Is project management content as generic as its name?

Generally giving a definition and boundary for project management is very difficult! Even giving a definition for management is very challenging. I just want to talk about some reflection about project management content as an insider.The term project management is used a lot for describing the management of activities which are done for assignments and works in the format of projects. But I have recognized that a lot of this area referred to as project management body of knowledge is actually based on the construction industry practices. It does not mean that project management in construction industry is more advanced than the other industries but because of certain characteristics of this industry the project management practices in this industry is more standardized and formalized. For example earned value, CPM, change control systems are very applicable in construction industry than in NPD or software development. This is also recognizable in how PMI and APM is promoting this knowledge area. Both PMI and APM body of knowledge are biased to construction industry. Looking to International Journal of Project management you can also see the large proportion of publications related to construction indutry while other industries are not much present.In fact the imbalance toward construction industry can only be attributed to differences in types of operations. Construction is low technology, labor intensive and require large capital. It is very difficult for project workers for example in software development to use the same methods used in construction. Fundamentally it is very difficult to plan very rigidly(as it is in construction) in software development. Software development is high technology, complex and include many uncertainties.We see in many non-construction industries that the managers demand their employees to deploy project management methods while PM body of knowledge is not actually designed for them. Project management is a fascinating general term but actually it is not in content!

Line of Balance(LOB)

Line-of–Balance (LOB) method is a project planning and control method which in projects with repetitive nature has proved to be more efficient than the network techniques like CPM and Petri-nets. Much of the reason for superiority of LOB to other planning methods is because it considers an additional dimension (unit of production) in the representation of the activities. Unfortunatly this method is not well introduced in the Project Management litrature. The following references are recommended for the readers:

Arditi, D., P. Sikangwan, et al. (2002). "Scheduling system for high rise building construction." Construction Management and Economics 20: 353-364.

Arditi, D., O. Tokdemir, et al. (2002). "Challenges in Line-of-Balance Scheduling." Journal of Construction and Engineering Management 128(6): 545-556.

Harris, R. B. and P. G. Ioannou (1998). Repetitive Scheduling Method. UMCEE Report No.98-35. Ann Arbor, University of Michigan.

Lumsden, P. (1968). The line-of-balance method. Oxford, Pergamon Press.

Mendes, R., L. Fernando, et al. (1998). Replanning Method for Multi-Story Building Construction using Line of Balance. International Group of Lean Construction Conference.

Currently I am writing a teaching case study which describes a real case where application of LOB has been proved to be beneficial. The case study is in review and will soon appear in ECCH case study collections. visit http://www.ecch.com/

Unfortunatly the most well known project management softwares like MS Project and Primavera do not provide any feature to develop LOB plans. The most well developted software for LOB in my appinion is Dynaproject from Graphisoft. Visit http://www.dss.fi/

See the video about the founders of PMI

Management Flight Simulators

Management Flight Simulators are the game programs mainly based on System Dynamics principles to train managers to experience and deal with circumstances mimicing the real world. The management flight simulators help managers to learn better decision making in an environment which allows making mistakes and mistakes are costless. The best known of this simulators is People Express Management Simulator developted by MIT. I have recently started to develop a Management Flight Simulator for Project Managers making decisons in multiproject environements. I will keep here posted when the development completes.

Risk versus Uncertainty

In the project management you would hear a lot about management of risk or risk assessment which is basically about taking measures to prevent being less affected by bad events. But is "Uncertainty" the same thing? What is the difference between the risk and uncertainty. For many risk and uncertainty is the same thing. However I think uncertainty is a more general term. Risk is something which you know it but you don't know when, where and how it will happen and how you will be affected. Uncertainty is about lack of information. It can be a risk which you don't know much information about it, but it encompass much more things. Uncertainty can exist in the requirements of the project, uncertainty can exist in that you don't know who is your project stakeholders or uncetainty may exist in that you don't know how your customer will be satisfied with the outcome of the project. Management of risk is comparatively well addressed in project management but management of uncertainty is still an undeveloped area in ptoject management.

World Class Projects: South Pars

South Pars, Qatar North Field, Iran
The Iranian South Pars field is the northern extension of Qatar's giant North Field. It covers an area of 500 square miles and is located 3,000m below the seabed at a water depth of 65m. The Iranian side accounts for 10% of the world's and 60% of Iran's total gas reserves. Iran's portion of the field contains an estimated 436 trillion ft³.
The field is planned to be developed in around 30 phases, each of which will require an initial investment of around $1 billion. The first 12 phases of the development are underway and will have the capacity of 1 billion ft³ and 40,000 barrels of condensate per day.

The large investment in development of this gas are in the form of many multi million dollars projects. Project Management jobs and competencies are in high demand in this region!

"Program", "Project Portfolio" and "Multi-project": Are they the same?

I found that the three terms: "program", "project portfolio" and "multi-project" have large overlappings in the concepts they refer to and at the same time they are different. This is my perception of the following concepts based on the academic litrature and my experiences:

In ocnstruction industry the differences between a project and a program is well known. A program is a package of projects which all together satisfy an objective. For example the construction of the Terminal 5 in Heathrow Airport(London) is a program. It consist of many projects which may be linked or not to each other but the final objective is to provide travel services to the passengers and Airliners in the this airport.

The term "project portfolio" is mostly heard when looking to the organization from finance and from strategic perspective. There are businesses which their operations are in the form of projects. These projects are not neccessary related to each other but they all together creat revenues for the company. Imagine a company like Arup. This engineering compnay is involved in many projects around the glob which are some related and some unrelated to each other. The main discussion when it comes to project portfolio is about how to select the best projects, what combination of the projects are best for the company profitibility and the scheduling of the projects to best utilize the company capacities.

Multi-project is usually refers to the environments where different projects in a company have something in common; for example the location, the resources, the business and so on. However I admit that this term is confounding in meaning with the "project portfolio" and program. This term is usually used by the practitioners and researchers when they are talking about the projects in micro level/operations level. Usually the questions of complexity, productivity, team work problems, communication, planning and control problems are mentioned in connection to multi-project environements.

Introducing the R&D Society

The Research and Development Society is a UK-based organisation formed to promote the better understanding of R&D in all its forms. It holds regular evening meetings at the Royal Society in London and runs a special interest group on innovation and R&D Management Best Practice.

visit: http://www.rdsoc.org/