Project management bodies of knowledge (BOKs) have been published by professional project management associations for 10 to 15 years. They are enormously influential. Not only do they provide standards against which the association's certification programs are run, they are used by many practioners and companies as best practice guides to what the discipline comprises. There are two or three different BOK's. This paper reviews the status of BOKs and reports research on what topics should be included in the BOK. Conducted at the Centre of Research in the Management of Projects (CRMP) and through ongoing work on a Global framework sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and others. It concludes that, while a perfect BOK is a chimera, it is important to agree on the elements that should be in the professions BOK, and that the current initiatives are timely and should be given further support. The profession's BOK's have a particularly interesting relation to emerging work on project management competencies.

Australian construction projects today are usually more successful than information technology projects. One reason lies in the way construction companies manage project management. Based on in-depth research of four successful construction companies, this paper describes a project management-centred organisational form. It describes the organisational and management arrangements that support project performance and the individual and organisational capabilities that underpin sustained project success. This particular form of organisation is shown to be stable and effective because its constituent arrangements are logically consistent and mutually reinforcing. The authors show how many of these arrangements can be adopted by IT service firms and in-house IT organisations to improve their performance on projects.

Michel Thiry asks the following questions - Is program management a higher level of project management, is it a lower level of strategy management, tactical for example, or could it be a strategic decision management process? The Powerpoint presentation given at the January AIPM NSW Chapter Seminar.

Key to this project was a successful change management process including process ownership . Five factors were credited for project success: upper management sponsorship, link between project and corporate strategy, a quality management plan, communication planning and deployment, and encouragement of the end user. Hewlett-Packard (HP) Consulting led organizational acceptance through project management processes. Key elements to guiding the technology implementation and change effort were leadership, testing, recognition, and follow-up.
 

The author suggests that the current Programme Management paradigm is strictly performance-based. He aims to demonstrate that there is a need for both a performance and a learning process in the management of programmes. He suggests that value management can be combined with project management to form an integrated learning-performance programme management model. This will be developed by identifying some specific methods and techniques which can be used to implement such a model.

A project management methodology is a tool for project management work, and it is replaceable. Factors to consider when evaluating methodologies for your organization are: 1) Distinction between product management and project management 2) Size of project - methodology should be flexible 3) Comprehensiveness 4) Authority of project manager 5) Appropriateness for speed at which organization must produce.

Unless  otherwise indicated all of the references listed are available from the AIPM Information Resource Centre. Where possible all internet url's are provided or contact details for material not held by AIPM.

All requests for information, copies of papers, ideas, suggestions, comments, etc should be addressed to....
 
Marisa Pavan - Information Resource Manager
E-Mail: marisa@aipm.com.au
Phone: 02-9252 7277  /  Fax: 02-9252 7077
Address: Level 9, 139 Macquarie St, Sydney NSW 2000