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In the 21st century, there is a clear swift from hard systems approach of project management to soft factors, a demand for strategic thinking in projectmanagement (Buttrick, 2000), new success factors (Atkinson, 1999) andproject uncertainty management (Ward & Chapman, 2003). Broader projectmanagement theory and more intense research efforts are also a trend in thefield (Winter & Smith, 2005).Human beings have been executing projects from ancient times (Kwak,2003). From relocating a tribe to constructing enormous buildings such as thepyramids, projects were a dominant element of history. Not long ago, thoseinvolved in projects understood that they needed methods and processes tohelp them manage these projects more efficiently. To meet this need,scientists and practitioners worked together to form a new concept which wascalled «project management». According to the PMBOK’s definition "projectmanagement is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques toproject activities to meet project requirements". (A Guide to ProjectManagement Body of Knowledge, 2004). There are many different views inthe literature concerning the birth of project management. Maylor (2005)mentions that "project management in the way that we would understand ittoday did not exist until the 1950s" and Wideman (2001) tracks the first use of project management in the UK’s Institution of Civil Engineers report on UKpost war national development first published in 1944.Since then, there have been a lot of changes. "The hard systems approach,which treated the project as a mechanical activity, has been shown to beflawed" (Maylor, 2005). The soft skills of project management are getting moreattention because it is now clear that "the ability to apply these skillseffectively throughout the life cycle of a project will enhance the success of aproject exponentially" (Belzer). In spite of the perfect understanding of planning, scheduling and controlling, projects have still a high rate of failure.Belzer points out that "more often they fail because of a project manager’sinability to communicate effectively, work within the organization’s culture,motivate the project team, manage stakeholder expectations, understand thebusiness objectives, solve problems effectively, and make clear andknowledgeable decisions". To address these problems in the 21st century, aproject team needs to develop a series of soft skills such as "communication,team building, flexibility and creativity, leadership and the ability to managestress and conflict". (Sukhoo et. al, 2005).In addition, project management requires a stronger strategy orientation."More than 80 per cent of all problems at the project level are caused byfailures at a board level in firms to provide clear policy and priorities" (Maylor,2001). The approach that Maylor suggests is very different from the traditionallink between strategy and projects, as he proposes a "coherent, co-ordinated,focused, strategic competence in project management which eventuallyprovides source of competitive advantage". This two-way methodology thatrelates organisational and project strategy is illustrated in figure 1. To better understand the project’s strategy, there is also a need to analyse "theexperiences from past activities, politics during the pre-project phases,

parallel courses of events happening during project execution and ideas aboutthe post-project future" (Mats Engwall, 2002).Moreover, Maylor highlights a change in project’s success criteria, fromconformance to performance. In 1960s project managers seek to comply onlywith the documented specifications of the project, while current projectsrequire real performance. In other words, the success criteria of the 21stcentury as indicated by Maylor have changed to as short time as possible, ascheaply as possible and towards a maximum customer delight. Other academics imply nowadays a much simpler view of success criteria which isfocused only in keeping the client happy (Ferguson, 2005) in contrast with the90s view of just finishing the project on time and on budget.Changes in risk management are also one of the hot topics of projectmanagement in the new century. Ward (2003) propose the term «uncertaintymanagement» and recommends that a "focus on «uncertainty» rather thanrisk could enhance project risk management". Adams has an interesting viewof risk as he describes it as "a reflexive phenomenon – we respond toperceived probabilities and magnitudes, thereby altering them", a definitionthat differs from the traditional quantitive analysis of risk. Green broads evenmore the scope of risk management and includes the clients. He thinks that"the process of risk management only becomes meaningful through the activeparticipation of the client’s project stakeholders". In his point of view there is anew way of assessing risk management that "depends less upon probabilisticforecasting and more upon the need to maintain a viable political consistencywithin the client organisation".The conventional theory of project management consists of a narrow focus onprojects as unique and totally separated units of work. But current projectstend to be integrated smoothly in the general context of organizations in order to "develop the «management of project portfolios» and «programmemanagement» which are more strategically orientated towards «doing theright projects»" (Winter & Smith, 2005).It is common ground in the literature that the theory of project managementneeds more research. Koskela and Howell (2002) suggest that the theoreticalbase "has been implicit and it rests on a faulty understanding of the nature of work in projects, and deficient definitions of planning, execution and control".From their point of view, enrichment of project management with newmethods and techniques cannot be done with any stable theoreticalbackground. As a result, there is a trend of putting more effort in research andrethinking the way which «bodies of knowledge» is written so that complexprojects’ actions will be better documented.As a conclusion, we could use the words of D.T. Jones (2005) who writes that"project management is no longer about managing the sequence of stepsrequired to complete the project on time". He adds that "it is aboutsystematically incorporating the voice of the customer, creating a disciplinedway of prioritising effort and resolving trade-offs, working concurrently on allaspects of the projects in multi-functional teams".

References

1. A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge, 2004, 3rd Edition,Project Management Institute2. Adams, Review for THES Risk Decision and Policy, Cambridge UniversityPress, [Electronic]3. Atkinson, 1999, Project management: cost, time and quality, two bestguesses and a phenomenon, its time to accept other success criteria,International Journal of Project Management Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 337±342,[Electronic]4. Belzer, Project Management : Still More Art than Science, [Electronic]5. Buttrick, 2000, The project workout, 2nd edition6. Engwall, 2003, No project is an island: linking projects to history andcontext, Research Policy 32, pp. 789–808, [Electronic]7. Ferguson, 2005, First Tutorial on Strategic Management, Full Time MSc inProject Management, Lancaster University8. Green, Towards an integrated script for risk and value management,Department of Construction Management & Engineering, The University of Reading, UK9. Jones, 2005, Foreward to Maylor’s book Project Management, FT PrenticeHall, UK10. Koskela & Howell, 2002, The underlying theory of project management isobsolete, Project Management Institute, [Electronic]11. Kwak, 2003, The Story of Managing Projects, Quorum Books, [Electronic]12. Maylor, 2005, Project Management, FT Prentice Hall, UK13. Maylor, 2001, Beyond the Gantt Chart:: Project Management Moving on,European Management Journal Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 92–100, 2001, UK,[Electronic]14. Sukhoo, Barnard, Eloff, Van der Poll Accommodating Soft Skills inSoftware Project Management, Issues in Informing Science and InformationTechnology, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa, [Electronic]15. Ward, 2003, Transforming project risk management into projectuncertainty management, International Journal of Project Management vol.21,pp. 97–105, [Electronic]

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reply05 / 14 / 2009

Distinguishing Features of Project Management in the 21st Century

In the 21st century, there is a clear swift from hard systems approach of project management to soft factors, a demand for strategic thinking in project management, new success ... (More)

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