Evidence‐Based Scope for Reducing “Fire‐Fighting” in Project Management

This paper reviews the problems of project management as reported by 1,879 individuals employed in the construction, manufacturing, process, and service industries in North‐West Europe over 23 years. Data obtained by a written questionnaire confirms that organizational relationships need the most attention. The data exhibits no trends over the 23 years. It indicates that many of the problems of project management are “institutional”; in other words, they are due to organizational cultures rather than inherent in project work. The evidence supports the view that poor discipline at the front‐end of projects results in too much “fire‐fighting” in project execution to overcome problems that could have been prevented. Prevention of these institutional problems requires action at the level of corporate governance, above the level of project management.     

Success criteria and factors for international development projects: A life‐cycle‐based framework

The paper presents a new conceptual model for not‐for‐profit international development projects that identifies different sets of success criteria and factors in the project life‐cycle phases and then provides the dynamic linkages among these criteria and factors. The model can serve as a basis to evaluate the project status and to forecast the results progressively throughout the stages. Thus, it helps the project management team and the key stakeholders prioritize their attention and scarce development resources to ensure successful project completion. Empirical data from a field survey conducted in selected Southeast Asian countries confirm the model's validity and also illustrate important managerial implications.     

“Agreeing to disagree” type results: a decision-theoretic approach

This paper explores interactive epistemology within Morris’ [S. Morris, Alternative definitions of knowledge, in: M.O.L. Bacharach, L.-A. Gerard-Varet, P. Mongin, H.S. Shin (Eds.), Epistemic Logic and the Theory of Games and Decisions, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, 1997, pp. 217–233] framework of knowledge. Specifically, this paper proves a generalized “agreeing to disagree” result. The major features of this formalization are: (i) non-expected utility receives a unified treatment; (ii) the information structure is not necessarily partitional; (iii) Aumann’s celebrated result of “agreeing to disagree” and Milgrom and Stokey’s well-known result of “no trade” are derived as special cases. This paper also presents some new extensions of the “no trade theorem”.     

The management of international development projects: Moving toward a standard approach or differentiation?

International cooperation supplies international aid to developing countries and emerging economies, typically through projects; to manage these projects, a specific approach based on the “project cycle” was introduced in 1970. In recent decades, many development agencies have adopted the project cycle, but they have also changed it over time, and today agencies work with different standards. In this article, the history of project management systems in international cooperation is reported, and the approaches adopted by five of the main worldwide governmental development agencies are compared. The analysis shows both the common aspects and differences in order to highlight limits and propose further research.     

Toward a more practical approach to evaluating programs: The Multi‐Objective Realization approach

Emerging trends indicate that programs are being used to deliver benefits that may not be fully harnessed from single sets of uncoordinated projects. To support this movement, it is essential to have suitable measurement frameworks to assess the contribution of these activities and supply decision makers with valuable data on whether their objectives are being realized. This paper introduces the Multi‐Objective Realization Method (MORE) to help measure the strategic contributions of programs. The main principles of MORE underline the importance of a formal strategy to elicit and develop program objectives and to frame those objectives within defined measurement dimensions.     

Knowledge maturity as a means to support decision making during product‐service systems development projects in the aerospace sector

Streamlining new product development forces companies to make decisions on preliminary information. This article considers this challenge within the context of project management in the aerospace sector and, in particular, for the development of product‐service systems. The concept of knowledge maturity is explored as a means to provide practical decision support, which increases decision makers' awareness of the knowledge base and supports cross‐boundary discussions on the perceived maturity of available knowledge, thereby identifying and mitigating limitations. Requirements are elicited from previous research on knowledge maturity in the aerospace industry, and a knowledge maturity model is developed through five industry‐based workshops.