面向客户的项目管理过程

客户关系作为项目管理过程中的重要方面需要引起项目实施团队的高度重视,面向客户的项目管理过程是在项目实施中管理客户关系的有效方法。本文探讨了客户关系在项目过程中的重要性,根据客户在项目实施过程中的角色及项目过程中项目团队与客户间的常见冲突,结合项目实施的五大管理过程提出在项目实施过程中进行客户关系管理的主要工作。     

Managing Outsourced Software Projects: An Analysis of Project Performance and Customer Satisfaction

We examine the drivers of project performance and customer satisfaction in outsourced software projects using a proprietary panel dataset. The data cover 822 customer observations related to 182 unique projects executed by an India‐based software services vendor. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, we investigate how project planning, team stability, and communication effectiveness impact project performance and customer satisfaction. We delineate the direct and interactive influences of the antecedent variables. We also examine how these influences are moderated by two important project contexts: (a) the nature of software work (maintenance and development vs. testing projects) and (b) project maturity (new vs. mature projects). Among other results, we demonstrate that, when project planning capabilities are high, the positive impact of team stability and communication effectiveness on project performance is even higher. In addition, our results suggest that the impact of communication on project performance is muted when team stability is high. Finally, we also demonstrate that the impact of the antecedent variables on project performance varies with the nature of software work. Our findings offer specific and actionable insights to managers that can help them manage outsourced projects better, and open up new research perspectives in the context of outsourced project management.     

跨地域ERP项目管理控制的应用研究

ERP项目的实施很难,而负责一个跨地域的ERP项目就更难。这需要项目经理具有项目管理经验的同时,还应该采用一些先进的项目管理工具以及高效的项目沟通手段解决跨地域带来的项目沟通问题。本文介绍了Project 2003以及远程控制软件Radmin在项目管理上的应用实例,对同类项目的管理控制有一定的启发和帮助。     

On the strategic project management process in the UK upstream oil and gas sector

This paper reports on an investigation into strategic project management in the UK upstream oil and gas sector. The management process is represented by a set of elements which covers context, content and output and are balanced across financial, internal business, external environment, and learning and innovation perspectives. The paper uncovers elements that appear to explain successful project management and compares these with the elements to which managers pay greatest attention. There appears to be a mismatch between those elements which are associated with success and those receiving significant management attention.     

Order Management in the Customization‐Responsiveness Squeeze*

Make‐to‐order (MTO) products may be either customized or standard, and customization can occur either at the configuration or component level. Consequently, MTO production processes can be divided into three customization gestalts: non‐customizers, custom assemblers, and custom producers. In this article, we examine how the multilevel nature of customization affects order management in processes that produce complex MTO products. We first empirically validate the existence of the three customization gestalts and subsequently, analyze the order management challenges and solutions in each gestalt in a sample of 163 MTO production processes embedded in seven different supply chains. In the analyses, we follow a mixed‐methods approach, combining a quantitative survey with qualitative interview data. The results show that important contingencies make different order management practices effective in different gestalts. Further qualitative inquiry reveals that some seemingly old‐fashioned practices, such as available‐to‐promise verifications, are effective but commonly neglected in many organizations. The results also challenge some of the conventional wisdom about custom assembly (and indirectly, mass customization). For example, the systematic configuration management methods—conventionally associated with project business environments—appear to be equally important in custom assembly.     

Lean in Swedish agriculture: strategic and operational perspectives

The purpose of this article is to present and test a framework for lean implementation in the agricultural sector, addressing challenges from an operational and strategical perspective. The article builds on the previous literature on the use of Lean and reports empirical data from a lean implementation project in the south-western Sweden, including interviews, observations, diaries and questionnaires. A framework is developed to examine strategic and operational perspectives on Lean Thinking. Using this framework, a number of challenges encountered in Lean implementation are presented. This article is limited to the study of Lean among a group of Swedish farms although its findings may have implications for the wider agricultural sectors. Many societal challenges are linked with agricultural sustainability, stressing the need for productive, resource-efficient, resilient and less wasteful food production. This article is the first to develop and test a Lean implementation framework in the agriculture sector.     

The Effectiveness of Risk Management: An Analysis of Project Risk Planning Across Industries and Countries

This article examines the effectiveness of current risk management practices to reduce project risk using a multinational, multi‐industry study across different scenarios and cultures. A survey was administered to 701 project managers, and their supervisors, in seven industries and three diverse countries (New Zealand, Israel, and Japan), in multiple languages during the 2002–2007 period. Results of this study show that project context—industry and country where a project is executed—significantly impacts perceived levels of project risk, and the intensity of risk management processes. Our findings also suggest that risk management moderates the relationship between risk level and project success. Specifically, we found that even moderate levels of risk management planning are sufficient to reduce the negative effect risk levels have on project success.     

Mapping IS failure factors on PRINCE2® stages: an application of Interpretive Ranking Process (IRP)

The social, political and cultural issues faced by organisations and their senior management team in the delivery and adoption of strategic projects, is highly complex and problematic. Despite a mature body of literature, increasing levels of practitioner certification, application of standards and numerous government initiatives, improvements in success have been minimal. In this study, we analyse the key underlying factors surrounding the failure of Information Systems (IS) projects and explore the merits of articulating a narrative that focuses on senior management embracing practical pessimism. Specifically, we develop a hypothesis supported by empirical study that leverages expert’s views on the dominance and interrelationships between failure factors within PRINCE2® project stages using an Interpretive Ranking Process. Our findings establish how the concept of dominance between individual failure factors can necessitate senior management to make key informed and timely decisions that could potentially influence project outcomes based on an empirical derived, interpretive predictive framework.     

基于活动敏感性的动态缓冲监控方法研究

缓冲监控问题对于企业成功应用关键性项目管理,提高项目进度管理绩效和确保项目按时完工,都至关重要。本文针对现有缓冲监控方法在项目进度监控中所存在的忽视内部情况的问题,引入项目进度风险分析方法中的活动敏感性信息。研究了动态环境下活动敏感性指标的计算和监控阀值的设定,在缓冲的黄区监控中集成了考虑活动敏感信息的动态监控过程。在综合考虑缓冲指标和活动关联度指标的监控指标体系,综合设置各指标的监控阀值的基础上,提出了基于活动敏感性信息的关键链动态缓冲监控方法。最后通过一个算例将所提方法与现有方法进行比较,实验结果表明,合理设置活动关联度的监控阀值后,所提方法在总赶工时间、总赶工活动数、超计划完工次数以及监控负荷这四个绩效方面的结果更优。     

关键链动态缓冲监控方法研究

缓冲管理是约束理论的一个重要管理方法,重要的监控机制和管理手段。本文针对项目执行的动态环境,提出了动态缓冲监控法。它根据项目的实际执行情况,来动态计算缓冲大小,动态设定监控点,动态调整两个监控触发点的高低,从而实时衡量项目实际进度和初始计划之间的差异,以便让项目经理及时采取正确的行动使得项目最终按时完工。最后,通过一个算例,将本文方法和CCPM中的绝对缓冲监控法和相对缓冲监控法进行了比较,验证了本文所提方法的有效性和实用性。     

点线面项目管理法研究

作为项目的组织管理者,时刻都要应对繁杂的项目内容,如何实施高效的项目管理模式是社会各界都在努力研究的课题。项目的失败犹如一个几何体的坍塌,项目的失败原因往往集中在以下三个方面:关键点出现问题;违背项目实施程序;决策界面和执行层面出现问题。基于此,提出点线面项目管理法。该方法的核心内容是:寻找项目实施过程中的关键点,并制定关键点的预控措施;建立项目实施过程中的程序控制线;强化项目实施过程中的决策界面和执行层面管理。     

Task Design,Team Context,and Psychological Safety: An Empirical Analysis of R&D Projects in High Technology Organizations

High technology organizations need to develop new products or processes that address the dual goals of exploration and exploitation. The competing viewpoints and the asymmetric nature of market returns associated with these goals in R&D projects can heighten stress levels among project team members and reduce their psychological safety. While current research calls for greater focus on task design for improving psychological safety, we know little about how team contextual factors affect this relationship. This study develops and tests a conceptual framework that examines the moderating role of R&D team contextual factors, namely, relative exploration and project‐organization metric alignment on the relationship between a key task design variable, namely, team autonomy, and psychological safety. Relative exploration captures the extent to which exploration goals are emphasized over exploitation goals in an R&D project, while project‐organization metric alignment measures the extent to which project metrics are aligned with broader organizational metrics. Furthermore, we examine the performance consequences of psychological safety in R&D projects. The empirical analysis is conducted using primary data collected from multiple informants across 110 R&D projects in 34 high technology business units. Our results indicate that relative exploration and project‐organization metric alignment have contrasting moderating effects. Furthermore, the effect of psychological safety on project performance is found to be indirect and mediated through team turnover. Implications of the study findings, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.     

Managing Cost Salience and Procrastination in Projects: Compensation and Team Composition

The rising trend of projects with high‐skilled and autonomous contributors increasingly exposes managers to the risk of idiosyncratic individual behaviors. In this article, we examine the effects of an important behavioral factor, an individual's cost salience. Cost salience leads individuals to perceive the cost of immediate effort to be larger than the cost of future effort. This leads to procrastination in early stages and back‐loaded effort over the course of the project. We model the problem confronting the manager of a project whose quality is adversely impacted by such distortion of individual effort over time. Complementary to prior works focused on the planning and scheduling tasks of project management in the absence of human behavior, we find that managers should reward contributions made in earlier stages of a project. Our analysis also yields interesting insights on the project team performance: teams with diverse levels of cost salience will perform better than homogeneous teams. We also address another important facet of team composition, namely, the choice between stable and fluid teams, and find that the practice of creating fluid teams might have previously unrecognized benefits when behavioral aspects of projects are considered. We conclude with insights and organizational implications for project managers.     

The front-end of projects: a systematic literature review and structuring

Abstract

This paper summarizes the results of a comprehensive systematic literature survey on the front-end of a project, commissioned by the Project Management Institute. The dedicated literature on the front-end is sparse: although the front-end has been shown to be critical to the strategic success of the project, this phase of the lifecycle is not well understood. This paper presents the literature on the concept of the front-end, and defines a temporarily ordered structure of generic processes that form the ‘front-end’ and how these fit together as a coherent whole. These start from the preliminaries to the initiative, then the project purpose (for various stakeholders), the initial analysis and scenario analysis; the analysis of alternatives and choice of project concept; assessment of the project, finishing with setting up project execution. It summarises the recent literature at each of these elements in turn, specifically as they relate to the front-end.     

Modeling External Risks in Project Management

To ascertain the viability of a project, undertake resource allocation, take part in bidding processes, and other related decisions, modern project management requires forecasting techniques for cost, duration, and performance of a project, not only under normal circumstances, but also under external events that might abruptly change the status quo. We provide a Bayesian framework that provides a global forecast of a project's performance. We aim at predicting the probabilities and impacts of a set of potential scenarios caused by combinations of disruptive events, and using this information to deal with project management issues. To introduce the methodology, we focus on a project's cost, but the ideas equally apply to project duration or performance forecasting. We illustrate our approach with an example based on a real case study involving estimation of the uncertainty in project cost while bidding for a contract.     

Exploring the Conceptual Foundation of Continuity Management in the Context of Societal Safety

Public and private actors with critical roles for ensuring societal safety need to work proactively to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. Traditionally, risk management activities have often been performed in order to ensure continuous functioning of key societal services. Recently, however, business continuity management (BCM), and its analytical subcomponent business impact assessment (BIA), has been introduced and used more extensively by both the private and public sector in order to increase the robustness and resilience of critical infrastructures and societal functions and services. BCM was originally developed in the business sector but has received a broader use during the last decade. Yet, BCM/BIA has gained limited attention in the scientific literature—especially when it comes to clarifying and developing its conceptual basis. First, this article examines and discusses the conceptual foundation of BCM concepts, including practical challenges of applying the concepts. Based on recent conceptual developments from the field of risk management, a developed conceptualization is suggested. Second, the article discusses challenges that arise when applying BCM in the societal safety area and provides some recommendations aiming to improve the clarity and quality of applications. Third, the article provides suggestions of how to integrate the overlapping approaches of BIA and risk assessment in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness of proactive, analytic processes. We hope that the article can stimulate a critical discussion about the key concepts of BCM, their wider use in societal safety, and their connection to other concepts and activities such as risk assessment.     

Information systems project failure – analysis of causal links using interpretive structural modelling

The analysis of the root causes of information systems project failure has been the subject of intense scrutiny for some time within industry and the academic community. Researchers have developed various models, notions of failure and categorisations to succinctly classify project failure into a set of key factors for organisations and project managers to focus on in their attempts to avoid failure. This study incorporates a technique titled: interpretive structural modelling as the methodology to formalise the relationships between the selected failure factors. This approach is positioned as a mechanism that can yield greater insights into the relationships between the factors surrounding project failure, thereby developing a better understanding of how these relationships can have a bearing on project outcomes. The findings identify key driving variables that are presented as having significant impact on the other factors within the model. A number of variables are also identified as being heavily dependent on other connected factors highlighting that a failure in one or more of these connected factors is likely to result in a failure in one or more of the dependent factors unless timely steps are taken to address these key issues. This research details a number of practical implications for senior management and project managers as well as the academic community. These considerations form an underlying thread within this study as specific practice-related implications are highlighted and discussed throughout the study.     

科技类评审中项目选择的两阶段综合集成方法

科技类评审中,如何合理地选择出若干优秀项目加以资助或激励至关重要。本文研究了科技类评审中的项目选择问题,指出在目前通行的两阶段评议法中存在通讯评议阶段的决策信息不能有效传递到会议评议阶段的情况,应采用适当的方法将两个阶段专家给出的评价信息进行综合处理,以得到更为合理的项目评审结果,进而给出了两阶段综合集成的框架与具体方法。算例表明,可以更充分的利用两阶段的专家评价信息,得到满意的选择结果。     

关键链项目实时滚动监控方法研究

为提高项目的按时完工率，研究了一种实时滚动的动态缓冲监控方法。新方法充分考虑了项目不确定性的变化以及各活动之间的联系，基于活动的风险暴露度对缓冲总量进行分配，并根据缓冲量的实际消耗情况，将各监控点的缓冲监控剩余量按照活动风险权重因子进行实时滚动和再分配，对用于监控的缓冲量和监控基准点进行实时动态调整。仿真实验表明，该方法可以减少错误预警的产生和因此耗费的额外成本和时间，极大地提高项目的完工概率。     

Integrated Management Systems — Opportunities and Risks for Corporate Environmental Protection

Environmental protection in companies is increasingly carried out using Integrated Management Systems (IMS). Based on empirical results, this article examines how IMS can be designed and how the integration affects corporate environmental protection. In particular, we discuss the findings of four empirical studies, which surveyed experiences of German and European companies.Our work shows, that the success of corporate environmental protection does not depend on whether the company has implemented a separate environmental management system or an IMS. What is crucial is the rank of environmental protection within the company's system of objectives. In case of goal conflicts, decision criteria in agreement with the company's system of objectives have to be formulated. Furthermore, the IMS model can have an effect on this issue. The results of a pilot project in the automobile sector are discussed to illustrate how to implement such an IMS on the basis of ISO 14001.Compared to isolated environmental management systems, IMS can even improve environmental protection, because ecological criteria can be considered from the beginning when designing customer-oriented products and processes.