Archive for September 30th, 2008

Project management standards – Diffusion and application in Germany and Switzerland (Ahlemann et al., in press)

Dienstag, September 30th, 2008

 roject management standards – Diffusion and application in Germany and SwitzerlandAhlemann, Frederik; Teuteberg, Frank; Vogelsang, Kristin: Project management standards – Diffusion and application in Germany and Switzerland; in: International Journal of Project Management, Article in Press, Corrected Proof.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2008.01.009Update: This article has been published in: International Journal of Project Management, Vol. 27 (2009), No. 3, pp. 292–303. This article discusses the use of standards and reasons behind that in detail. Instead of going in to these details I want to quickly focus on the more interesting aspects of this article, with three simple questions (1) Which standards do exist in the industry?, (2) What are the benefits of using them?, and (3) What holds us back?The standards used, and as such included in this survey, were

  • DIN 69901 – 69905
  • IPMA’s (International Project Management Association) International Competence Baseline (ICB)
  • ICB’s German cousin the PM-Fachmann, and PM-Kanon
  • ISO 10006
  • OPM3
  • PMBOK
  • Kerzner’s Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM)
  • PRINCE

What are the benefits of implementing and using a project management standards?

Better communication/consistent terminology Project stakeholders are able to communicate about project management aspects without friction. They experience that communication about project management issues becomes easier when there is a shared understanding of fundamental project management terms as expressed in a standard
Faster process implementation (Compliant) project management processes can be planned and introduced faster than without a standard
Better process quality Higher quality in terms of cycle times, process failures and achievement of objectives
Transfer of knowledge and best practices Improvements of project management competencies
Better recognition by customers/marketing effects Compliance as a cue of high project management competence for external stakeholders
Cost savings Costs reductions for setting up and running the project management system
Better team play More efficient project teams with better project results
Comparability with other internal organizational units Standards allow benchmarking/comparisons of processes and results with other internal organisational units
Comparability with other external organizational units Standards allow benchmarking/comparisons of processes and results with other external organisational units

What holds us back in implementing project management standards in practice?

Too theoretical Standards are highly abstract and theoretical, such it cannot be understood easily and applied efficiently
Lack of flexibility Standard not flexible enough for the requirements of a specific organization. Adaptation is either not foreseen or only hard to achieve
Not applicable to the specific implementation scenario Standard is generally not applicable since its premises do not match the characteristics of the affected organisation
Costs of change The costs of implementing the standard are too high
Administrational overheads The operation requires too high administrative overhead
Lack of acceptance The standard is not sufficiently accepted by staff members
Inefficient processes/practices Standard requires inefficient processes or practices. Instead of improving process performance, cycle times and process costs rise

The empirical results of this survey show that PMBOK is the most widely used standard in the sample. The second most commonly used standard is the ICB. Whereby the standard is rarely (in only 11% of cases) used as-is. Instead it is mostly adapted to the organisation or used as a pool of ideas.Secondly the list of benefits was tested against expectations before implementing standards and the captured benefits after the implementation. Expected benefits were

  • Improvement of communication regarding project management issues
  • Better process quality
  • Faster implementation of project management processes
  • Implementation of best practices

Of all benefits tested only the improvement of communications was taking place after implementing the standard.The authors identify lack of flexibility and adaptability as the major shortfall of standards. The main reasons for not applying a standard were

  • High administrative overhead
  • Lack of user acceptance
  • High costs

Posted in Standards | 4 Comments »

Investigating the use of the stakeholder notion in project management literature, a meta-analysis (Vos & Achterkamp, in press)

Dienstag, September 30th, 2008

 Investigating the use of the stakeholder notion in project management literature, a meta-analysis (Vos & Achterkamp, in press)

Achterkamp, Marjolein C.; Vos, Janita F.J.: Investigating the use of the stakeholder notion in project management literature, a meta-analysis; in: International Journal of Project Management, Article in Press, Corrected Proof.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2007.10.001

Managing the stakeholders is an, if not the most, important part of the project manager’s job. Previously Vos & Achterkamp published articles focussed on the identification of stakeholders, which is a crucial and not so simple task.“Basic, but not trivial“, as one of my Economics professors always used to say.

In this article, however, Vos & Achterkamp reviewed 42 articles in terms of

  • Definition of stakeholders
  • Purpose of stakeholder notion
  • Identification issues
  • Role of stakeholders

Analysing the commonly used definitions of stakeholders the authors identify two key theoretically based definitions – stakeholders could either be persons with an interest in the project, or persons who can or are affected by the project. One or both of these two definitions are used in only 16.6% of articles reviewed, the remaining articles mainly deal with this topic without defining the object stakeholder at all.

Why look at stakeholders? The purpose of the stakeholder notion is first and foremost to sense-making and defining success. Further purposes of stakeholder management are risk management, use as source of information, and using stakeholders as a management instrument.

The review of the identification issue, a topic close to the authors, shows that most articles only recognise the issue, or explain it partly. Only a minority of 4 articles (out of 42) recognises and explains the issue.

Lastly Vos & Achterkamp review the roles of stakeholders. For reasons of not only simplifying complexity down to a managable level, but also for overcoming issues of stakeholder identification stakeholders the authors suggest an explicit, structured, role-based identificiation procedure. Whilst they acknowledge that stakeholder salience model, as discussed in this earlier post, is the leading theoretical model of identifying stakeholder; the authors argue that the role-based stakeholder classification model for innovative projects is more promising.

„Considering stakeholders in terms of roles of involvement in the context of projects then raises the question of whether there is anything new. Indeed, thinking in terms of roles is not new in project management. Could project roles perhaps be used for stakeholder identification?“ (p. 4)

Vos & Achterkamp review three articles in detail, which use a role-based stakeholder classification model. These three articles define the following roles

  • Callan et al. (2008)
    • Controller
    • Executer
    • Constraining advisor
    • Discretionary advisor
  • Turner (2008)
    • Manager
    • Steward
    • Owner
    • User
    • Sponsor
    • Broker
    • Resources
  • Vos & Achterkamp (2006)
    • Client
    • Decision maker
    • Designer
    • Passively involved

Posted in Literature Review, Research, Stakeholder Management, Theory | 4 Comments »