Perspectives on Projects

Modern project management had its genesis in the field of operations research in the late 1940s, but today it is a much more diverse subject. It has evolved and developed a much wider range of methods, techniques, and skills that the project manager can draw upon.



Not all these skills are relevant to every project, but an assortment of them will be relevant to most. This book aims to describe for students, researchers and managers the full range of skills that project managers can use to develop their methodologies. The authors group the skills into nine perspectives, representing nine schools of project management research and theory. By attaching a metaphor to each of these perspectives, students, researchers and managers are better able to understand each approach and decide whether it is best suited to the development of a strategy for managing their project.



Perspectives on Projects builds upon the various theoretical orientations that the field of project management has developed. Featuring several case studies, drawn from a variety of settings, to illustrate how the different schools can provide different perspectives on projects, this book is an ideal text for anyone involved in project management.

1. The Diversity of Projects and Project Management Part 1: The Nine Perspectives 2. Optimization: The Project as a Machine 3. Modelling: The Project as a Mirror 4. Success: The Project as an Objective 5. Governance: The Project as a Legal Entity 6. Behaviour: The Project as a Social System 7. Marketing: The Project as a Billboard 8. Process: The Project as an Algorithm 9. Decision: The Project as a Computer 10. Contingency: The Project as a Chameleon Part 2: The Three Case Studies 11. Using the Nine Perspectives 12. The North-South Metro Line: Managing in Crowded Historic Amsterdam 13. The LAS Story: Learning from Failure 14. ABS International: Sustainable Project Management