Rethinking Project Management – An Organisational Perspective

Citation

Walker, D.H.T. (2009), "Rethinking Project Management – An Organisational Perspective", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Vol. 2 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijmpb.2009.35302dae.001

Rethinking Project Management – An Organisational Perspective

Article Type: Book reviews From: International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Volume 2, Issue 4

E.S. Andersen,Pearson Education Limited,Harlow,2008,345 pp.

This book is a very useful for project management (PM) practitioners, PM scholars and PM academics. I also believe that it would be of value to those in undergraduate studies that are studying PM as part of their courses in a business degree. It is especially suitable for postgraduate level students.

The book is one of only a handful that are emerging to take a more inclusive and business and social science perspective of the general field or discipline of PM (Hodgson and Cicmil, 2006). It seems to advance, in the space of just over 300 pages of actual written content, excellent coverage of traditional PM theory that one would expect of a good PM text book as well as providing the kind of insights and access to prevailing emerging PM theory. There are some very good PM textbooks available among these (Frame, 2002, 2003; Morris and Pinto, 2004; Turner, 2007, 2009) and many of these do take a business perspective, however, some of these are more like reference books in the sense that they have many authored chapter (that are usually very interesting and present a wealth of PM ideas) but they can be rather bulky. Rethinking PM is a fairly standard sized soft-copy book that does not stress the baggage limit on planes. It has all the relevance of a standard PM text to serve well as a text book for students as well as cleverly addressing higher level readerships through a generous set of endnote comments at the end of each of the seven chapters.

This is where I appreciated one aspect of the value of this book because not only do many of these numerous notes expand upon the content within each chapter with insights, comments and clarifications but Andersen also provides citations to authorities that appear in the references from pages 313 to 334. The references and index are produced in a blue colored paper so that it is easy to flick from content page to check out references. Personally, I really liked the idea of presenting the book as a text that should be easy enough for practitioners and students to follow but with the added layer of a more “academic” approach in the end of chapter notes. I spend a lot of time chasing up references cited in the notes and then references and genuinely felt that I had improved my understanding of topics that I had tended to take for granted before. Thus, the title “Rethinking PM” really does tend to tempt the treader to re-frame ideas, re-formulate approaches and to review the PM landscape. My copy that I read and made my own notes from for this review, is now crammed with jottings and scrawled memo notes about papers or books to follow up on.

Chapter 1 (project concepts) is 50 pages long with 115 notes, many that link to references. My point is that this provides a lecturer who may be using this book, with several tutorials-worth of discussion material. As an introduction to PM, it would provide a valuable teaching resource. Further, because it takes an approach to challenge the reader to view projects from several perspectives it genuinely achieves the intention of its “Rethinking” title. Many readers would likely be from construction engineering (like me) or an information system/ information technology background and find a task perspective to be an “obvious” way to perceive PM, also those with a PMI background, for example, would also see PM this way. However, many of the project managers that we see in our universities these days are working in more complex PM situations, in change management, in business transformations and in products and service delivery sectors. The “traditional” projects, the “earth” ones that Turner and Cochrane (1993, p. 95) identified are increasingly the minority of projects we are now seeing realised. Andersen discusses person, system and organisation projects a lot in this book so it links projects well with how they relate to systems and within the organisation sponsoring them. Project timing and the concept of entrainment is something that, while not new to me, was better explained here than I had found elsewhere before reading this book. The task perspective of PM often presupposes that project time, as part of an iron triangle, means scheduling to optimum completion “on time”. This chapter opens our eyes to other perspectives.

Chapter 2, the foundation of the project, takes a more strategic view to PM and helps readers rethink the purpose of PM. The project vision, mission, goals and objectives are well explained and this places a fundamental understanding of the value of PM. Sections on the naming of identity of projects and the focus on stakeholders is refreshing to see in a PM book. It is also links in well with Chapter 7.

Chapter 3 is devoted to discussing planning the project. What is new here is that it provides the insights that Anderson has raised in earlier publications, the effective use of milestones for planning projects where there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the project. This is one of the more particularly valuable chapters for novice or student project managers as it clearly spells out the planning process. Many other PM texts tend to rush into techniques such as certified project management, Monte Carlo simulation, etc. while this chapter generically explains the planning process clearly.

Chapter 4 is about organising the project. It introduces some useful questions not always asked such as what sort of project is needed – either requiring an action organisation or political organisation. It also links well into project governance answering who does what, who is accountable for what questions. It has some very useful sections about teams including models of team development and an excellent section on virtual teams and resourcing projects (people) teams and project management offices, etc. It also has a section on creativity and humour as well as ethics in PM.

Chapter 5 is about controlling the project. It follows up on the milestones theme and discusses project action and resource escalation, organisational learning (OL) and authority structures. The OL part fits in well with recent interest in projects as potential learning generators for businesses and how this perspective is often neglected and ignored.

Chapter 6 is devoted to PM leadership. This covers that which one would expect in conventional PM text books but it has an excellent section on trust, communication, boosting morale and handling conflict. The section on burnout is followed by a section on making a successful team. This chapter contains material from the general business and psychology literature that often misses notice in the PM world and links in well with emotional intelligence literature (not discussed in this book) which is featuring in the PM journals now (PMJ, IJPM and IJMPB).

Chapter 7 discusses the project-oriented organisation and the project-oriented society. This chapter cites related work from decades ago updated with recent work. The concepts discussed have strongly emerged from Europe with earlier Professor Roland Gareis from Vienna and Pernelle Eskerron in Denmark, Karlos Arrto and Kim Wilström from Finland, the rethinking PM group mainly based in the UK and Mats Engwall and others that have brought to PM not only a strong strategy view but also questioned how projects fit into delivering benefit to business. This chapter very clearly discusses portfolio and program management in terms that is understandable. It delves reasonably well into how standardisation and project maturity fit into the picture. Culture is linked in well and there is a section on PM as a profession. This chapter ends with some discussion of the findings from the rethinking PM group (Winter and Smith, 2006; Winter et al., 2006a, b).

In general, I would recommend this book. I consider myself reasonable well read and up to date in this emerging area, yet I found at least 40 new references to track down and read up on from the 20+pages of references and am grateful for that resource to make me aware of gaps in my knowledge. As stated earlier, I think this is a handy book for students and reflective practitioners who can read it quite easily but also at a deeper level, when delving into the chapter end notes and then deeper into the references cited in these end notes, I felt that you get a very sound appreciation of PM in a light that has not been as strongly shone as the plethora of PM books that appeared during the 1980 s and 1990 s. It does not supersede these texts but adds a valuable layer so that the air, water and fire projects described by Turner and Cochrane (1993) get suitable addressed as well as the more traditional earth projects.

Derek H.T. WalkerRMIT University, Melbourne, Australia and Umeå School of Business, Umeå University,Umeå, Sweden