درک وابستگی های درونی پروژه: نقش نمایش تصویری، فرهنگ و فرآیند

Project portfolio management is central to many organizations' strategic processes and requires consideration of multiple factors and the ability to envision alternative future consequences to support strategic project portfolio decision making. Complex project portfolios with multiple project interdependencies are characteristic of many project environments, yet existing methods do not provide the clear understanding of project interdependencies that is required. This exploratory study aims to improve organizational understanding of project interdependencies through two loosely coupled avenues of investigation conducted in tandem in a telecommunications and a defense organization. The first avenue of research introduces a new type of visual representation and shows that the creation of graphical network displays of projects and their interdependencies can provide benefits by supporting communication and strategic portfolio decision making. The second avenue of research tests a conceptual model and highlights the importance of both the culture and processes in an organization's understanding of project interdependencies.

Decisions about project investments are central to the realization of strategy in many organizations, especially the increasing number of organizations that are project based (Maylor et al., 2006 and Thiry and Deguire, 2007). Project portfolio management (PPM) aims to enhance the return from project investments and contribute to an organization's competitive advantage by providing a holistic framework for the strategic management of the project portfolio. PPM requires consideration of multiple factors and the ability to envision alternative future consequences to support and enhance strategic project portfolio decision making. Many PPM tools and methods, while providing a portfolio-level perspective for balancing project decisions, still treat each project as an isolated entity. As PPM matures and project complexity and interdependency increase, it is no longer sufficient to apply traditional PPM tools that consider projects as independent of each other. In portfolios where many projects are interdependent, these interdependencies must be understood for effective decision making (Blau et al., 2004 and Verma and Sinha, 2002). PPM is more than an extension or scaled-up version of project management; the inter-project effects are more complex and difficult to predict (Aritua et al., 2009). Managing a portfolio of projects with uncertainty, dynamism, and complexity represent a complex multi-dimensional challenge. This challenge is amplified by the presence of interdependencies (Collyer and Warren, 2009 and Perminova et al., 2008) and the management of interdependences is an area of weakness for PPM (Elonen and Artto, 2003). The research presented in this paper aims to help improve organizations' ability to understand the interdependencies within a project portfolio, and therefore improve their ability to make strategic portfolio decisions. The research asks whether network mapping visualizations can help organizations understand project interdependencies, and it explores other factors within a project environment that may influence that understanding. The research was conducted in two loosely coupled studies: the application of a network mapping approach for the visual representation of project interdependencies and the testing of a conceptual model of the factors that influence organizations' understanding of project interdependencies. Section 2 starts with a review of the literature on the use of visual representations to support managerial and strategic decision making (Section 2.1). In Section 2.2 we present a brief overview of the literature on PPM and strategy, including a discussion on the visual tools commonly used to support project portfolio decision making. Section 2.3 explores the nature of project interdependencies and proposes a conceptual model on the factors that affect an organization's ability to understand project interdependencies. Finally, to conclude the literature review, Section 2.4 provides a brief review of literature on the application of network mapping and analysis for strategic and managerial decision making. Building on the findings of the literature review, Section 3 introduces a network mapping approach to visualize project interdependencies that is proposed to support strategic project portfolio decision making. The methods employed for the two avenues of investigation in this exploratory study are then outlined in Section 4, followed by the findings and discussions from the two approaches in Section 5. Finally, we present conclusions, acknowledge the limitations of the research and suggest avenues for future research in Section 6.

This research makes a significant contribution by extending previous studies in two areas: the use of visual representations to support strategic decision making, and the development and application of methods and tools for the management of project interdependencies. In addition to the contributions to these bodies of research and literature, the findings also provide guidance for practitioners of PPM. It is generally accepted that organizations need to understand the interdependencies between projects in order to strategically manage their project portfolios. We have described two organizations' experiences with applying a new way of visually representing data to support decision making, and we have tested a conceptual model of the understanding of project interdependencies. This research has generated insights into how organizations may be able to improve their understanding of project interdependencies through two avenues of investigation. First, we tested the use of VPM, a network mapping approach for the visualization of project interdependencies to support decision making. Findings indicate that VPM offers insights that can improve understanding, and that it has the potential to provide benefits by providing support for strategic decision making and as a communications tool. Second, we explored the relationships in a proposed conceptual model on factors influencing organizational understanding of project interdependencies. The findings highlight the importance of both culture and process, and suggest that the culture factors may have more influence than the process factors on an organization's understanding of project interdependencies. We emphasize that this is an exploratory study involving two organizations. Further research with other organizations and industries is required to verify or extend these findings and refine insights into the factors that affect an organization's understanding of project interdependencies. The findings from the first research avenue suggest that network mapping approaches such as VPM may become one of the tools identified as useful for PPM. Further research is required to better understand whether and how such tools can enhance an organization's capability to manage its project portfolio, and how the visual network mapping representations can be best constructed, interpreted, and used in practice. This research used responses from project managers to develop the VPM displays; however, future research could consider whether other sources of knowledge about project interdependencies can be effectively used. In addition, future research should evaluate the effort required to create network mapping displays on a regular basis and the effectiveness of methods of updating the displays to represent dynamic project portfolio environments. The conceptual model tested in the second research avenue is an exploratory model that could be extended to include a wider range of factors through future research. In addition to further culture and process factors, future research could also consider other dimension such as portfolio size and portfolio complexity. The exploratory work has employed some new item questions, and further work on the development of items and scales is recommended. In conclusion, this exploratory research has introduced project network mapping as a visual representation tool for understanding the interdependencies in project portfolios. Our study indicates that network mapping has potential as a tool to assist with PPM and support strategic portfolio decision making; however, the results also highlight that the culture and environment may be more important than the tools and processes. The findings suggest that managers need to pay attention to the project culture as well as the tools and processes. While seeking the best methods and tools to implement, they must also ensure that the culture and the project environment support the between-project communication and the capture and sharing of information that are required for best understanding of project interdependencies.