Flexibility in project management: Towards improving project performance

Increasingly it is argued that nowadays a pure project management approach (the conventional project management approach) is no longer effective as it underestimates the influence of the dynamic environment. An approach is needed which recognises the complexities of a project and provides tools to cope with these; an approach that is aimed increasing flexibility.Therefore this research investigated the effect of project management flexibility and project complexity on project performance. Using a mix-method approach, the research was divided in different steps including literature study, case studies, Q-study and survey studies.Integral Design and Managemen

Four stages of Making Project Management Flexible: Insight, Importance, Implementation and Improvement

Increased project complexity, project dynamics and changes in clients’ requirements are a few examples that suggested the necessity of flexibility in project management to deliver successful projects. Despite the fact that literature suggests adding flexibility to project management, there is no existing framework which provides a practical process of how to add flexibility into the practice of project management. Therefore, this research aimed at investigating how project management could become flexible and whether such flexibility would improve project performance. The research question is: how to embed flexibility in the practice of project management in early project phases? To answer the research question four sub-questioned were formulated which have been separately researched. This main question was answered by proposing a flexibility framework. This framework comprises four stages: understanding the current situation, practitioners’ perspectives on flexible project management, choosing enablers to become flexible, applying selected enablers to improve project performance. It can be concluded that trust appears not only to be an enabler of flexibility in project management but an existing perspective among the practitioners regarding the concept of flexibility. This perspective puts the emphasis on ‘trust’ as the most important enabler of flexibility. Moreover, the positive contribution of ‘trust’ to project performance is acknowledged in this research. Considering the movements towards flexibility and adaptability concepts, this research fills the gap in the literature by providing a practical project management flexibility framework. Moreover, it provides a step-by-step guideline for practitioners to embed flexibility in practice

Four stages of Making Project Management Flexible: Insight, Importance, Implementation and Improvement

Increased project complexity, project dynamics and changes in clients’ requirements are a few examples that suggested the necessity of flexibility in project management to deliver successful projects. Despite the fact that literature suggests adding flexibility to project management, there is no existing framework which provides a practical process of how to add flexibility into the practice of project management. Therefore, this research aimed at investigating how project management could become flexible and whether such flexibility would improve project performance. The research question is: how to embed flexibility in the practice of project management in early project phases? To answer the research question four sub-questioned were formulated which have been separately researched. This main question was answered by proposing a flexibility framework. This framework comprises four stages: understanding the current situation, practitioners’ perspectives on flexible project management, choosing enablers to become flexible, applying selected enablers to improve project performance. It can be concluded that trust appears not only to be an enabler of flexibility in project management but an existing perspective among the practitioners regarding the concept of flexibility. This perspective puts the emphasis on ‘trust’ as the most important enabler of flexibility. Moreover, the positive contribution of ‘trust’ to project performance is acknowledged in this research. Considering the movements towards flexibility and adaptability concepts, this research fills the gap in the literature by providing a practical project management flexibility framework. Moreover, it provides a step-by-step guideline for practitioners to embed flexibility in practice.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Integral Design and Managemen

Practitioners’ Perspectives on Flexible Project Management

Literature defines two main streams in project management: mechanistic and organic. Mechanistic reflects the traditional waterfall approach and organic reflects a more adaptive approach. The organic approach became known by the awareness of dynamic project environment and changing requirements. The organic approach is characterized by flexibility. Accordingly, scholars and practitioners tried to define flexibility and find ways to make project management more flexible. However, scientific literature about practitioners’ perspectives on making project management flexible is lacking. Therefore, this paper explores practitioners’ perspectives on project management flexibility by the use of Q-methodology. The scope of the paper was narrowed down to the front-end phase of infrastructure projects. Two types of organizations were targeted: client and consultancy organizations. Data were gathered from 43 respondents from six organizations (three client and three consultancy organizations) in The Netherlands. The results of the study reveal three distinct perspectives on flexibility for both organization types (client and consultant): flexibility by trust, flexibility by scope management, and flexibility by proactive management. These perspectives partly support defined flexibility categories in literature. Further research could focus on exploring the perspectives in different project phases, operationalizing the perspectives in practice, and team composition taking into account these perspectives.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Integral Design and Managemen

Does flexibility in project management in early project phases contribute positively to end-project performance?

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of project management flexibility in early project phases on end-project performance including its mediating role on the effect of complexity over project performance. Design/methodology/approach: Out of 13 hypotheses, 6 hypotheses regarding the relationships between areas of flexibility and project performance, 1 regarding the effect of complexity on performance and 6 other hypotheses regarding the mediating effect of six areas of flexibility were formulated. Statistical analysis was performed using partial least squares–structural equation modeling on data gathered from 111 surveys. Findings: Research results revealed that flexibility of “how-attitude” and “how-organization” has positive significant effects on project performance. “How-attitude” contributes to the flexibility of project management processes by having an “open attitude,” “wide approach” and “proactive attitude” while “how-organization” put the emphasis of flexibility on “facilitate planning,” “outer organization” and “inner organization.” Moreover, this research confirmed that complexity has a negative effect on project performance. Among the six areas of flexibility, flexibility of “how-organization” mediates the effect of complexity on project performance. Originality/value: The increased project complexity requires some degree of flexibility in project management to deal with project dynamics. However, whether such flexibility in early project phases has an effect on end-project performance has not been empirically investigated. This research contributes to filling the gap in literature about the relationship between project management flexibility and project performance. Such effect was investigated by studying the direct effect of flexibility on project performance and the mediating role of flexibility on the negative effect of project complexity on project performance.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Integral Design and Managemen

Does Lean & Agile Project Management Help Coping with Project Complexity?

Still, projects in the construction sector are delivered with time delays and cost overruns. One of the reasons for poor performance was assigned to project complexity. A combination of lean construction and agile project management are hypothesized as a possible solution to cope with project complexity. In this paper we aim to understand if the implicit usage of lean and agile help coping with complexity. The research was done by means of correlation analysis on data gathered from a structured questionnaire (67 responses). In total, 51 significant correlations among 255 possible relations were found. To reduce the number of variables, factor analysis was performed. Correlation analysis on the defined factors showed 8 significant correlations among 25 relations. Several lean and agile elements were shown to significantly correlate to either reducing complexity or managing complexity. It was therefore concluded that these are promising to cope with complexity and improve project performance, which is to be confirmed in subsequent research

Inter-Organizational Co-Creation: An Approach to Support Energy Transition Projects

Societal challenges such as climate change and inefficiency of energysystems more and more crave for a sustainable environment. Research proved thatrestructuring energy systems into more sustainable forms, called “Energy Transition”, has faced challenges. How to deal with these challenges requires the cocreation between various actors with multiple disciplines, expertise, and perspectivesfrom different organizations. The research question to be answered here is whetherco-creation helps the interaction between different actors in an inter-organizationalproject for the sake of better project results. By doing case study research in theNetherlands, an example of co-creation project in its front-end phase was investigatedregarding the interaction among different actors involved in the project. The researchrevealed that in the case of a co-creation project the multiple actors collaborate acrossorganizational boundaries in order to unite. This leads to a better solution-findingapproach. Openness, trust and respect are valued more in co-creation. Moreover,the project team is better integrated to work towards a shared interest which aresocial benefits. The co-creation facilitated the data-sharing among the key actorsin the project which traditionally is influenced highly by the mother-organizations’culture. Further research will investigate the transition in organizations to supportthe co-creation approach.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Integral Design and Managemen

Does Lean & Agile Project Management Help Coping with Project Complexity?

Still, projects in the construction sector are delivered with time delays and cost overruns. One of the reasons for poor performance was assigned to project complexity. A combination of lean construction and agile project management are hypothesized as a possible solution to cope with project complexity. In this paper we aim to understand if the implicit usage of lean and agile help coping with complexity. The research was done by means of correlation analysis on data gathered from a structured questionnaire (67 responses). In total, 51 significant correlations among 255 possible relations were found. To reduce the number of variables, factor analysis was performed. Correlation analysis on the defined factors showed 8 significant correlations among 25 relations. Several lean and agile elements were shown to significantly correlate to either reducing complexity or managing complexity. It was therefore concluded that these are promising to cope with complexity and improve project performance, which is to be confirmed in subsequent research.Integral Design and Managemen