INNOVATIONS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Innovations in Project Management

Innovations in Project Management

Introduction

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” This is perhaps one of the most popular saying among project management (PM) practitioners and it is hard not to concur with this management philosophy. For that matter, project planning remains a key factor of project success. For example, Project Management Institute (PMI) strongly advocates the contribution of project planning to project success (Murphy et al., 1974). Despite the claim made by certain authors, that project planning is not a guarantee against project failure, and that too much planning can curtail creativity, many believe and have evidence to support their claim, that a minimum level of planning is required. In fact, although planning does not guarantee project success, lack of planning will probably guarantee failure.

It comes as no surprise that the empirical relationship between project planning and project success is under close scrutiny by some authors. Concerned and at least for research and development (R&D) projects, the relationship between the investment in project planning and the degree of success achieved is clear. If a minimum level of project planning is required, “there is no correlation between the implementation of planning procedures in the project and the various success dimensions” (p. 94). They also suggest that any question as to what kinds of tools are used is of no importance (p. 95). Such research results are intriguing and evidence seems to be against the popular belief that project planning is closely related to project success.

Project lifecycle has been broken into three major phases. This is very instructive for purposes of comparison with the PMI project cycle: “planning” (pre-identification, identification, preparation, and approval); “executive” (redefinition, mobilization and actual implementation, and monitoring); and ongoing operations (evaluation). It is indeed in that “executive” phase that implementation planning is actually done (planning, scheduling, control, and supervision) and institutional arrangements such as project organization and PM are decided upon. Once the project plan is approved at the preparation and appraisal phases, a project manager, often a local civil servant with expertise in the sector, is appointed, called a project coordinator or a national (field) project coordinator (NPC), who will be in charge of the actual implementation of the project. The role of the NPC is not to create a project plan in first place like in the conventional PM but to update, to refine or to redefine the project and therefore to respond intelligently to project plan- or goal-changes. In other words, the NPC's job is to “reshape or replan parts of the project or perhaps the entire project,” then to implement and complete it. The NPC is not a project planner per se, but a project re-planner and implementer. In fact, projects are subject to (formal or informal, desirable or undesirable, and avoidable or unavoidable) plan, scope, or goal-changes and to delays and cost overruns during implementation; and it is up to the NPC to manage the “mini-project cycle” of implementation for time, cost and ...