Project Management as a Discipline in its own right

1
Project Management as a Discipline in its own
right

• Steve Armstrong
• Faculty of Mathematics and Computing
• The Open University

s.armstrong_at_open.ac.uk
2
Context

• some history
• where do I step in?
• where do I want to go with the subject?
• what do you think?

3
A project manager

• has certain skills
• knowledge, experience and background
• has a number of resources
• with people and things to talk about (Lennon
  and MaCartney)
• works in a given context
• that influences the possibilities and outcome
• e.g. time and tide wait for no man

4
A discipline?

• exercising control over group of people
• a form of physical, mental or moral training
• a branch of instruction or learning
• magic words training and learning imply
  change

5
Raising the profile of project management

• promote teaching and research in the subject
• the profession and its practitioners
• guarding the provision of training and education
• standards and their quality
• promote research into the body of knowledge
• and its relation to practice

6
A Network of Excellence

• for the development of the management of projects
  (PROMNET)
• structured around centres of excellence
• integration through a dedicated panel or Senate
• each centre includes topics from the APMs BoK

7
Centres of Excellence

• foundation knowledge
• management of projects
• management of business
• environment
• management of change
• personal development
• project performance
• project resources

8
How would centres work?

• collect and co-ordinate information on a related
  topic
• use results from research and development to
  build on a topic
• generate views on the required competency for a
  topic

9
Cant operate in isolation

• integrative node
• e.g. organizational behaviour and culture
• special forum for economic sectors
• e.g. banking, construction and technology
• forum for professional bodies
• e.g. IEE, BCS and CIMA
• forum for academic and educational co-operation

10
Trial research topics

• funding
• a current topic
• supply chains
• a current topic in software engineering
• emotional literacy
• inspired by dispute resolution

11
Closing remarks

• the link between teaching and research
• the next call for EU funded projects
• (for Framework 6 see http//europa.eu.int/comm/res
  earch)
• next steps
• comments welcome