Evidence, theses and open questions

Interrupted work is often resumed only much later.

In observations by Gloria Mark and colleagues, people returned to the original task after an interruption only after around 23 minutes on average, often after intermediate steps in other tasks. In a further study, interrupted people worked faster but reported more stress, frustration, time pressure and effort.

Source

Gloria Mark and colleagues

Maturity does not replace culture.

Project management maturity does not replace an organisation's culture. The study found a connection between maturity and perceived business performance, but not between maturity and project performance.

Source

Study by H. J. Yazici with 86 project professionals from service and manufacturing organisations in the United States

Limit or counter-position

It does not support the six-level model of this publication, nor a causal link between maturity and project success; it is based on the respondents' own assessments.

The basic idea receives fewer resources than implementation.

Knut Samset and Gro Holst Volden describe as a paradox that organisations spend fewer resources on finding the right basic idea than on improving performance during implementation.

Source

Knut Samset and Gro Holst Volden

Lessons learned are captured but hardly used.

In a survey of around a thousand experienced project managers cited by Blaize Horner Reich, 62 per cent had a formal procedure for lessons learned, but only 12 per cent actually adhered to it. I know this finding second-hand and therefore list it as an indication.

Source

Blaize Horner Reich (cited)

Limit or counter-position

I know this finding second-hand and therefore list it as an indication.

Explanations for cost overruns.

Flyvbjerg and his co-authors explain systematic cost underestimation in particular through psychological and political-economic biases. Other researchers, including Love and Ahiaga-Dagbui, criticise this explanation as too narrow and emphasise, among other things, project complexity, scope changes and methodological questions in measuring cost overruns.

Source

Flyvbjerg and co-authors; Martin Wachs (1989)

Limit or counter-position

The counter-position belongs here too. Other researchers, including Love and Ahiaga-Dagbui, criticise this explanation as too narrow and emphasise, among other things, project complexity, scope changes and methodological questions in measuring cost overruns.

Projects depend more on individuals than the line does.

Many companies master well-established line processes. The orderly handling of projects, on the other hand, often depends more heavily on individual people.

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.

The staging by company size.

It is a value from practical experience and not a study.

Interdependent undertakings cost more coordination than many similar ones.

Ten similar, independent undertakings are rarely a problem despite their number; they resemble each other and do not interfere. Five complex, interdependent undertakings, by contrast, create a high coordination effort, because every change in one affects the others.

Early warning signs form a pattern.

Together they form a pattern, and anyone who recognises it early can act while it is still easy.

A good method also lifts less experienced people.

A good method also helps a less experienced person achieve strong impact, if they orient themselves by the shared principles of action.

Structure alone does not change an organisation.

Structures and strategies alone do not change an organisation. Change only takes effect when shared ideas and lived practices change as well.

Imposing more order is the most common reflex.

The most common reflex is to prescribe more order. … The consequences can be measurable: more coordination effort, longer lead times, greater strain or lower productivity.

The bottleneck often arises further up.

On closer inspection, it often arises further up, where fundamentals would need to be clarified.

Eight areas of clarification are a chosen structure.

That there are exactly eight is not a derivation from a law of nature but a deliberately chosen structure that has proven itself in practice: fine enough to be concrete, coarse enough to remain clear.

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.

Who decides often counts for more than the plan.

The seemingly simple question of who actually decides here is often more important for success or failure than any plan, however good.

The story is assembled from several cases.

The following story is assembled from several real cases.

What survives are the templates.

What survives are mostly the forms and templates, not the actual insights.

The maturity model.

The six levels are an orientation model from practice. It helps to make organisational preconditions visible, but it is not empirical proof of why a specific introduction succeeds or disappoints.

The pattern of failed undertakings.

That leadership, stakeholders and risks are not addressed at the outset and that too much burden rests with employees is a value from experience, not a research finding.

There is no single cause of failure.

The reasons can include organisational, communication-related and leadership-related factors; no single cause that applies to all undertakings can be identified.

The lower areas of clarification cost influence.

The upper areas cost reflection. The following ones cost something else, namely influence. Whoever defines decision rights redistributes them.

The best-presented proposal often prevails.

In the debate about an undertaking, it is not always the best proposal that prevails, but often the best presented one.

Early clarification is usually the most favourable point.

Clarification at the very beginning, when you define what an undertaking is meant to achieve at all, is, as a rule, the most favourable point in time. A mistake recognised at that stage can usually be corrected with far less effort than in the middle of implementation.

The reference model is an orientation model.

The reference model is a generic leadership framework for projects.

Does systematic project management pay off?

I do not know whether investment in systematic project management pays off at company level. I 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. I nevertheless consider the following assumption useful: the return is likely to be greatest when taking the next step from a low level, and to decrease at high levels.

Do the findings apply to all kinds of projects?

How far they can be transferred to other kinds of projects, such as internal change initiatives or customer orders, is open.

Does visibility change anything about power relations?

I know that visibility makes distortions visible. Whether an organisation then decides differently, I do not know.

Do decisions get better?

Whether an orderly handling of the new also improves the quality of decisions beyond the preliminary phase is open. I suspect so; I cannot prove it.