BeingL_S — Being Lean and Seen: Meeting the challenges of delivering projects successfully in the 21st century

Results in brief

Being Lean and Seen: Meeting the challenges of delivering projects successfully in the 21st century

The advancement of project management (PM) knowledge and the development of people’s PM capability is crucial to successful project delivery. Our programme was designed to put building blocks in place to enable PM to respond to the challenges it faces in delivering projects successfully in the 21st century. It does this by taking a multi-disciplinary perspective encompassing PM, lean management, psycho-social aspects, innovation and change management. The building blocks comprised: 1) PM efficiency (being Lean), 2) PM systems that meet the psycho-social needs of project staff (being Seen) and 3) making PM responsive to the need of organisations to be innovative and manage change (being Lean and Seen). Different country contexts of project delivery are included to reflect the global interconnectedness of projects. A network of five academic and five non-academic partners collaborated to deliver the holistic PM framework to guide project delivery. The role of different PM practices, contexts, systems and delivery approaches were explored through the collection of primary and secondary data. Knowledge of theoretical perspectives from different disciplines, which largely resided in the academic partners, was combined with the practical knowledge of project environments, largely residing in the non-academic partners, to develop the holistic framework. Work was organised through seven work packages, which are now complete. The project has generated knowledge in: • The challenges to the successful delivery of projects in forms that are both understandable to, and actionable by, the wider PM community; • The role of relevant management practices in tackling the challenges to the successful delivery of projects; • The distinctions in PM system design and delivery within the context of developed and developing countries. It provides an evidence-base for the mix of management practices required for effective and efficient PM. It promotes a multi-disciplinary perspective in the design and implementation of PM systems and in the advancement of PM Bodies of Knowledge.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

The advancement of project management (PM) knowledge and the development of PM capability of people is crucial to the successful delivery of projects. As the overall project-related spending in the EU is assumed to be about € 3.27 trillion there are huge societal and economic challenges of reducing the massive financial and psychological costs of poor project delivery. Especially as about 6% of all projects are believed to be wholly unsuccessful, many of them tax-payer funded. Our programme is designed to put building blocks in place to enable PM to respond to the challenges it faces in delivering projects successfully in the 21st century. It does this by taking a multi-disciplinary perspective encompassing PM, lean management, psycho-social aspects, innovation and change management. The building blocks will have three broad pillars: one focused on PM efficiency (being Lean), one on PM systems that meet the psycho-social needs of project staff (being Seen) and one on making PM responsive to the need of organisations to be innovative and manage change (being Lean and Seen). The programme will cater for different contexts of project delivery in developed and developing countries, to reflect the global and interconnectedness nature of projects. A network of five academic partners, including one from a developing country and five non-academic, will deliver the holistic PM framework to guide project delivery in the future. They will investigate the role of different management practices in PM contexts and the distinctions in PM system design and delivery in different contexts. Data will be collected through a multiple method approach including in-depth reviews of the literatures, secondary data sources, cross-sectional surveys, case studies, focus groups, Delphi and interviews. Innovation will take place by bringing together the knowledge of theoretical perspectives from different disciplines, which largely reside in the academic partners, with the practical knowledge

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES UNIVERSITY · LIVERPOOLCoordinatorUnited Kingdom
AIMES GRID SERVICES COMMUNITY INTEREST COMPANY · LiverpoolUnited Kingdom
DREES & SOMMER SE · StuttgartGermany
HOCHSCHULE FUR TECHNIK STUTTGART · StuttgartGermany
HTWG HOCHSCHULE KONSTANZ TECHNIK WIRTSCHAFT UND GESTALTUNG · KonstanzGermany
PROJECT FIVE CONSULTING LIMITED · ChesterUnited Kingdom
REFINE PROJECTS AG · StuttgartGermany
TCI TRANSFORMATION CONSULTING INTERNATIONAL GMBH · MannheimGermany
THE MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY · MANCHESTERUnited Kingdom
THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL · LIVERPOOLUnited Kingdom
UNIVERSITI SAINS MALAYSIA* · PenangMalaysia
UNIVERSITY OF STUTTGART · StuttgartGermany

BeingL_S · Being Lean and Seen: Meeting the challenges of delivering projects successfully in the 21st century

Results in brief

Being Lean and Seen: Meeting the challenges of delivering projects successfully in the 21st century

Project objective

Participants

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