The Evolution of Project Management Practice From Programmes and Contracts to Benefits and Change Routledge Frontiers in Project Management Series

Project practice has undergone significant changes requiring new ways of thinking about and managing projects. The single focus on the staged delivery of artefacts is gradually being replaced by a wider interest in stakeholders, value, benefits, and complexity. As a result there is a growing interest in the development of practitioner capabilities, grounded in the recognition that dealing with permeable boundaries and unstructured situations transcends normative processes. Modern practitioners increasingly utilise deliberative and reflective approaches, often challenging received wisdom and traditional interpretations.

This volume provides a sampling of some of the best writing in the project domain, enabling readers to access a wider group of authors, ideas, and perspectives. Key topics covered include agility and programme management, planning, people, business cases, contracts, teams, sponsorship, collaboration, strategy, patterns, context, change, and benefits.

The main aims of the collection are to reflect on the state of practice within the discipline; to propose new extensions and additions to good practice; to offer new insights and perspectives; to distil new knowledge; and, to provide a way of sampling a range of the most promising ideas, perspectives and styles of writing from some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the discipline.

List of figures List of tables About the editor Notes on contributors Introduction: the evolution of project practice Darren Dalcher 1. Programme management The temporal boundaries of projects and programmes Darren Dalcher New developments in programme management Michel Thiry 2. Planning Why planning is more important than plans Darren Dalcher Foresight saga: pursuing insight through chaos and disaster Mike Lauder 3. People Rethinking the social element of projects Darren Dalcher The social project manager: balancing collaboration with centralised control in a project-driven world Peter Taylor 4. Business case Business cases, benefits, and potential value Darren Dalcher The case for project net present value (NPV) and NPV risk models Martin Hopkinson 5. Contracts Thinking in contracts: the role of intelligent procurement Darren Dalcher Planning for contract management Louise Hart 6. Teams Thinking teams, performing teams, and sustaining teams Darren Dalcher VUCA and the power of emergence teams Tom Cockburn and Peter A. C. Smith 7. Sponsorship The unspoken role of sponsors, champions, shapers, and influencers Darren Dalcher Exercising agency: making a difference in how projects are initiated Mark Mullaly 8. Collaboration The essence of collaboration Darren Dalcher Leading extreme projects: strategy, risk, and resilience in practice Alejandro Arroyo and Thomas Grisham 9. Strategy Thinking in patterns: problems, solutions, and strategies Darren Dalcher Bridging the gap: effective transition from strategy development to strategy execution Lucy Loh and Patrick Hoverstadt 10. Context Why situational awareness remains essential Darren Dalcher An introduction to a typology of projects Oliver F. Lehmann 11. Change Living with the inherent paradox of change Darren Dalcher Enterprise-wide transformation programmes do not succeed without change management! Sankaran Ramani 12. Benefits So where do benefits come from? Darren Dalcher Managing programme benefits Andrew Hudson Conclusion Darren Dalcher Index

Darren Dalcher is Professor of Project Management at the University of Hertfordshire. He has written over 200 papers and book chapters and published over 30 books. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Software: Evolution and Process and of two established book series published by Routledge.