The rise and fall of project management: are we observing the birth of a new discipline?

This conceptual paper examines the state of the project, program and project portfolio management literature and highlights the divergent views of strategy that exist between project managers and top managers. Project management concepts are shown to be based on approaches to planning that top managers had rejected after thirty years of unsuccessful experience with strategic planning. Persistently high project failure rates and recent developments at the board level suggest that we might have reached the limits of our current approaches, and the question is asked whether project management is destined to follow the rise and fall of strategic planning. Alternatives to the traditional linear mechanistic approaches are explored and it is suggested that the project management field would need to embrace the delivery of strategy as the common ground to engage top managers. Approaches would need to be developed that are consistent with how strategy emerges in turbulent environments. Program and portfolio concepts are found to have the most potential to contribute to the emerging field of strategy implementation.

Estimating the value of IT Project Governance

This paper synthesises prior research findings to highlight how few IT projects realise all their expected benefits despite the widespread use of project management and technical methodologies. Using plausible assumptions derived from research the paper suggests only a third of IT projects currently deliver any benefits at all and that overall ROI is around 30%. It suggests IT Project Governance has the potential to increase ROIs to 135-240%. A large organisation that spends $30M pa on IT might realise an additional$10.5M to $21M pa, and nationally GDP might be lifted by 1.6% to 3.1%. Further research is suggested.8 page(s

An Example of Relevant IS Research for Top Managers on IT Project Failure

This paper attempts to progress the development of a more relevant IS research tradition. It describes an application of Benbassat & Zmud’s (1999) recommendations for conducting relevant research to explain how top managers influence IT projects to succeed. The findings challenged the main emphasis of the common IT prescriptions and explained why the success rates of IT projects has been so inconsistent. The research provides a example of how to overcome the fragmentation in the field and if it achieves its goal of influencing management and IT audiences, it will serve as an exemplar of relevant research. It is notable for its use of the pragmatic paradigm and collaboration leading its publication by Standards Australia

UAS Concept of Operations and Vehicle Technologies Demonstration

In 2017 and 2018, under National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sponsorship, the New York Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Test Site and Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research (NUAIR) Alliance conducted a year-long research project that culminated in a UAS technology flight demonstration. The research project included the creation of a concept of operations, and development and demonstration of UAS technologies. The concept of operations was focused on an unmanned aircraft transiting from cruise through Class E airspace into a high-density urban terminal environment. The terminal environment in which the test was conducted was Griffiss International Airport, under Syracuse Air Traffic Control (ATC) approach control and Griffiss control tower. Employing an Aurora Centaur optionally piloted aircraft (OPA), this project explored six scenarios aimed at advancing UAS integration into the National Airspace System (NAS) under both nominal and off-nominal conditions. Off-nominal conditions were defined to include complete loss of the communications link between the remote pilots control station on the ground and the aircraft. The off-nominal scenarios that were investigated included lost-link conditions with and without link recovery, an automated ATC initiated go-around, autonomous rerouting around a dynamic airspace obstruction (in this case simulated weather), and autonomous taxi operations to clear the runway

Slow wins: Patience, perseverance and behavior change.

It is easy to despair at the unsustainability of human behavior; however, such despair may come from taking too narrow and pessimistic a view of human nature. Behavior change does happen but durable change happens only slowly. What is unnerving is that our environmental problems are urgent, perhaps accelerating. This might give rise to intolerance for the slow-change notion suggested in this article. But, in fact, the opposite response is needed from us. The transition we face must be done well the first time with the changes made durable; it is unlikely we will get a second chance.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/88161/1/De_Young,_R._(2011)_Slow_wins,_Patience,_perseverance_and_behavior_change._Carbon_Management,_2(6),_607-611.pd

Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue

In his youth Daniel Trabue (1760–1840) served as a Virginia soldier in the Revolutionary War. After three years of service on the Kentucky frontier, he returned home to participate as a sutler in the Yorktown campaign. Following the war he settled in the Piedmont, but by 1785 his yearning to return westward led him to take his family to Kentucky, where they settled for a few years in the upper Green River country. He recorded his narrative in 1827, in the town of Columbia, of which he was a founder. A keen observer of people and events, Trabue captures experiences of everyday life in both the Piedmont and frontier Kentucky. His notes on the settling of Kentucky touch on many important moments in the opening of the Bluegrass region. Chester Raymond Young (1920–1999) was professor of history and chairman of the Department of History and Political Science at Cumberland College in Williamsburg, Kentucky. Daniel Blake Smith is professor of history at the University of Kentucky. A valuable portrait of one important aspect of late-eighteenth-century social history. While Trabue describes in vivid detail life on the Kentucky frontier, Indian troubles, Daniel Boone\u27s court-martial, and so on, the rich material on Revolutionary-era Virginia is an unexpected find. —Journal of Southern Historyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_united_states_history/1018/thumbnail.jp

Examination of air transportation trip time variability

Scheduled air transportation is required to provide a service that is safe, consistent, and dependable, with reliable trip times and delays managed within acceptable limits. High trip time variability and delay in the current system are driven by multiple factors; The study objectives were: (1) to develop a comprehensive database for individual major U.S. airline domestic trips between 1995 and 2005; (2) to explore the central tendency and variability of airline gate-to-gate trip times and delays; (3) to develop values for unconstrained, or unimpeded, trip times, and (4) to develop traveler and airline delay and variability costs relative to unimpeded trip times; The research used U.S. Department of Transportation (U.S. DOT) data for scheduled domestic airline trips reported by major U.S. air carriers between 1995 and 2005. For valuing air carrier cost savings, this research estimated variable costs for individual trips, based on individual carrier financial reports to U.S. DOT; The research used reported trip times as a primary indicator, unimpeded trip times as a reference, and attached a cost to the excess of reported trip time over unimpeded trip time at the individual flight level. This approach represents a process for evaluating the time savings and operating cost impacts of measures for increasing capacity and reducing impedance in U.S. domestic scheduled air transportation; Areas in which trip time variability and delay impose a high penalty on travelers and airlines were identified. The most important study results concerned disproportionately higher delays and costs relative to: (1) origin and destination airports and corridors; (2) times of day; and (3) the days with highest delays. The main areas were arrivals and departures at leading airports (40 percent of flights and 55 percent of costs), flight departures and arrivals between noon and early evening (50 percent of flights and 60 percent of costs), and during the 40 percent of days in which there were heavy system wide delays (55 percent of costs) costs appropriate to time changes on individual trips, the magnitude of penalties incurred by impeded trips were estimated relative to unimpeded trips. These were: 150 million annual excess traveler hours per year; {dollar}8 billion annual excess air carrier operating costs; with 400 million annual gallons of excess jet fuel consumption. The costs of impeded trips added about 10 percent (or about {dollar}3.4 billion annually) to airline variable operating costs during the study period

An Evaluation of administrative practices concerning secondary-school libraries

This study is an attempt to evaluate the practices of eight South-east Kansas secondary-school administrators concerning school libraries located in eight counties. Previous library studies have generally disclosed serious inadequacies. Administrators are responsible for conditions in any part of the school, and this study attempts to discover how nearly existing administrative practices agree with principles and practices accepted by library science authorities. After much study an information sheet was constructed and used to record data obtained during personal interviews held in the administrator\u27s office of each school. Administrative practice concerning library housing, accessibility, finance, acquisition of materials, personnel, control, support, and organization were studied in addition to the library objectives. In general, administrators consider the secondary-school library as an essential part of the school, but they seem to be unaware of its proper functions in helping attain the educational objectives of the school in modern education. More administrative practices concerning library housing and cooperation with the public library appear to be unsatisfactory than is true of those concerning other areas of study. As a whole, existing administrative practices appear to be contributing to the secondary-school objectives stated by administrators, but they do not appear to contribute much toward the attainment of objectives given by library authorities for the library in modern education