Perspectives on Projects / Edition 1

by Rodney J. Turner, Martina Huemann, Frank T. Anbari, Christophe N. Bredillet

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415993739
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/24/2010
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Rodney Turner is Professor of Project Management at the Lille School of Management, France and at the Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, Ireland. He has also authored or edited thirteen books, written numerous articles for journals, conferences and magazines and is editor of The International Journal of Project Management.

Martina Huemann is a Researcher at Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria.

Frank Anbari is Professor of Project Management at Drexel University, USA. He is a board member on several journals on project management.

Christophe Bredillet is Deputy Director General and Dean of Postgraduate Programs & Research, at Lille School of Management, France. He is editor of the Project Management Journal.

Table of Contents

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

Editorial Reviews

"If you are looking for a nice overview of the generic and most common contemporary approaches to project management, or if you are quite sure that you are managing fairly well-known projects with little uncertainty, the book by Turner et al. will be a good choice." – KJELL TRYGGESTAD, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

From the Publisher