Evidence, theses and open questions

At the beginning we said that you should always be able to tell what kind of statement you are reading. Here everything is brought together.

A paper that knows its own limits is worth more in conversation than one that answers every question. That we also write down what we do not know is therefore, in our view, no flaw.

What is backed by evidence

The basic idea receives fewer resources than implementation. Organisations spend fewer resources on finding the right basic idea than on improving implementation. Described by Knut Samset and Gro Holst Volden. (Chapter 8)
Political explanations for cost overruns. In research on cost overruns they are widely regarded as the main cause – with the caveat that this explanation is itself disputed. (Chapter 8)
Maturity does not replace culture. Project management maturity does not replace an organisation's culture. A study with 86 project professionals found a connection between maturity and business performance, but not between maturity and project performance. (Chapter 7)
Interruptions cost time. Regaining attention after an interruption takes around 23 minutes on average, according to the studies of Gloria Mark. (Chapter 4)
Lessons learned are captured but hardly used. A formal process for lessons learned exists in many organisations, but only a fraction actually apply it. (Chapter 6)

What is our thesis

Change is paid for out of the margin. Change is paid for out of the margin of the running business, and a disorderly handling of the new burns part of this margin without effect.
A good offering meets real needs. A good offering meets real needs of real people who cannot satisfy them themselves. This is a statement of values, not an empirical claim, and it deliberately stands at the beginning of the first area of clarification. (Chapter 5)
The model of coordination paths. The simplified model of the increase in coordination paths shows an order of magnitude and is not a law of nature. (Chapter 2)
The staging by company size. It is a value from our experience and not a study. (Chapter 2)

What is open

Does systematic project management pay off? We do not know whether investment in systematic project management pays off at company level. We have found no study that cleanly compares companies with systematic project management against those without. Research on maturity levels is inconsistent, relies predominantly on self-reporting and has a selection problem, because companies that invest differ from others anyway. One finding is nevertheless useful: the return is greatest when taking the next step from a low level, and it decreases at high levels. (Chapter 7)
Do decisions get better? Whether an orderly handling of the new also improves the quality of decisions beyond the preliminary phase is open. We suspect so; we cannot prove it.
Does visibility change anything about power relations? We know that visibility makes distortions visible. Whether an organisation then decides differently, we do not know. (Chapter 8)

On our sources of thought

The books that have shaped our thinking are listed under “Sources of thought”. They are sources of ideas and not evidence. Where we rely on studies, we name the study and not the book that made it popular.