Situational Project Management: The Dynamics of Success and Failure

Most project managers would agree that every project is unique. But not all project managers would agree that the best way to manage a unique project is unique. Many still cling to the old practice of having a methodology that is applied to all projects. “One size fits all” is still in common use, and this approach has proven to lead to project failure. Flexibility, situational intelligence, and creativity are essential to deliver project success.

The need to recognize and master ever-changing requirements and environmental conditions is a tough challenge for professional project managers. The same practices that led to success yesterday may cause failure today. Selecting favorable responses to a given situation is often the most critical factor of the dynamics of success and failure. This book is designed to help project professionals assess a situation, predict the appropriate approach, methodology and achieving styles, and then apply them in a situational fashion.

To guide project managers in selecting the appropriate responses, Situational Project Management (SitPM) shows how to assess a given project, determine its unique characteristics, and select the appropriate methods to complete the project. With this book, projects managers can use SitPM to develop profiles of their projects on the basis of the projects’ physical characteristics, the project teams’ behavioral characteristics, the enterprise environment, and the market environments receiving project deliverables. These profiles help project managers to determine the appropriate project life cycle approach and leadership style. The book also explores various ways to engage stakeholders on the basis of a project’s SitPM profile.

The book’s author, Oliver F. Lehmann, has developed a set of templates to apply SitPM in practice. It can be downloaded from www.oliverlehmann.com/SitPM/Templates.zip.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 The Situational View on Project Management
Chapter 2 Digging Deeper
Chapter 3 A Typology of Projects
Chapter 4 Practices for SitPM
Chapter 5 Some Basic Tools for SitPM
Chapter 6 Leadership and the Dynamics of Success and Failure
Appendix A: Answers to Introductory Questions
Appendix B: Traps in Terminology
Appendix C: What the Practitioners and Experts Say
Appendix D: Twelve Suggestions for Situational Project Managers