Managing digital coordination of design: emerging hybrid practices in an institutionalized project setting

What happens when digital coordination practices are introduced into the institutionalized setting of an engineering project? This question is addressed through an interpretive study that examines how a shared digital model becomes used in the late design stages of a major station refurbishment project. The paper contributes by mobilizing the idea of ‘hybrid practices’ to understand the diverse patterns of activity that emerge to manage digital coordination of design. It articulates how engineering and architecture professions develop different relationships with the shared model; the design team negotiates paper-based practices across organizational boundaries; and diverse practitioners probe the potential and limitations of the digital infrastructure. While different software packages and tools have become linked together into an integrated digital infrastructure, these emerging hybrid practices contrast with the interactions anticipated in practice and policy guidance and presenting new opportunities and challenges for managing project delivery. The study has implications for researchers working in the growing field of empirical work on engineering project organizations as it shows the importance of considering, and suggests new ways to theorise, the introduction of digital coordination practices into these institutionalized settings

IT Project Management from a Systems Thinking Perspective: A Position Paper

We proposes a Systems Thinking approach to the study of IT project management and show how this approach helps project managers in controlling their projects. To illustrate our proposal, we present an example model of the dynamics of IT out-sourcing projects. The example model explains these dynamics in terms of feedback loops consisting of causal relations re-ported in the literature. The model provides insight in how coordination, trust, information exchange and possibilities for op-portunistic behaviour influence each other and together influence delivery quality, which in turn influences trust. The integra-tion of these insights provided by applying the Systems Thinking perspective helps project managers to reason about how their choices influence project outcome. The Systems Thinking perspective can serve as an additional tool in the academic study of IT project management. Applying the Systems Thinking perspective also calls for additional research in which this perspective is itself the object of study

Leadership and Gender: An Experiment

We present an information based model of leadership in a setting that exhibits the familiar problems of free riding and coordination failure. Leaders have superior information about the value of the project in hand and can send a costly signal to their uninformed followers to persuade them to cooperate in the project. Followers voluntarily choose whether or not to follow the better informed leader. We provide experimental evidence that, when the leaders� gender is revealed to their followers, female subjects hesitate to lead (send a costly signal) while followers� behavior does not indicate any gender discrimination. Such behavior is not observed among the male leaders.Leadership, Information, Gender, Free Riding, Coordination Problem

The Role of Horizontal Coordination in Performance of ISD Projects

ISD projects depend on coordination among team members and stakeholders to be successful. In the past, researchers studied antecedents, strategies, contingencies and outcomes of coordination. This study examines how horizontal coordination can impact the performance of project team members. We propose a research model that horizontal coordination will result in increased leadership empowerment, knowledge transfer, and experimentation among team members. The results of the study can recommend suggestions for project managers to improve project performance by utilizing horizontal coordination

Understanding The Role Of Social Capital In Expertise Coordination In Information Systems Development (isd) Teams

Information system development (ISD) project is a knowledge-intensive teamwork process which requires members to coordinate their expertise to generate the final outcome. Breakdown or coordination and insufficient knowledge integration have been reported as critical factors which lead to ISD project failure. Most existing coordination literature focus on the effect of administrative coordination mechanisms toward project performance which hints that more efforts are needed to understand expertise coordination and explore ways to improve it. Addressing the above issues, two studies in this dissertation attempt to understand expertise coordination within the IS development team based on social capital perspective. The first study, based on intention-behavior literature, knowledge management research, and Gerwin\u27s (2004) coordination model, investigates relationships among willingness, competence, and actual expertise coordination. The relationships between expertise coordination and teamwork outcomes are also examined. The second study incorporates social capital theory and examines (1) dependencies among three dimensions of social capital and (2) linkage between social capital and expertise coordination. Data collected from more than five hundred information systems project team members was used to test the proposed hypotheses. The analysis results confirmed most of the hypotheses. This dissertation contributes to coordination, project management, and team mental model research through many perspectives. In each study, directions for management practice and future research are discussed

Development and correlation: Viking Orbiter analytical dynamic model with modal test

The Viking Orbiter (VO) experience in the achievement of a mathematical model is described along with the following project activities: (1) the generation of the overall plan for load analysis, an analytical dynamic model, and development tests; (2) the performance of VO subsystem static and modal tests; and (3) the correlation of the VO system model analysis and test. Success is attributed to the coordination of analysis and test using substructure modal coupling techniques

Impact Evaluation of Grassroots Leadership Development

This roundtable discussion presents the current impact evaluation model of a grossroots assessment leadership development project in a higher education setting. The model examines participant achievement of knowledge and skill learning outcomes, assessment plans produced, implemented, and presented as a result of the participation in the project, coordination of collaborative assessment activities in their respective programs, and changes in program assessment activities.This roundtable discussion presents the current impact evaluation model of a grossroots assessment leadership development project in a higher education setting. The model examines participant achievement of knowledge and skill learning outcomes, assessment plans produced, implemented, and presented as a result of the participation in the project, coordination of collaborative assessment activities in their respective programs, and changes in program assessment activities

How coordination trajectories influence the performance of interorganizational project networks

This study examines how the joint use of integrators and contracts either enables or hampers coordination and, in turn, the performance of interorganizational project networks. Using extensive qualitative analyses and socio-metric techniques, we investigated coordination among organizations during seven small and medium-sized building projects. Our longitudinal study reveals how integrators develop connecting functions that, together with contracts' steering functions, largely drive coordination dynamics. Further data analyses provide insight into how coordination hinges on the prevalence of connecting or steering, which may more or less fit with coordination needs in various project phases. Given these findings, we theorize the contingent nature of the interplay between the use of integrators and contracts throughout projects. Our findings are integrated into a process model of how coordination trajectories lead to different performance levels of interorganizational project networks. Our study has theoretical implications for the literature on project-based organizing and, more broadly, the literature on interorganizational coordination. (17) How Coordination Trajectories Influence the Performance of Interorganizational Project Networks. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316692856_How_Coordination_Trajectories_Influence_the_Performance_of_Interorganizational_Project_Networks [accessed Sep 27, 2017]

An organisational model for simplifying the complexity of managing software project

The project success depends to a large degree on communication and coordination among team members. But project management systems and models do not support cooperative group work. Their basic philosophy is rather hierarchical and centralistic. It is the intention of this paper to present an Organisational Model for simplifying the complexity of managing software project, both at software project modelling aspect and the aspect of communication and coordination among project team members. In particular, it focuses on the following points: an activity is the main component of project management, the constraints between activities and resources must be established. A role defines a group of duties and responsibilities. The activity related communication proceeds by the exchange of products between roles. While the constraints coordinate the products flow between roles. The benefit of the practical use of the model is to reduce the coordination effort required of project team members, and thus to increase the productivity in software development project

Governance, cooperation and coordination in large inter-organisational project networks: a viable system perspective

Purpose: This study aims to further the understanding of multi-level analysis in inter-organisational relationships by investigating the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination in inter-organisational projects (IOPs) on sub-system and project levels. Design/methodology/approach: The authors use the Viable Systems Model as a framework to analyse inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination by adopting a multiple-case study. Findings: The findings illustrate how governance and coordination mechanisms exhibit a filter-down effect on lower sub-systems while cooperation influence is confined within each sub-system. While remarking the importance of specific sub-systems on the overall project performance, the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination across sub-systems appears to be complex, with governance influencing cooperation and coordination, whereas cooperation and coordination influence each other with an incremental effect. Originality/value: This study defines two propositions that explain how multiple levels of analysis (project and sub-systems) can support the governance of large inter-organisational projects. The authors elaborate theory on the interplay of inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination