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Project management is of growing importance as bureaucratic organisations pass through transition to be more flexible “network organisations”. Work is increasingly undertaken by groups and teams, and the focus of assessment shifts from input to output. In certain sectors, companies are coming to resemble portfolios of projects. This article considers a survey of the role and status of project management undertaken by Adaptation Ltd, for the Association of Project Managers. It concludes that project management requires distinct skills and competencies and that these will need to be developed by an increasing number of managers.

Draws on the experiences of the author working in various project management positions to illustrate the application of TQM to the process of modern project management. Provides guidance on the application of five fundamental quality principles in project management. Emphasizes that a focus on customer requirements is essential.Charts the journey organizations and project managers may take in implementing quality project management.

Notes that the project management approach has enjoyed growing acceptance by a wide variety of businesses and organizations over the past 20 years or so. Emphasizes the usefulness of training in the basics of project management to management training and team development. Following a brief description of project management, discusses implementation factors to facilitate the successful implementation of this approach in the workplace and the expected benefits. Describes a sample of basic management techniques and tools for the planning and controlling of projects. Concludes that managers and trainers can readily see that adopting project management can be done with minimal disruption to the workplace and that the costs of adopting project management are relatively small compared with the potential benefits in terms of improved individual and team efficiency and productivity, high standards of work quality, and reduced employee stress and conflict in teamworking among other benefits.

The paper describes the results of an exploratory study of the application of programme management in six companies. A classification of programmes developed may help in understanding the differences between programmes and the managerial impact of these differences. The research shows that the formalised and rigorous approach as described in most programme management handbooks is not widely adopted. The cases show less centralisation, less formalisation and less management of the interdependencies between the projects in the programme than one would expect on the basis of the programme management literature. This is especially the case in programmes that originate as a grouping of a set of existing projects. Yet, formalisation is mentioned as the main success factor in managing programmes.

THE aviation and aerospace industry has always been characterised by highly complex, even high risk undertakings. The outcome of these undertakings, or projects, is dependent on the availability of money, manpower, materials and time. Predicting the way in which these various factors interact requires powerful management tools and, for many years, the aircraft engineering and aerospace industry has used computerised planning and control systems. The most profusely used software tool is Artemis which accounts for 40% of the project management software systems in use throughout the world. Artemis was developed and marketed by Metier Management Systems, a former Lockheed company. The company is now a division of Lucas Industries plc and trades as Lucas Management Systems. Lucas is the first to point out, however, that effective project management does not end with acquisition of an appropriate software tool. Equally important is creating the right organisational structure in which project managers and all those participating in a project can perform most effectively. This is why Lucas has employed Dennis Archibald, not to sell project management systems but to educate all management levels in the discipline and methods of project management. In this article Dennis Archibald, who first encountered project management techniques as an RAF officer in the early 1970's, explains the importance of understanding project management methodologies, irrespective of the software tools which may be either in use or under consideration.

There are several conditions essential for project success that apply to all projects, whether related to top‐level strategic business issues or operational ones: executives must make a compelling business case for project management; make it practical, relevant, and beneficial from day one; make systems and procedures project management‐friendly; make project management a win for team members and managers; make project management an ongoing learning experience, and; make success public. Project management requires deliberate planning and action to create the conditions for success and put in place the strategy, leadership, goals, process, skills, systems, issue resolution, and structure to direct and exploit the dynamic nature of project work. If work today is done through projects, as is surely the case, then working smarter on projects will enable an organization to meet, head‐on, whatever strategic and operational challenges may come its way.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the main findings of a successfully defended doctoral thesis that studied factors or interventions causing the discrepancy between how adequate project risks should be managed and how project risks are actually managed.

The approach involved interviews and a survey using questionnaires gathered data from project managers about their experiences with project risk management during two phases of fieldwork. The first phase included in‐depth interviews with information technology (IT) project managers in order to explore patterns involving risk mediators and their influence on project risk management. A web‐based survey was used in the second phase for the purpose of testing these patterns on a wider range of project managers.

Specific risk‐related interventions strongly influence the effective use of project risk management: project managers tended to deny, avoid, ignore risks and to delay the management of risk. Risks were perceived as discomforting, not agreed upon. IT project managers were unaware of risks and considered them to be outside their scope of influence and preferred to let risks resolve themselves rather than proactively engaging with them. As a consequence, factors such as the lack of awareness of risks by IT project managers appeared to constrain the application of project risk management with the result that risk had an adverse influence on the outcome of IT projects.

The underlying rational assumptions of project risk management and the usefulness of best practice project risk management standards as a whole need to be questioned because of the occurrence of interventions such as the lack of information. IT project managers should first prevent risk‐related interventions from influencing the use of project risk management. However, if this is not possible, they should be prepared to adapt to risks influencing the project outcome.

The paper contradicts the myth of a “self‐evidently” correct project risk management approach. It defines interventions that constrain project manager's ability to manage project risk.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, project management was undergoing gradual shift and moving from traditional ways of working toward embracing digitization. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this transformation. This paper highlights the importance of digital project management (DPM), its adoption of digital technologies, the changing role of digital project manager, significant and abrupt swing in the rise of virtual teams and the benefits and challenges of remote project teams. This paper aims to discuss the latest development in project management and to lay out the rationale why DPM is here to stay even after the pandemic.

The author has based this research on reviewing publications from the project management journals and publications, interviews of project management professionals and analyzing data from a project management consultancy.

The pandemic accelerated the digitalization of project management including the adoption of digital tools and technologies, embracing an agile approach to implementing projects; working collaborative in remote teams; and breaking traditional barriers of geography, time zones and fundamentally how project teams collaborate.

Project management is being digitized, changing how teams work. Fueled by the pandemic, DPM accelerated its momentum. The rate of adoption is likely to be strong after the pandemic. Organizations and individuals should consider embracing DPM but with the full knowledge of both benefits and challenges.

DPM is still in its early days even though the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its use. Today and likely after the pandemic, organizations and people are increasingly embracing digital technologies, remote teams and agile project management approaches to project management. It is likely that in the foreseeable future, nearly all project managers will be digital project managers, giving rise to the importance of understanding the challenges and benefits and building the digital skills for both individuals and organizations.

Project management is an essential skill in the hospitality organization that is only becoming more important (Tereso et al., 2019). Bridging the gap between academia and industry is achievable by experiential learning or providing students with curriculum that gives them hands-on access to real-world industry research projects that attempt to solve real-world industry issues (Steed and Schwer, 2003). The purpose of this paper is to understand the scope of project management curriculum in universities’ hospitality programs, to understand the scope of project management skill requirements in hospitality firms and to narrow the disconnect between project management in academia and in hospitality firms.

The study used a mixed method approach. On the side of academia, a quantitative collection method was used to gage which universities offered a project management course, how many universities offer these courses and how many project management courses each university had. On the side of industry, a survey was administered to industry professionals in senior management positions. It was a quantitative survey designed to gage the importance of having project management as part of university curriculum. The aim was to show what was expected to be a disconnect between the two sides – academia and industry. A total of 57 responses were collected. Out of them 49 were usable. The Human Subjects consisted solely of two populations: individuals who worked in the hospitality industry. This accounted for 12 of the responses; individuals who worked in academia – more specifically in higher education at schools that offer Hospitality Management curriculum. This accounted for 37 of the responses. The subjects were identified and recruited through the professional networking site LinkedIn (for subjects that were industry professionals) and through both LinkedIn and American Hotel Lodging and Educational Institute databases for the subjects in academia. There were no direct potential benefits to the subject. The potential societal benefits of the study were the advancement of knowledge within the disciplines of both Hospitality Management and Project Management. The authors used the University of Memphis’ Qualtrics system and changed settings to anonymize responses so IP addresses would not be collected. The Qualtrics’ default is to collect IP addresses and GPS coordinates of those who responded. By setting the survey to anonymized responses the investigators were not able to collect this identifiable information. This information was included in the confidentiality, methods/procedures and in any other necessary sections/documents noting that the investigators would set Qualtrics to anonymize responses.

H1 was supported. The findings showed that most colleges and universities did not require project management classes for degree completion. Preliminary research showed that of 68 of the top hospitality programs in the world that were researched, only 7.5 percent required taking project management centric courses in order to graduate (College Choice, 2019; The Best Schools, 2019; Top Universities, 2018). In total, 43.2 percent of respondents answered “yes” when asked if their school offers courses in project management based on this definition of project management: “A project is temporary in that it has a defined beginning and end in time, and therefore the defined scope and resources. And a project is unique in that it is not a routine operation, but a specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal. A project team often includes people who do not usually work together – sometimes from different organizations and across multiple geographies. Project management, then, is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirement” (Project Management Institute) (See Table A1). Of 43.2 percent that answered yes, 64.3 percent said that the courses were required for graduation (See Table AII). Meaning, only 27.8 percent of schools surveyed offered and required completing project management courses for graduation. It should be noted that this number may be lower as bias may have played a factor. It is evident that hospitality programs understand the importance of project management because 85.7 percent of the colleges and universities surveyed are teaching project management concepts in courses that are not project management centric, like Meeting and Event Planning (See Table AIII). H2 was supported. Only 9.1 percent of respondents believed that project management skills are not at all important to line level employees. Most, 54.6 percent, believed that project management skills are important to some extent for line level employees. In total, 9.1 percent believed that project management skills are not at all important for supervisory level employees; 27.3 percent believed they are needed to some extent and 36.4 percent believed they are needed to a moderate extent. As for management level employees, it was found that 63.6 percent believed project management skills were needed to a great extent. For director level employees, 63.6 percent believed project management skills are necessary. Finally, 72.7 percent of respondents believed project management skills are necessary for both VP level employees and executive leadership (See Table AIV). It should be noted that one person did not believe themselves qualified to answer questions regarding project management within their organization. More than half of respondents said that project management skills are used to a great extent within their organization. H3 was not supported. Both hospitality schools and hospitality companies agreed that project management skills have some level of importance in academia and in industry – most believed the skills were very important at both junctions (See Tables AV and AVI). However, in the preliminary research the authors found that 55 percent of the top 111 hospitality companies had project management positions, meaning that there was a potential need for project management courses in colleges and universities (Ranker, 2019). As stated earlier, only 7.5 percent of the top 68 colleges and universities required project management courses to be completed upon graduation. So, the discrepancy lies within the vastly different percentages between project management positions within companies and project management courses within schools.

The data provided strong evidence that supported the idea that project management is not required in hospitality programs upon completion. This opens new avenues to research the reasons behind schools not offering project management courses or making it a requirement for degree completion. On the other hand, project management skills are considered to be needed by hospitality managers. This provides valuable information for future studies that look to close the gap between academia and industry. The results indicated that project management is important for hospitality companies and schools, but the lack of project management education in colleges and universities is evident. The results of this study provided good news to students that aim to work in hospitality companies, since they can improve their project management skills and encourage their programs to stay updated with the industry needs so that they can succeed in their professional lives. Though this was an exploratory study of the project management discipline within the hospitality industry – with a limited sample size – the data clearly justified that there is room for additional data collection and research in this area of study.

The results show that there is a disconnect between project management curriculum in schools and project management skill demand in the hospitality industry. The research should encourage schools to invest appropriate resources into required project management curriculum. The hospitality industry is vast in the types of businesses that fall under it. Project management is one skill set that can be useful across most of the different businesses in the hospitality industry. From a practical standpoint, providing students with a solid background in the project management discipline provides them an advantage in the highly competitive hospitality industry. It accomplishes this by providing the students with in-demand knowledge and competencies that are both universally accepted and highly regarded by hospitality management companies as a skill set that is widely used in the industry.

There were limitations to this study. Some pieces may be improved in future research. The Qualtrics survey could have been reduced in number and order of questions for a better interaction and results. The use of the Qualtrics database might be helpful to reach a bigger population. Potential steps could be taken to reduce bias that may play a factor in the responses. For example, some respondents may have claimed that their schools offer project management curriculum when in fact they do not, or they do not know to what extent.

Project management is an essential skill in the hospitality organization that is only becoming more important (Tereso et al., 2019). Bridging the gap between academia and industry is achievable through experiential learning or providing students with curriculum that gives them hands-on access to real-world industry research projects that attempt to solve real-world industry issues (Steed and Schwer, 2003). Most graduate level curriculum at universities was found to hone skills like written and oral communications, problem solving and decision making, organization, time management and cost control (Steed and Schwer, 2003). It has been suggested that universities add project management curriculum and experiential learning to their programs for a more streamlined transition from academia to industry (Steed and Schwer, 2003). Existing research on this subject is a bit dated, so the objectives were: to understand the scope of project management curriculum in universities’ hospitality programs; to understand the scope of project management skill requirements in hospitality firms; to narrow the disconnect between project management in academia and in hospitality firms.

The study aims to investigate the concept of strategy-as-practice in construction management literature has been investigated. The focus is on the link between strategizing practices and project management.

An exploratory literature review is carried out based on fifteen journal articles on strategizing practices in the construction industry.

The analysis shows how strategy-as-practice questions and contradicts project management practices as depicted in the dominant deterministic perspective. Strategy-as-practice has a focus on reacting and adapting to a chaotic and changing environment, while project management is concerned with creating and maintaining a stable working environment. The findings point to the necessity of considering the organizational and institutional context of project management practices, and hence the values the strategy-as-practice lens, when considering new avenues for improving the industry.

As the study is based on an exploratory literature review of only 15 articles, generalizations should be made with caution. The identified literature is restricted by search words and choice of database.

The differences between strategizing and project management practices are very clear, and a focus on both may offer insights into how the construction industry could improve its productivity by developing more robust management practices.

The paper illustrates the benefit of applying a strategizing perspective, which hitherto has been under-investigated in construction management research.