بازاندیشی مدیریت پروژه فن آوری اطلاعات : مشاهده یک طرز فکر جدید و پیامدهای آن

This paper contributes to the rethinking project management agenda in relation to the information technology (IT) sector. Our analysis of the evolution of thinking and practice among leading IT project managers across four countries elicits nine principles and four personal qualities that constitute the core of a mindset that facilitates rethinking the practice of IT project management. We compare this with the Rethinking Project Management research agenda [Winter M, Smith C, Morris P, Cicmil S. Directions for future research in Project management: the main findings of a UK government-funded research network. Int J Project Manage 2006;24(8):638-649.]. Our contribution is to (1) validate the directions defined in that agenda; (2) identify elements not incorporated in it and (3) provide examples that crystallise the agenda for the domain of IT project management.

A recent study, called Rethinking Project Management [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5] has highlighted the need for a fundamental re-appraisal of project management research. The study identified five directions for advancing research and was based on collaboration between academic researchers and practitioners. The five directions identified were: complexity, social process, value creation, broader conceptualisation of projects, and reflective practice. Each direction can be seen as enhancing conventional wisdom. Taken as a whole, they amount to a substantial, even radical, re-statement of the nature of projects and project management. While academics and practitioners alike may accept the appropriateness of each new direction intellectually, we need to articulate what this means to the project manager in practice. From the perspective of a project manager, there is the question of what kind of person would they need to be to embrace all five directions and attempt to integrate them into a coherent management approach. In short, we need to understand the mindset that will drive project managers to advance practice in the ways implied by the Rethinking Project Management (RPM) agenda. Concurrently with the RPM research, we investigated how information technology (IT) project management has been changing and why. We interviewed more than 50 thought-leading practitioners across three continents. The IT sector was chosen because there has been such pressure for improvement that it was reasonable to expect to find evidence of innovation in practice [6] and [7]. Our focus was on identifiable changes to project management. In conversations with us, our interviewees provided data that offer insight into how they themselves are rethinking project management. We distil what they told us into key principles and qualities of an emerging new mindset and compare it with the results from the RPM research. The RPM researchers suggest that the agenda they have published is not definitive and may be refined, elaborated, supplemented or challenged. The contribution of this article to the emerging research agenda is to: 1. Validate the directions defined in their agenda from our research in the IT sector. 2. Advance the agenda by identifying elements not obviously incorporated in the five directions. 3. Provide concrete examples that help to crystallise the agenda for one important project management domain – IT. In positioning our findings in terms of a mindset, the article’s contribution to practice is to: 1. Show how project managers have to think if they are to adopt an expanded and more sophisticated view of project management. In Section 2, we justify our use of the five directions of the RPM framework as a basis for structuring our findings. We also describe research findings that support our view that IT is an important sector to examine both in its own right and as a lead indicator for other sectors. In Section 3, we describe our research and show that it is appropriate to analyse it in terms of a new mindset. Then, in Section 4, we describe our results as a set of principles of the new mindset and show that they support the RPM framework. We condense these principles into four personal qualities that help practitioners rethink IT project management. We propose two further directions for the RPM research agenda. Finally, we identify practical applications of our understanding of the new mindset.

The Rethinking Project Management agenda defined five directions for future research. Our study has examined IT project managers and made explicit a new mindset that promotes the reframing of IT project management. Articulation of the principles embodied in the new mindset confirms the appropriateness of the RPM’s five directions. It also suggests two further directions – projects as a knowledge process and projects as an emotional process. As neither new direction has received much attention, there are many opportunities for researchers. In pursuing the idea of projects as a knowledge process, there are three principal areas for development. The first involves conceptualisation of projects and project management in knowledge terms in parallel with more traditional action and control terms. The second involves investigating in what ways managing projects as a knowledge and learning process can enable improved performance. The third involves examining the potential contingency of the knowledge approach: that is to say, determining whether certain kinds of projects such as IT-enabled change and other advanced technology projects may be more susceptible to the knowledge approach while others such as civil engineering projects may be less so. In pursuing the idea of projects as an emotional process, two avenues are apparent. The first relates to the emotional component in self-management. This will deal with the harnessing and display of emotions as part of the leadership role of project managers. The second relates to the management of emotion in others, principally the team and stakeholders such as sponsors. Both involve what is commonly referred to as emotional intelligence and on which there is considerable research in fields outside project management [24].. Prior research can act as a powerful springboard. Our description of a new mindset that is reshaping the practice of IT project management has implications for practice and further implications for research. Organisations will need to recruit and develop individuals with the appropriate mindset. While our articulation of relevant principles and qualities can help recruiters recognise the “right stuff”, researchers can assist by investigating what psychology, what intellectual calibre, what experience disposes an individual to the appropriate mindset. Further, we need to understand what human resource and management interventions can accelerate development of the appropriate mindset. Finally, there is a challenge for both reflective practitioners and researchers. The Rethinking Project Management agenda and our own research are positioned as additions to the established practices of conventional project management. Yet, the approach described in this article, and implicit in the RPM agenda, gives rise to major tensions – between controlling change and embracing change; between controlling decisions and empowering the team; between achieving short term results and building a solid infrastructure for the future. These and other tensions require the concerted and combined efforts of the communities of practitioners and researchers to address. Whether we will be able to fully integrate the new with the established is an important question that both communities will have to confront.