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There are significant, ongoing threats of species extinction. Threatened species recovery programs are an important way of reducing this threat, but many recovery programs are unsuccessful. The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues facing species recovery programs, and the potential benefits to be found in managing threatened species recovery from a project management perspective.

This research used the Grounded Theory Method to analyze the contents of four senate inquiries and 21 interviews with recovery experts. The Grounded Theory Method was then used to inductively develop concepts and theories that explain some of the issues faced in the delivery of recovery programs in Australia. These were explored from a project management perspective, to understand ways that project management could provide benefit to the recovery planning process.

Eight core challenges that have an impact on recovery emerged from the data. It was identified that there is a general lack of integration of project management into the recovery process. This was found to be particularly evident in terms of the recovery project lifecycle, risk management and stakeholder management. Strategies for addressing these issues are discussed.

Conservation scientists typically focus on technical recovery competencies. The authors argue that managing recovery from a project management perspective will increase recovery success rates through an increased focus on the contextual and behavioral competencies that are essential to the management and delivery of recovery projects and programs.

Many projects involve an organisational change component. Project management (PM) and change management (CM) have the potential to jointly contribute to the delivery of organisational changes. However, there is a lack of clarity in the literature about the boundary and relationship between these disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution these disciplines make to a set of project critical success factors, to understand the ways that these disciplines can most effectively work together.

This paper analyses data collected through an online survey, examining project managers’ and change managers’ perception of each disciplines’ contribution to critical success factors. The survey received 455 responses.

This paper identifies the success factors that are most clearly influenced by PM and CM, and areas where practitioners of these disciplines hold significantly different perceptions of their contributions. The results have been used to rank and categorise success factors based on the influence of each discipline. This has been used to develop a risk-based questionnaire to guide the contribution of PM and CM to the mitigation of specific project risks.

These findings will be of use to practitioners managing organisational change projects, or projects with a significant change component. The findings will be of assistance in determining the ways in which these disciplines should work together to mitigate risks associated with specific critical success factors.