Research Agenda in Project Management

Introduction

Project management orientation entails planning, controlling, initiation process, and closing of the process to achieve the objectives and goals that guide the success analogy. A project entails designing a product or service to attain a given result with a basic starting point and ending time. Project management faces many challenges, and to attain its objectives, it needs a guideline that can be followed by the team working under the project manager (Di Maddaloni and Davis, 2017). All the information that pertains to a specific project is documented at the start of the development. The project’s primary focus is usually the time, quality, scope, and budget. The secondary focus includes the challenges that are most likely to be faced during the project and finding ways of neutralizing the optimization framework.

The optimization can be using previous ways of tackling a problem in the previous project that made it successful. For the project to be completed successfully, the project management team must execute objectives that the stakeholders need. Christophe N. Bredillet proposed the following modes in outlining the project management vector. There presentations posed by the author in the six-part series contextualizes the project management research agenda and it develops the literature of understanding the main matrix of the project advancements.

Identifying the Context of the Project Management Research Agenda as Aiscussed by Christophe N. Bredillet in a Six-Part Series Published in Project Management Journal

The modernity incorporated by the project management notates as a subsidy of the research agenda. Many techniques are adopted to optimize the operations, look developed, and absorb the wide variety in the nine schools of ideologies (Kerzner, 2020). To support the development spectrum, the community that runs the project research must be recognized by the academic community as a complete team that can tackle various challenges (Bredillet, 2008). The recognition will allow the academicians to track their projects and guide them on the advancements in each area of their expertise. Every day there is a technological mileage that must be absorbed in projects across the globe, and there is a need for constant updates. This is the ethics of lifelong learning and ensuring the projects are done with ease and speed.

Identifying Different Perspectives in This Research Agenda

Nine perspectives have been approved for use in the research agenda. These are:

• Optimization School: The modern project managements are affiliated to the fields of operations that date back to the:

The 1940s. Optimization school uses the networking techniques such as the critical path methods (CPM) and program evaluation and review technique (PERT). Both the CPM and PERT are the geneses of modern project management realism (Bredillet, 2008). Many scientific fields or science-related projects use the optimization school.

• Modelling School: Modern project management ideologies moved from optimizing one or two objectives, such as time and cost, to modeling the whole system contained in the project management scheme. Modernity has made it possible for the project management team to focus on interactions with components of the project systems, making it easier for the whole project to take shape subjectively.
• Governance School: The framework that guides the governance school is two basic activities. The first burst investigates the relationship between contract management and project management, while the second burst looks at the governance of a specific project. The focus on a particular project enables the organization to predict its orientation or ensure that it is taken seriously in each department that contributes to its success.
• Behavior School: The behavior school is linked to the governance school because it takes the premises of a project to look like a temporary organization in a social system. The focus areas include team building and leadership orientation, communication channels, and human resource management docket.
• Success School: The focus of success school is based on the success or failures of the project. When a project is termed as successful, it has passed the success literature and other components such as the project success factor and criteria (Bredillet, 2008). The project success factors increase the likelihood of basic elements that govern the project having independent variables. The project success criteria measure the success of the outcomes based on the judgments made during the literature reviews.
• Decision School: The decision school factors in all the relevant initiations that initiate, approve, and fund the project. The decisions govern the project, the decision school can terminate, conclude, and term a project as complete based on the path of its success or failures. Decision school addresses political, economic, and cultural rules that improve investments injected into the project.
• Process School: This school is popular in Europe because it defines the structured processes from its conceptual start until it achieves its objectives. Many projects need insights that give them the thrill to focus on the results more when they prove to be productive.
• Contingency School: This school differentiates the project organizations and the type of project it suites. The approaches used in some project settings can adapt to the management processes or fall out of their fundamental needs (Bredillet, 2008). The synchronization scheme makes the decision-making matrix governable because it uses background experiences to predict the future.
• Marketing School: Marketing objectivism focuses on managing the early phases of the project to identify stakeholders and customer needs, formation of the organizational management, stakeholders’ management, and internal marketing mix (Bredillet, 2008). An organization should focus on the results to reach their target audience and pose the right competition.

Identifying How the Research Agenda has Developed

The Literature of Research Agenda

The European Academy of Management (EURAM) has made significant records of accomplishment based on project management. EURAM has managed to attend seven conferences that started in 2001 (Kerzner, 2020). According to the summits, it is evident that the practices entailed in project management, the world economy, and the academic community would be enriched if project management ventures were taken seriously.

Methodologies of Literature Review Process

The first stake of the literate review entails having the unstructured and explorative alternatives of the classical view in a project. The rethinking initiative in the UK discovered that the process could be managed with discoveries of advanced technologies. The knowledge base in the UK realized that people should change their mode of thinking about project management. The fashion of project management agenda is provided as a knowledge base for the foundation field. Over twenty-six approved articles, textbooks, and other online learning stores offer a new perspective on project management (Cuellar, Tabatabaei and Case, 2019). The new insights outshine the traditional approaches in moderating the project initiatives. According to the research, the productive analogy addresses the estimates of cost and time needed to oversee a project to completion. The accomplishments must meet the minimum threshold in terms of quality and handling deliberation estimates. For instance, The Journal of Management does not address project management as their subject area, but it covers operations and technology management (Cuellar, Tabatabaei and Case, 2019). This type of unstructured literature review can be a major problem since it does not follow the structured pattern.

The second methodology entails the frameworks of structured literature review for a project to be completed. When there is a systemic approach, the structured vector outlooks the unstructured or explorative review (Farashah, Thomas and Blomquist, 2019). The literature review needs an extensive research method that utilizes the inputs of the project management framework. However, the structured literature review does not utilize interviews, questionnaires, and observations as its inputs. The steps followed in the structured review include:

1. Planning the review: Having a planned review enables the whole project to be possible in terms of making it a success.
2. Clarification scope: The second step of the systemic methodology is to clarify the scope of conceptualization. A project needs to be clear as possible so that people working on it can interpret the finest details contained in the plan (Farashah, Thomas and Blomquist, 2019). Any slight mistake can crumble the whole project and result in a loss.
3. Searching evaluation and review selection: The literature review must be searched and evaluated before selecting the course of action in each phase. As the third, step in systematic methodology, the evaluation plays a critical role in ensuring that every stage is certified before actualizing activities.
4. Analysis of the literature review: After selecting the literature review, the next step is ensuring that the selections made are met in systematic methodology.
5. Reporting and dissemination: The last stage entails simulating actual activities for the designers and project managers to rectify problems and the stakeholder to approve the corrections.

The methodology paradigm is extremely useful because it benefits following the systematic patterns of the literature review. Four phases can be utilized when using the structured literature review. The phases are inseparable analytically because the research process is iterative. The four phases are as follows:

• Phase 1: Reviewing the scope is focused on the research study and modes of rethinking the literature review. The systematic literature is comprehensive and purposed to include the literature within the defined scopes.
• Phase 2: A project can be described as rethinking or classical project management. However, the two descriptions are monolithic and inclusive, while the review intends to assess the alternative perspectives that are scrutinizing UK project management. Therefore, the outsets of the study show the identification of key terms and various topics covered in the UK study that can be used for research processes (Farashah, Thomas and Blomquist, 2019). The major concepts include reinventing project management and rethinking project management.
• Phase 3: The second phase entails creating search processes that can encompass literature reviews in phase one. The proper signification of the study synchronizes with the third phase as an iterative process. The third phase conceptualizes the rethinking analogy of project management based on networking initiatives. The documentation of special problems provokes the need to rethink workable project management designs (Koch and Guceri-Ucar, 2017). This phase shares many ideas with the initiatives discussed in the UK, such as conceptualizing the execution processes and the embedded spectrum of the environment surrounding the project. The outset of the third phase is the paper works that come as practice contemporaries. The papers include the actuality of themes contained in a project as posed in the UK. The criticism is oriented towards classical projects and rethinking project management to make it perfect.
• Phase 4: In this phase, the analysis is divided into two literature reviews within the context of the coding process. The first process is the inductive process that is done through identification of the hierarchical topics and gradually categorizing them into the type of contribution it has in each category.

Critical Analysis of the Research Agenda

The six paper containing the ideologies of Christophe N. Bredillet shows that project management is a developing field that needs an academic outlook. The substantial riches and diversity contribute to the posing knowledge in the management matrix (Bredillet, 2008). The realism on modes of synchronizing economic importance with the project management needs shows significant development trends that can be categorized into nine major schools: governance, behavior, optimization, success, modeling, contingency, decision, marketing, and process. Researching any project does not mean that it is an immature field nut it provides the insight necessary in understanding the frails that occur in a project. It is ideal for gaining experience through researches in various fields o that the ecosystem of project management can be at equilibrium with the well-being of technological advancements (Lukianov et al., 2017). It makes it easier for individuals to understand their field perfectly rather than having one person commercialize every project without deep understanding. Being an expert saves time, cost, and rate of accidents that can make stakeholders invest appropriately.

The results of a structured review of the rethinking project management literature can be classified and analyzed into 74 contributions and their critical look in the global advancements. For instance, the UK government funds research and networks it by rethinking project management as posed by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The funding spectrum took place between 2003 and 2004, and the development proved to be positive in educating people on the need of having a structure analysis (Lukianov et al., 2017). It is important to be updated with emergent ideas and plan new projects such as organizational changes, long-term service deliveries, IT upgrades, and an integrated business solution. The field of project management is like a model that incorporates techniques that control its complex undertakings.

Lessons and limitations

The six articles have provided major insights to the project management team. It has also enabled them to achieve the goals and various objectives of the organization. The main limitation of the six articles is the unstructured methodology contained in the literature review (Spyropoulou, Panas and Pantouvakis, 2021). The methodology is a major problem because it has no specific school or organization. It is better to equate a given project to a specific project rather than speculation of the generalization of ideas from authors.

Conclusion

The discussion concludes that project management is a form of achieving the objectives and goals of an organization. The theoretical field can be described as a technique or model that can plan the complex undertaking and take control of its consequences—the insights point towards having cohesive working ethics and better communication methods during a project. Projects are significant because they structure the work in most organizations and constitute its significance to organizational development. Rethinking project management provides a diverse outlook for research and literature reviews. The literature reviews can provide useful inputs in conceptualizing the rethinking analogy of the project management ideologies. It also establishes the integrated view of the project setting, thereby reducing the chances of having a critical management problem.

When an individual understands that rethinking project management in a given time can make it possible to elucidate forms of rethinking, it can open new channels of tackling negativities. Christophe N. Bredillet, in the sic part series, identifies the context of the project management plan through a systematic methodology. A systematic methodology is better than an unstructured methodology. The unstructured methodology does not abide by time and cost hence prone to creating problems when the problem is underway. It is better to have problems before actualizing the project because rectifying it in the early stages is professional, and it saves time and money for the stakeholders. A systematic methodology is important during the development of project management because it synchronizes with a new class of emerged technologies.

The sensation of information technology and some organizational changes long-term affects the well-being of service integrations and the provision of business solutions. Moreover, the objectives identify various perspectives in the research agenda, and it reports on the procedures that are better in understanding project literature. The report provides the components of current stocks and a brief description of analyzing situations. Modern project management is an academic discipline that borrows tools from operations management and operations research. The inward looking interacts with the disciplines that are beneficial to the research progress. People must learn to adapt ideas and apply them based on the identifiable field in the current globe. For instance, if an individual is an engineer, they should know how to update their research methods to incorporate the latest technologies whenever they are doing a specific project. Christophe N. Bredillet provides the six articles that are foundational in learning the criticality of various methodologies in the report.

Reference List

Bredillet, C.N. (2008) ‘Exploring research in project management: nine schools of project management research (part 4)’, Project Management Journal, 39(1), pp. 2-6.

Cuellar, M., Tabatabaei, M. and Case, T. (2019) ‘Antecedents of technology selection for Project use’, Journal of Computer Information Systems, 61(5), pp. 395-409.

Di Maddaloni, F. and Davis, K. (2017) ‘The influence of local community stakeholders in megaprojects: rethinking their inclusiveness to improve project performance’, International Journal of Project Management, 35(8), pp. 1537-1556.

Farashah, A., Thomas, J. and Blomquist, T. (2019) ‘Exploring the value of project management certification in selection and recruiting’, International Journal of Project Management, 37(1), pp. 14-26.

Kerzner, H. (2020) ‘Innovation project management’, Project Manager (IL), (43), pp. 5-6.

Koch, S. and Guceri-Ucar, G. (2017) ‘Motivations of application developers: innovation, business model choice, release policy, and success’, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, 27(3), pp. 218-238.

Lukianov, D. et al. (2017) ‘Analysis of the structural models of competencies in project management’, Technology Audit and Production Reserves, 2(34), pp. 4-11.

Spyropoulou, T., Panas, A. and Pantouvakis, J. (2021) ‘Formulation of change management model for achieving business excellence in large organizations’, WSEAS Transactions on Business and Economics, 18, pp. 1452-1460.