Unleashing the Power of Project Management
Part 1 - The Project Management Opportunity
By Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

Although projects have been around for thousands of years and project management as a discipline about fifty years, there are two reasons why projects and project management are becoming more and more important today to almost all organizations and businesses. First, the share of on-going operations in most organizations is on the decline, while the share of projects is rising. This trend began in the early 1900s during the industrial revolution, and it is accelerating in almost every organization or industry: Not only do product lifecycles become shorter, today’s customers require greater variety and more choices, forcing companies to offer more products. In addition, market globalization is forcing businesses to respond to local markets and to low-cost competition around the world.

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Unleashing the Power of Project Management
Part 2 - Why Managing a Project by the Book is Not Enough
By Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

The current techniques as used in the discipline of project management form the necessary basis for learning and understanding what project management is all about, but they are insufficient to guarantee a project’s success or to address the needs of today’s dynamic and uncertain projects.

We have seen projects that were managed exactly as required “by the book”--and still failed. They followed a structured process of planning and execution, which is common in the profession, and even when completed on time, they ended up in disappointment to management and clients. And we have observed other projects that did not follow any acceptable structure or process, or did not have a full plan with all its elements, and yet they turned out to be outstanding successes, bringing-in value and fame to their performing organizations and great satisfaction to their customers.

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Unleashing the Power of Project Management
Part 3 - What is Missing in Traditional Project Management
By Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

As mentioned in the previous article, the current, standard, and formal approach to project management is based on a predictable, fixed, relatively simple, and certain model. It is also generally decoupled from the changes in the environment or the business needs; once you created the project plan, this plan sets out the objectives for the project, and the project manager must execute the plan, using a “management-as-planned” philosophy. After the project is launched, progress and performance are assessed against the plan and changes to the plan should be rare, and if possible avoided. Consider the following two major drivers of project management today:

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Unleashing the Power of Project Management
Part 4 - The New Adaptive Project Management Framework
By Dr. Aaron J. Shenhar

Based on our research we suggest changing the paradigm of project management and accepting things as they are. The new framework is success-focused, flexible, and adaptive, and we can simply call it the “Adaptive Project Management Model;” it differs from the traditional approach in several ways, as shown in Table 1.  

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