(Newswire.net — December 6, 2018) — A cursory review of the project management literature reveals a wealth of disparate viewpoints and argument over the existence of a foundational theory of project management. The place and function of theory in the practice of project management is also a matter of much discussion. Some authors propose the need for unique, solid theory in order to legitimize project management as an academic and professional discipline. In light of the high rate of project failure, theory is also proposed as being required to guide practice and support the evaluation of methodologies.
Theory and 21st Century Project Management
The modern project management environment is characterized by increases in project scale, cost, levels of uncertainty, numbers of stakeholders, and their degree of involvement. The simplistic view of project management as the work of managing the sequence of steps required to complete a project on time and under budget is now out dated. It has given way to a model that emphasizes incorporating stakeholder voices, developing systematic approaches to prioritizing effort and negotiating trade-offs, and multitasking by multi-functional teams using collaborative project resource planning tools to work on all aspects of a project simultaneously. If a traditional theory of project management exists, does it offer any benefits and applicability in the current realm of project management?
Foundations of PM Theory
In a 2002 paper, Lauri Koskela and Greg Howell counter claims that there is no explicit theory of project management. They argue that “it is possible to precisely point out the underlying theoretical foundation of project management as espoused in the PMBOK by PMI and mostly applied in practice.”
Koskela and Howell divide this foundation into a theory of project and a theory of management. They present the traditional theory of project as based on a transformation view of operations. In this view, projects represent a transformation of inputs to outputs via a process of decomposing the entire transformation into a hierarchical set of smaller transformations, or tasks. Management can be viewed as a set of three theories that correspond to the primary stages of project management.
Management-as-planning positions management at the operations level as the creation, revision, and implementation of plans. This theory assumes a strong causal relationship between the actions of managers and project outcomes. The dispatching model concerns project execution and assumes that managing this stage involves dispatching tasks to work stations. The theory of control, called the thermostat model, assumes that there is a standard of performance and a unit for performance measurement that is applied to a process being controlled. Control entails applying corrections to the process in order to remove variance between the measured value and the standard.
Koskela and Howell go on to claim that “the present underlying foundation is obsolete and has to be substituted by a wider and more powerful theoretical foundation: a paradigmatic transformation of the discipline of project management is needed.” They offer the framework for a new theoretical foundation of project management. This framework includes a more nuanced theory of project as well as extensions of the theories of management.
From Theory to Practice
It appears that an improved, unified, and complete theoretical foundation for project management can be created. But where does theory intersect with and support practical application? It is important to realize that project management is more of an art than an exact science. Theory is not to be confused with a prescription for guaranteed success. Instead, it serves as a guide that provides context to efforts at thinking about and solving problems.
The reality of practice is that theory, frameworks, and guides like the PMBOK may appear to be prescriptive, but the variability of work on the ground defies prescriptive approaches. Knowledge of the PMBOK and procedural frameworks should serve as a toolkit, with processes selected and applied as appropriate to the situation. Managers also need to realize that any useful theory of project management needs to go beyond project management processes and methodologies to account for the need to manage the relationships and expectations of customers, stakeholders, and the project team.