This section will describe potential research projects whose need has been highlighted by this research.
7.2.1 The meaning of project management
The objectives of project management are generally assumed to be as they are given in the PMBOK:
“Project management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to project activities to meet project objectives” (Italics in the original) (Project Management Institute, 2000).
This assumes that the identified project objectives are the only objectives and that project managers will strive to meet them. However, projects are performed by a group of people who may have individual perceptions of their objectives in any given circumstances. In particular, there is not yet a definition of “project coordination” nor any measure of how well a project is coordinated at any one time. Coordination-related objectives and any judgement of how well a project is coordinated exist, subjectively, in the mind of the project manager. Similarly, a project manager’s objectives for and judgement of project control remain subjective.
While there has been a number of investigations into some of the social aspects of software development (Gruhn, 1992; Sawyer et al., 1997), particularly teamwork (Mantei, 1981; Walz et al., 1993; Hoegl and Gemuenden, 2001; Potter and Balthazard, 2002), project management objectives have not been viewed as subjective. Investigations into the social aspects or subjective aspects of project management could advance understanding of the area and, potentially, point out ways to improve project management of software development projects. An investigation into how project managers understand their project objectives, what those objectives are and how they might change as the project progresses could reveal new insights into aspects of project management. For example, a project manager could regard the project team’s harmonious interactions as a primary objective, believing that if the team is working well together than all other objectives will be accomplished. Such a view would change perspectives on project management tools toward more social objectives rather than utilitarian objectives. Thus, research is proposed to investigate which objectives project managers regard as important, what they understand by those objectives and how both the objectives and their understanding change as a project progresses.
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7.2.2 The efficiency of project management mechanisms
There has not been a rigorous analysis nor any empirical data on how any one mechanism is used by a project manager to achieve multiple objectives. Research to date has investigated project control (Zmud, 1980; Henderson and Lee, 1992; Kirsch, 1996; Addison and Vallabh, 2002; Choudhury and Sabherwal, 2003) or project monitoring (Kitchenham, 1996; Dumke and Winkler, 1997; Royce, 1998; Kitchenham et al., 2001) or project coordination (e.g. Kraut and Streeter, 1995; Crowston and Kammerer, 1998; Fussell et al., 1998; Faraj and Sproull, 2000; Fussell et al., 2000; Andres and Zmud, 2002; Sabherwal, 2003) and has identified the
mechanisms employed to achieve each separate objective. But many of the same mechanisms used for project control, for example, are also used to achieve project coordination.
Sabherwal (Sabherwal, 2003) considers efficiency in relation to project coordination, taking the definition of efficiency from Ring and Van de Venn (1994) as “the most expeditious and least costly governance structure for undertaking a transaction”. While this definition may be useful when considering interorganizational relationships, it would be difficult to apply to the
mechanisms of project management where efficiency should concern the effects of a mechanism compared to the costs of using it.
A project management mechanism could be used for different objectives, depending on the circumstances. For example, a meeting may be used to enforce project control and, later, another meeting be used to clarify how some parts of the system must interact, which is a coordination matter.
More likely is that mechanisms will be used for several purposes at the same time. A
mechanism may be used to achieve a primary objective as well as a secondary objective. For example, a specification such as a system design is primarily a control mechanism since it specifies what is to be achieved. However, the same specification acts as a coordination mechanism by specifying the how different parts of the system will interact.
The primary, secondary or incidental purposes for which a mechanism is used could vary according to circumstances and this would need to be investigated.
Understanding how the different mechanisms are used would reveal more about how project managers actually monitor, control and coordinate their projects and lead to a better
understanding of requirements for tools to assist them.
A research project is proposed to investigate the efficiency of project management mechanisms used by project managers during a software development project. The research should
investigate the “whole of life” costs of using different project management mechanisms and the results obtained by using them. Such research should reveal some reasons why different project management mechanisms appear to be preferred. This may indicate fruitful directions for
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project management training as well as the types of tools that would support distributed project management.7.2.3 Varying usage of project management mechanisms.
This research did not find any evidence that increasing organizational distance influenced the selection of project management mechanisms. However, the research did not anticipate that increasing organizational distance might affect the manner in which those same mechanisms were used. For example, in a co-located project a meeting may be held with everyone in the same room and able to discuss matters interactively and in person. With a distributed project, the same meeting might be held using video-conferencing or telephone conferencing or even by one of the electronic forums such as NetMeeting. Regardless of the implementation, this research project considered all of these examples as “meetings” and did not distinguish between them.
Clearly, when investigating distributed or outsourced projects, the categorization of project management mechanisms appears to be too broad and needing to be extended to include elements of the mechanism’s implementation. Mechanisms that are interactive, such as meetings, are clearly affected by the degree of interactivity afforded by the meeting logistics. Mechanisms that are considered more rigid, such as standards-based control or coordination mechanisms, could be quite responsive to circumstances through tailoring rather than fixed for all time and all circumstances.
Research that considers the usage of different mechanisms and whether this usage, in relation to other mechanisms, varied as the project contingencies varied should reveal what project
managers need in order to manage their projects. It should also indicate more about what it is that is essential in order to monitor, control and coordinate a project separated from specific realizations of project management mechanisms.
Thus, a research project is proposed that investigates the ways in which project management mechanisms are implemented as project contingencies vary.
7.2.4 The orientation of project management
The theories and methods of project management have come largely from industrial practice and not from, for example, sociology. This results in a heavy concentration on the logistics of activities such as planning the work, monitoring the work and coordinating the work. The PMBOK (Project Management Institute, 2000) has been adopted by the IEEE as a standard for project management (IEEE 1490, 1998) and will serve as an example text. The PMBOK places the project activities at the centre of project management efforts and everything else serves to
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support the activities. For example, human resource management is concerned with recruiting and training personnel as needed by the project. Recruitment and training is not, for example, oriented toward staff well-being or to help them to attain skills beyond those required by the project.A very strong theme through project management texts is that the project manager should direct the efforts of others. Yet software development projects are characterised by, among other things, interdependence among groups (Kraut and Streeter, 1995) that requires considerable interaction among the groups. Software development is performed by teams with considerable interaction among the teams (Gruhn, 1992; Brooks, 1995; McCarthy, 1995; Cusumano and Selby, 1997; Carmel, 1999). Rather than be oriented around the activities with the project manager as some sort of supervisor, software development could be considered as a group activity with the chief role of project management being to foster group interactions. However, it is pointless to argue that, because software development involves teams, the social processes of teams are more important than the logistical processes of software development.
So far, there is little information available on the interaction of social process and logistical processes in software development. This means that discussion about improving software development project management has difficulty comparing “agile” projects (Beck, 1999; Highsmith and Cockburn, 2001; Fowler, 2003; Cockburn, 2004) with more orthodox software development projects and valuable lessons from one are discounted in the other. Projects that employ “extreme programming” or other agile software development methods do succeed despite little apparent formal project management and there has been at least one attempt to examine where and why each project approach, plan-driven and agile, succeed or fail (Boehm and Turner, 2004). Boehm and Turner (2004) note that “Good people and teams trump other factors” and go on to list some of the factors relevant to people oriented software development that are paid insufficient attention by the more orthodox software development methodologies. However, their book is concerned primarily with software development methodologies and not project management and does not venture into exactly how project management should deal with the identified human factors.
Future research into mechanisms of project monitoring, control and coordination ought first establish what project managers understand by a project being “under control” and a project being “coordinated”, and establish what project managers do to influence both states.