Mapping the Future for Project Management as a Discipline – For more Focused Research Efforts

Despite the large number of successfully delivered projects and programmes, the failure rate remains unacceptably high. Project related practice has been the subject of research for well over 30 years and there is a significant educational programme to support practitioners, increased focus on standards and alignment with organisational strategy and increased awareness of behavioural aspects, but still projects fail, often spectacularly. A paradigm shift is needed and alternative approaches are necessary to achieve that shift. As Kuhn shows, such change is often driven by new forms of thinking and by those not steeped in the traditions of a professional discipline.Projects are seen as sociological in nature and sensitive in context: concerned with people, their effective performance and team behaviour. We argue that these factors require new ways of looking for solutions to problems and that this will lead to developing new approaches to PPP management in the future. In assessing ideas that might be needed in the future, some researchers have examined the past history of projects but we propose to move the profession forward by drawing upon IPMA's unique strengths and worldwide resources, views, cultural differences and patterns of thinking to drive new approaches. We conclude that a Project Management Think Tank is needed to achieve the necessary paradigm shift. It will need to draw on enabling technologies as well as range of talented thinkers who are able to bring new ideas to the table and synthesise these ideas into pragmatic concepts for practitioners to test.