakeholders on the project, when they were evolved, which events triggered their involvement, and which meaning they gave the ERP system. The author shows that different stakeholders have different meanings, attitudes, and views, which dynamically change over time and which are not always disclosed. [Similar to the concept of technological frames described in this article.] Furthermore Boonstra underlined the importance of power as a major attribute for stakeholder salience. He also showed that Dominant Stakeholders can become Dormant Stakeholders, which activates other stakeholders to fill in that power gap.
For future research they briefly discuss two possible directions (1) linking stakeholder analysis to success/failure of projects and (2) exploring the role of the project manager.

Posted in Stakeholder Management | 2 Comments »

Leadership Behaviours in Matrix Environments (Wellman, 2007)

Montag, August 11th, 2008

 Senior Leadership in Matrix Organisations

Wellman, Jerry: Leadership Behaviours in Matrix Environments; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 38 (2007), No. 2, pp. 62-74.

Wellman uses Grounded Theory to analyse his case study. Grounded theory is an „inductive method to understand the perspective of actors relevant practices“. Thus it combines the world of the structural researchers with the systems researcher’s world. Wellman applied a five step research process

  • Collecting (1) Interviews, and (2) Organisational Artefacts
  • Identifying (3) recurrent themes and concepts which are validated against empirical data
  • Follow-up (4) interviews to test conclusions
  • Construction of (5) meta-concepts and their relationships

Wellman investigates the senior management role in matrix organisations. He shows that Empowerment, Support, Decision-Making, Flexibility, and Communications are critical success factors for projects in matrix organisations. Moreover he identifies culture and competence as two basic requirements.

Posted in Grounded Theory, Research | 1 Comment »

Effective Project Sponsorship – An Evaluation of the Role of the Executive Sponsor in Complex Infrastructure Projects by Senior Managers (Helm & Remington, 2005)

Montag, August 11th, 2008

Success Factors for Project Sponsors

Helm, Jane; Remingtone, Kayne: Effective Project Sponsorship – An Evaluation of the Role of the Executive Sponsor in Complex Infrastructure Projects by Senior Managers; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 36 (2005), No. 3, pp. 51-61.

Helm & Remington used a Grounded Theory approach to explore the role of Project Sponsors in semi-structured in-depth interviews. They identified 9 success factors:

  1. Seniority
  2. Political knowledge & savvy
  3. Connect project and organisation
  4. Battle for the project
  5. Motivate team
  6. Partner with project team
  7. Communication skills
  8. Compatibility with project team
  9. Provide objectivity and challenge project

Posted in Actuality Research, Sponsor, Success Criteria | 1 Comment »

A Staged Framework for the Recovery and Rehabilitation of Troubled IS Development Projects (Aiyer et al. 2005)

Montag, August 11th, 2008

Project Recovery Framework

Aiyer, Jagu; Rajkumar, T.M.; Havelka, Douglas: A Staged Framework for the Recovery and Rehabilitation of Troubled IS Development Projects; in: Journal of Project Management, Vol. 36 (2005), No. 4, pp. 32-43.

In this paper Aiyer et al. propose a 4 step framework to lead ailing projects out of their misery and bring them back on track. The 4 phases are

  1. Recognition
  2. Immediate Recovery
  3. Sustained Recovery
  4. Maturity

The process of project recovery starts with recognition of the problem and that help is needed. The second step identifies symptoms and stops the bleeding. Before the third step analyses the issues in-depth, creates new project plans, WBSes, and seeks approval. The final step then gathers the lessons learned from the intervention and disseminates these into the organisation.

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