Images of Projects

Citation

Cicmil, S. (2010), "Images of Projects", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 3 No. 2, pp. 350-352. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538371011036644

It is always exciting to see a new title in the project management field which does not ambitiously claim to be the ultimate book on project management but carries a more intriguing notion which steers curiosity and expectations in the potential reader. Recently published by Gower, collaboratively authored by Mark Winter and Tony Szczepanek Images of Projects is one such surprise.

The authors' starting premise is that, just like organisations, projects mean different things to different people and they can also be viewed in different ways by practitioners. The book is written in the spirit of encouraging practitioners to think about projects from multiple perspectives and the actions that can flow from these in different situations. This links to the book's main premise that combining experience with the deliberate use of multiple images can prompt people to consider things that might not otherwise be thought about and hence can make a difference to the action taken in project environments. As the authors state: “Images of Projects is simply an invitation to practitioners to do what they already do, but to do so more consciously, with the aid of some images and frameworks, as and when required” (p. 9; italics and emphasis in original). In this way, a number of traditional debates together with emerging thoughts, more recent theoretical insights and imaginative approaches in the field of projects and PM studies have been embraced by this book.

In a disciplined, consistent, and user friendly way, Winter and Szczepanek demonstrate how multiple realities of a single organisational phenomenon can coexist and be experienced as such. In other words, the way in which one names and frames a project determines a way of looking at it, understanding it and acting in relation to it. The authors argue that the practice of project work and project management can therefore be enhanced by developing awareness of a range of perspectives from which to analyse them and by encouraging a way of thinking which embraces simultaneously, rather than ignores, the multi‐faceted nature of projects. The authors also provide a set of practical guidelines on the various ways in which the images can be applied in different situations.

Seven core images of projects are proposed, illustrated and pragmatically argued in this book. These images are: social, political, intervention, value creation, development, organisational and change. The book is easy to read, with a user‐friendly structure of each chapter discussing a specific image by presenting image definition, followed by the argument of its relevance and importance, with five aspects of each image illustrated through an example of a project or programme, concluding with image summary and a discussion of strengths and limitations. I particularly enjoyed Image 5: Projects as Development Processes, presented in Chapter 7 and illustrated through the insights from the King's Cross Development Programme, Coalfields Heritage Initiative Kent and Rethinking Project Management Research Project. There is also an intriguing section within Chapter 3 (Social Image 1; Projects as Social Processes) on the role of language and metaphors in socially constructing or inducing a preferred shared reality of a project or programme.

Upon reading the book, I was left convinced that not only organisational members already involved with projects and programmes but younger students and general members of public, too, might find this book useful for practical as well as informative purposes, given the intensity with which projects related discourses are occupying the spaces outside work.

No doubt, there will be many more interpretations of this book, its message and its images than the number of proposed images in the book itself. A polyphonic dialogue of voices from different readers will be heard, debating the theoretical underpinning, categorisation and compartmentalisations of the named images, some unnecessary repetitions as well as what ‘imaginizing projects’ might mean for practical action in project environments and what is, in the end, new. The authors have already offered their own response to some of these questions by explaining the roots of their ideas in the work of, for example, Gareth Morgan, Peter Checkland, Edward de Bono, Donald Schon, Guy Claxton and Richard Rorty, by presenting the material in a finely structured, consistent and logical way, and by choosing 16 contemporary projects and programmes for illustration and insights.

And finally, a word on the image of the book cover which visually prepares the reader for what is to come on the pages inside. The same landscape is represented in four different pictures reflecting changes over the four seasons with the visibility and relationships between the elements of the environment (the tree, the path, the grass, the shadows) differing from image to image and leaving the observer with varying impressions. With this book as a whole, the authors have made a step towards reconnecting the project with the more subtle aspects of human activity and existence, on which they should be congratulated, too.