Are We Getting Any Better? Comparing Project Management in the Years 2000 and 2008

1345 Words6 Pages
This paper presents a study on the progress of project management. Descriptions of projects from 2000 and 2008 are studied. The study concludes that the field of project management is moving ahead. Project team members are more knowledgeable about project work, project objectives are more clearly expressed, project organization is more appropriate, most work processes are improved, and team members experience project work as rewarding and are more motivated for future projects. However, the project results are not fully satisfactory. It is shown that stakeholders’ satisfaction could be improved by better decision processes, better management and leadership, and closer cooperation with the stakeholders. Project management as a professional discipline is a young field. It is interesting to see how it has developed and continues to change. Researches point out five directions for future research (project complexity, social process, value creation, project conceptualization, and practitioner development). Three views for project management research that may evolve as central in the next few years (the strategic/business view, the operational/process view, and the team/leadership view). Many researches are available that shed light on the development of the discipline of project management. This study is intended not to discuss project success over the years, it is essential that a distinction is made between project success and the success of the project management effort, bearing in mind that good project management can contribute towards project success but is unlikely to be able to prevent failure. However, it is challenging to determine which aspects of project management one should look into to ascertain whether the discipline is improving. One idea would be to look at different Bodies of Knowledge (BoKs) but these BoKs have “ontological differences. We might
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