Creating value in project management using PRINCE2

This important research is published at a critical time in the history of PRINCE2. The world’s project managers are under incredible scrutiny and pressure to ensure their projects deliver quality on time and on budget – and even more so during a world recession. The research shows that PRINCE2 goes a long way to helping them achieve these goals. Although its origins began in the UK, PRINCE2 now has a truly international reach. We are delighted that the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has undertaken this global, thorough and informative research project. While it highlights the strengths of the methodology itself, the report also looks at the challenges organisations face when using a project management method such as PRINCE2. We’re sure the challenges will resonate with project managers around the world. Securing executive support to champion the adoption of PRINCE2, creating a robust business case and prioritising project governance are key issues that all project managers will grapple with during their career. The research also shows that to be thoroughly effective, organisations need to properly embed PRINCE2 and tailor it to suit their particular circumstances. Many successful organisations have sought the effective help of accredited consulting organisations to assist them in developing a programme to tailor and inculcate this method into their organisational culture. The latest version incorporates a whole chapter on tailoring PRINCE2. We believe that the publication of PRINCE2 Directing Successful Projects using PRINCE2 and the development of further support in the form of materials, mentoring and training for senior executives will be of significant benefit to contemporary project based organisations. The APM Group has already developed a qualification for sponsors in conjunction with the UK’s Home Office to help with this.

Meta-evaluation to improve learning, evaluation capacity development and sustainability : Findings from a participatory evaluation project in Nepal

Recent studies suggest that meta-evaluation can be valuable in developing new approaches to evaluation, building evaluation capacities, and enhancing organizational learning. These new extensions of the concept of meta-evaluation are significant, given the growing emphasis on improving the quality and effectiveness of evaluation practices in the South Asian region. Following a review of the literature, this paper presents a case study of the use of concurrent meta-evaluation in the four-year project Assessing Communication for Social Change which developed and trialled a participatory impact assessment methodology in collaboration with a development communication Non-government organization (NGO) in Nepal. Key objectives of the meta-evaluation included to: continuously develop, adapt and improve the impact assessment methodology, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and process and other project activities; identify impacts of the project; and build capacities in critical reflection and review. Our analysis indicates that this meta-evaluation was essential to understanding various constraints related to the organizational context that affected the success of the project and the development of improved M&E systems and capacities within the NGO. We identified several limitations of our meta-evaluation methods, which were balanced by the strengths of other methods. Our case study suggests that as well as assessing the quality, credibility and value of evaluation practices, meta-evaluations need to focus on important contextual issues that can have significant impacts on the outcomes of participatory evaluation projects. They include hierarchical organizational cultures, communication barriers, power/knowledge relations, and the time and resources available. Meta-evaluations also need to consider wider issues such as the sustainability of evaluation systems and approaches.

Adaptation and empathy : intercultural communication in a choreographic project

The tricky terrain of intercultural communication within the pressure-cooker environment of creating new performance work is explored through the experiences of five Australians working with 55 artists in Hanoi, Vietnam on a project called Through the Eyes of the Phoenix. Key cultural communication issues such as the concept of ‘face’, identity, translation, adaptability, ambiguity tolerance, empathy, enmeshment and the development of shared understandings are examined in relation to theories of high and low context cultures and individualist collectivist frameworks. The experiences of both Australian and Vietnamese artists are foregrounded, revealing the importance of other intercultural communication modes such as visual, kinaesthetic and tactile languages as well as the languages of their art forms. Immersion in social activities and the importance of the emotional domain are also highlighted as essential factors to survive and thrive in intense creative collaborations across cultures. These dance perspectives, embedded in practice, provide alternative contributions to the messy complexities of intercultural communication.

Navigating in a sea of change : second set of working papers of the higher education policy project

This volume represents teh second collection of working papers and articles by participants in the Higher Education Policy Project (HEPP), a project funded by the Australian Research Council and based in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Queensland. The first volume, 'Higher Education in Transition: Working Papers of the Higher Education Policy Project (Bella, McCollow and Knight, 1993), took the broad theme of "higher education in transition" in order to introduce readers the HEPP and give them some idea of the breadth of the research being pursued by the HEPP research team itself and by the cohort of post-graduate students also associated with the project. Since then, higher education has remained in transition. Stubborn and resurgent questions continue: such as what a university ought to be, what forms of research should be supported in a mass system, and how institutional accountability can be demonstrated. In differing ways and using a variety of research perspectives and methodologies, the contributors to this volume explore these and other questions of relevance to higher education today.

Development of network-level project screening methods supporting the 4-Year pavement management plan in Texas

The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is concerned about the widening gap between pavement preservation needs and available funding. Thus, the TxDOT Austin District Pavement Engineer (DPE) has investigated methods to strategically allocate available pavement funding to potential projects that improve the overall performance of the District and Texas highway systems. The primary objective of the study presented in this paper is to develop a network-level project screening and ranking method that supports the Austin District 4-year pavement management plan development. The study developed candidate project selection and ranking algorithms that evaluated pavement conditions of each project candidate using data contained in the Pavement Management Information system (PMIS) database and incorporated insights from Austin District pavement experts; and implemented the developed method and supporting algorithm. This process previously required weeks to complete, but now requires about 10 minutes including data preparation and running the analysis algorithm, which enables the Austin DPE to devote more time and resources to conducting field visits, performing project-level evaluation and testing candidate projects. The case study results showed that the proposed method assisted the DPE in evaluating and prioritizing projects and allocating funds to the right projects at the right time.

Client adaptiveness in entrepreneurship and its effect on sustained competitive advantage in project-orientated service firms

Important differences exist in how service firms operate in comparison with manufacturing firms (c.f. Johne & Storey, 1998; Tether, 2002). Despite these significant differences, not much is known whether these differences extrapolate to entrepreneurship in the services industry. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating how value creation occurs when project-oriented firms1 adopt client adaptiveness as part of their entrepreneurial posture. Specifically, we examine the effect of client adaptiveness on sustained competitive advantage. Client adaptiveness is conceptualized as the extent to which an organization engages in identifying and responding to perceived client needs and wants which reflects the service firm’s propensity to dynamically synchronize with the project/client requirements.

Liveable city project : Desktop review of liveability indices

The QUT Centre for Subtropical Design reviewed tools and indices that measure ‘liveability’ on behalf of the Brisbane Development Association. This review provides insight into the concept of ‘liveability’ and how various international and local tools measure or value ‘liveability’ of cities. Liveability is subjective, and can mean different things to different individuals depending upon their situation and lifecycle stage, and is therefore difficult to define. Essentially, the term ‘liveability’ constitutes thoughts of quality of life and wellbeing of residents in urban environments.

Program and project management

Program management serves as an overall vehicle for the transformation effort. It aims to support the implementation of the decided strategy in order to achieve the expected benefits in a business transformation initiative. A program is defined as a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available when managing them individually . A project on the other hand, is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result. Projects tend to have definite start and finish points, with the aim of delivering a predetermined output, giving them relatively clear development paths from initiation to delivery. Programs, on the contrary, exist to create value by enriching the management of projects in isolation. Programs typically have a more strategic vision of the desired end goal, but no clearly defined path to get there. Therefore, program management is expected to deal with the uncertainty surrounding the achievement of the vision, whereas projects work best where the outputs can be well defined.

The ECOS green buildings project : data dramatization, visualization and manipulation

Buildings are key mediators between human activity and the environment around them, but details of energy usage and activity in buildings is often poorly communicated and understood. ECOS is an Eco-Visualization project that aims to contextualize the energy generation and consumption of a green building in a variety of different climates. The ECOS project is being developed for a large public interactive space installed in the new Science and Engineering Centre of the Queensland University of Technology that is dedicated to delivering interactive science education content to the public. This paper focuses on how design can develop ICT solutions from large data sets to create meaningful engagement with environmental data.

Teaching Teachers for the Future (TTF) project TPACK Survey : summary of the key findings

This paper presents a summary of the key findings of the TTF TPACK Survey developed and administered for the Teaching the Teachers for the Future (TTF) Project implemented in 2011. The TTF Project, funded by an Australian Government ICT Innovation Fund grant, involved all 39 Australian Higher Education Institutions which provide initial teacher education. TTF data collections were undertaken at the end of Semester 1 (T1) and at the end of Semester 2 (T2) in 2011. A total of 12881 participants completed the first survey (T1) and 5809 participants completed the second survey (T2). Groups of like-named items from the T1 survey were subject to a battery of complementary data analysis techniques. The psychometric properties of the four scales: Confidence - teacher items; Usefulness - teacher items; Confidence - student items; Usefulness- student items, were confirmed both at T1 and T2. Among the key findings summarised, at the national level, the scale: Confidence to use ICT as a teacher showed measurable growth across the whole scale from T1 to T2, and the scale: Confidence to facilitate student use of ICT also showed measurable growth across the whole scale from T1 to T2. Additional key TTF TPACK Survey findings are summarised.

Shifting meanings : The role of metaphors in collective meaning–making in complex project leadership

This paper examines the use of metaphors in collective meaning-making in the work of managers and leaders of megaprojects, drawing on interviews with thirty-three leaders of complex projects in a case study organisation responsible for the delivery of major acquisitions. Recognising the notion of both contextualised and decontextualised approaches to either seeking to elicit or project metaphors, the paper describes the various ways in practising project leaders describe their work and the synergies these metaphors have with the broader social discourse and theorisation around complexity and the language of complex adaptive systems. The paper presents our case study findings where we outline our typology of meta-metaphors describing project leaders’ multiple roles and our interpretation of the significance of these choices.

Standardising practices improves clinical diabetic foot management: the Queensland Diabetic Foot Innovation Project, 2006-09

Objective. The aim of this paper is to report the clinical practice changes resulting from strategies to standardise diabetic foot clinical management in three diverse ambulatory service sites in Queensland, Australia. Methods. Multifaceted strategies were implemented in 2008, including: multidisciplinary teams, clinical pathways, clinical training, clinical indicators, and telehealth support. Prior to the intervention, none of the aforementioned strategies were used, except one site had a basic multidisciplinary team. A retrospective audit of consecutive patient records from July 2006 to June 2007 determined baseline clinical activity (n = 101).Aclinical pathway teleform was implemented as a clinical activity analyser in 2008 (n = 327) and followed up in 2009 (n = 406). Pre- and post-implementation data were analysed using Chi-square tests with a significance level set at P < 0.05. Results. There was an improvement in surveillance of the high risk population of 34% in 2008 and 19% in 2009, and treating according to risk of 15% in 2009 (P < 0.05). The documentation of all best-practice clinical activities performed improved 13–66% (P < 0.03). Conclusion. These findings support the use of multifaceted strategies to standardise practice and improve diabetic foot complications management in diverse ambulatory services.

Standardising practices improves ambulatory diabetic foot management and reduces amputations : the Queensland Diabetic Foot Innovation Project, 2006 – 2009

Background Diabetic foot complications are recognised as the most common reason for diabetic related hospitalisation and lower extremity amputations. Multi-faceted strategies to reduce diabetic foot hospitalisation and amputation rates have been successful. However, most diabetic foot ulcers are managed in ambulatory settings where data availability is poor and studies limited. The project aimed to develop and evaluate strategies to improve the management of diabetic foot complications in three diverse ambulatory settings and measure the subsequent impact on ospitalisation and amputation. Methods Multifaceted strategies were implemented in 2008, including: multi-disciplinary teams, clinical pathways and training, clinical indicators, telehealth support and surveys. A retrospective audit of consecutive patient records from July 2006 – June 2007 determined baseline clinical indicators (n = 101). A clinical pathway teleform was implemented as a clinical record and clinical indicator analyser in all sites in 2008 (n = 327) and followed up in 2009 (n = 406). Results Prior to the intervention, clinical pathways were not used and multi-disciplinary teams were limited. There was an absolute improvement in treating according to risk of 15% in 2009 and surveillance of the high risk population of 34% and 19% in 2008 and 2009 respectively (p < 0.001). Improvements of 13 – 66% (p < 0.001) were recorded in 2008 for individual clinical activities to a performance > 92% in perfusion, ulcer depth, infection assessment and management, offloading and education. Hospitalisation impacts recorded reductions of up to 64% in amputation rates / 100,000 population (p < 0.001) and 24% average length of stay (p < 0.001) Conclusion These findings support the use of multi-faceted strategies in diverse ambulatory services to standardise practice, improve diabetic foot complications management and positively impact on hospitalisation outcomes. As of October 2010, these strategies had been rolled out to over 25 ambulatory sites, representing 66% of Queensland Health districts, managing 1,820 patients and 13,380 occasions of service, including 543 healed ulcer patients. It is expected that this number will rise dramatically as an incentive payment for the use of the teleform is expanded.

Mapping the dynamics of the project management field : project management in action (part 6)

This is the sixth part of a Letter from the Editor series where the results are presented of an ongoing research undertaken in order to investigate the dynamic of the evolution of the field of project management and the key trends. Dynamics of networks is a key feature in strategic diagrams analysis. The radical change in the configuration of a network between two periods, or the change at subnetwork level reflects the dynamic of science. I present here an example of subnetwork comparison over the four periods of time considered in this study. I will develop and discuss an example of subnetwork transformation in future Letter from the Editor article..

Mapping the dynamics of the project management field : project management in action (part 5)

This is the fifth part of a Letter From the Editor series where the results are presented of an ongoing research undertaken in order to investigate the dynamic of the evolution of the field of project management and the key trends. I present some general findings and the strategic diagrams generated for each of the time periods introduced herein and discuss what we can learn from them on a general standpoint. I will develop and discuss some detailed findings in future Letter From the Editor articles...