Implementation of a Successful Project Management Method to Serve Modern Organizations

The project management arena requires much knowledge, many skills, techniques, tools, and a high level of experience in order to achieve satisfactory results and to add value to organizations. The scope of this paper is to address and discuss many important aspects needed to succeed in project management within Iraqi organizations because Iraqi businesses are developing and expanding their products into global markets. However, most Iraqi organizations struggle to implement and select productive programs and projects that will fit in with their strategic objectives. Therefore, a primary aim of this paper is to discuss the factors that make project management more effective and successful in these organizations. Also, there are many challenges and risks that project management can face during project processes that can have an effect on an entire project and sometime cause project failure. In addition, many organizations have problems with project teams, such as, differences in culture and behavior within the same team. Therefore, project management should have the organizational skills, knowledge, experience, and technical skills in order to meet the project requirements. This paper contributes and clarifies the understanding of project management field and how it works in an efficient manner. The results will help Iraqi organizations to utilize project management skills and knowledge. Also, these skills will help them to reduce budgets and increase the value of the final products within a reasonable time

Project portfolio evaluation and selection using mathematical programming and optimization methods

Project portfolio selection is an essential process for portfolio management and plays an important role in accomplishing organizational goals. This research explores the feasibility of developing a project portfolio selection tool by using mathematical programming and optimization models, specifically 0-1 integer programming (one objective portfolio) and goal programming (multiple objectives portfolio). These methods select the set of projects which deliver the maximum benefit (e.g., net present value, profit, etc.) represented for objective functions subjected to a series of constraints (e.g., technical requirements and/or resources availability) considering the scheduling of selected projects in a planning horizon, interdependence relationship among projects (e.g., complementary projects and mutually exclusive projects) and especial cases like mandatory and ongoing projects. ^ Based on the proposed model, a Decision Support System (DSS) will be developed and tested for accuracy, flexibility and ease of use. This computational tool will be designed for decision makers and users that are not familiar with mathematical programming models

Collaboration requirements for project management information systems and its implications to project knowledge management

More and more organizations are changing their way of managing projects, switching from a traditional and controlled to a more flexible bottom-up paradigm, where collaboration and knowledge sharing between internal and external project members are critical factors. In addition, the role of technology is increasing in the context of project management due to greater challenges in today’s technology-enabled work environment, where technology tools are habitually used for collaboration, communication, and deployment of project management practices The purpose of this thesis is to identify and analyze current requirements of project management in project-based organizations regarding collaboration and knowledge management, as well as the impact of these requirements in use by practitioners on improving the management of projects. The research design and methodology were supported by main research questions. In order to collect the evidence to answer the questions a comparative case study approach was selected, which included several project-based organizations in Finland belonging mainly to the IT industry. In addition, the evolution and roadmap of a project management information system was presented and analyzed. The findings reveal the influence of collaboration and knowledge management to be incorporated in the management of projects through the use of socio-collaborative tools. An integrative project management framework combining these tools is presented.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

A Framework to Establish a Project Management Office

This research presents a framework of the needed steps and process to establish a successful Project Management Office (PMO). This framework is driven by the different functions and roles that may be performed by a Project Management Office (PMO) as well as the type of PMO that would best serve organizations. Significant gains can be achieved by using the proposed framework. This framework is driven by the implementation of PMOs best practices that drives PMO success as well as the prevention of all pitfalls that lead to most PMOs failure. Keywords: PMO framework, PMO success, project management office, project management, PMO, establish PMO, PMO start proces