As in other applications of project management, in-house research in academia, government agencies, and corporations is more and more complemented or even replaced with research that is outsourced or outtasked, partially or in full.
However, project management methods (including agile methods) are only to some degree applicable in such projects, as project managers do not so much lead internal teams, they work with external contractors, who are sometimes forming complex Project Supply Networks (PSNs). These contract parties must be turned into project partners and must jointly prioritize completing over competing to achieve mission success.
On contractor-side, project managers also differ from internal ones, as they run profit centers, not cost centers. They must bring money home with their customer-facing projects.
Can you provide personal experience or observations on the dynamics of success and failure in such situations, that require skills in Project Business Management? What were the specific challenges? Were project managers sufficiently qualified to meet these challenges?
Milan B. Vemić, I am not sure.
In 2016, I developed a typology of projects (Lehmann, 2016a; Lehmann, 2016b), together with a group of experts. The intention was to help identify appropriate and detrimental practices, given the fundamental uniqueness of each project.
We identified several typological dimensions, among them the continuum between Predictable Projects and Exploratory Projects.
Your predictive practice - the "waterfall" world - is appropriate for highly predictable projects. However, on the Predictable - Exploratory dimension, I would expect research projects generally more on the exploratory side, where "the way is made by walking". This calls for "Rolling Wave" or sometimes even "Agile" practices.
Or, simply said: If research projects were characterized by predictability, there would not be any need for the research anymore.
Outsourcing research work to contractors adds another level of unpredictability to these projects, and I would be interested in hearing experiences how this affected the projects and how practitioners actually coped with that - or not.
Kind regards,
Oliver F. Lehmann
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References
Lehmann, O.F. (2016a) 'Advances in Project Management Series: An Introduction to a Typology of Projects", PM World Journal, V (12), December [Online]. Available from: Article Advances in Project Management Series: An Introduction to a ...
(Accessed: 31 January 2019).Lehmann, O.F. (2016b) Situational Project Management: The Dynamics of Success and Failure, New York: Taylor & Francis
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