Head IT Operations & Engineering at Sapura Energy Berhad

Introduction

Everything we do in our life, either conscious or unconscious, can be classified as a “project” that has the needs or wants (requirements) to be delivered or accomplished. Due to the importance of this context in organisations and society, the increasing interest in project management knowledge and experience has recently shown a significant demand.

Despite the demand, the successful achievement of the project or “project success” is still not satisfactory compared with failed projects, although many theories and innovative approaches have been created for the practitioners to implement and apply in real project management practice. Based on the actual project outcomes, project management theory has no explicit approach, is not perfect, has a lot of optimism bias, and doesn’t portray realistic outcomes and practicality.

The challenge is to capture and relate the academic knowledge and situated knowledge in implementing project management practice that is essential to the success of a project. The distinctive perspective between the strategic or operational project also has made a difference in understanding by the client, end-user, and stakeholder. The disparity between Theory and Practice leads to inconsistent outcomes of project success and sustainability.

  

​The challenge is to capture and relate the academic knowledge and situated knowledge in implementing project management practice that is essential to the success of a project

   

Project Management - the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet or exceed stakeholder’s needs and expectations from the project (PMBOK Guide® by PMI, 2001)

The disparity between Project Management Theory and Practice

Project management is still seen as execution management that focuses on delivering the project on time, on budget, and on scope. Front-end is a key internal element of project management, interfacing with the strategy, finance, technology, procurement, and organizational structure. The external elements are interaction with the business and general environment. Although project management intends to emphasize and manage the unforeseen requirements in real fact, there is no solid evidence that the theory will capture the risk of uncertainty during the project execution.

It has become an impossible, and most likely, value-adding" endeavor to define efficiency measurements in terms of the traditional "iron triangle" principles, the achievement of time, cost, and quality for the role of project management written by Atkinson, 1999 in International Journal Project Management.

Therefore, there is a combination of concerns that drive the crisis in the spectrum of project management, leading to anxiety and instability that shows poor discipline. Project management theory is not definite, unique, and solid, which prevents its legitimization as an academic and professional discipline of its own. To help improve the practice, theory must regain its place in the practice.

Theory and Project Management Practice - The Missing Link

The role of practitioners should be to increase the accountability for knowledge by intentional causality, conscious understanding, and distinguish self-caused from externally caused phenomena. The opposite of academics is to define and legitimise knowledge to reinstate the importance of ethics in practice.

With an explicit explanation regarding the theory and project management, theorists cannot create a narrow-looking view and produce literature targeted for other theorists to read instead of for practitioners to improve their practice; theory will continue to lose direction and validity of relevant discipline, thus, failed to reach its values in the form of practice.

In support of this view, we should encourage and consistently invite practitioners to lecture on project management and lead to their experience and work practices, but rather the opposite situation, researchers are invited by companies to test assumptions and to share their findings. Therefore, to connect the missing link between theory and practice, the theory has become more specialized in problem-driven (specific) rather than general-driven (common) methodology; namely, the practical effect of the practice and theory can be made thereon.

In project innovation, to achieve success in innovation via projects, the organization must prepare to sacrifice the view that projects are unique endeavors. Innovation requires adaptation and flexibility in project management in NTCP dimensions (Novelty, Technology, Complexity, and Pace) or using the Diamond model.

To make an important theory contribution by altering existing models, this method seldom satisfies practitioners, has inadequate value to accept the relationships, and contributes the value-added knowledge of social theories to help project management practice.

The current theories are improving and expanding towards a more relevant perspective action in helping the experts to manage a project implemented in complex and mega projects. Because the major theory had existed for project management for quite some time, the model had dominated the paradigm even though the rates of project failure are still successively high, and project success is hard to define and measure the performance in the context of strategic management view of PESTLE framework (Politics, Economy, Social, Technology, Legal, and Environment).

Theory needs to become very helpful, ethical, simplified, and driven by the reflection from the previous and current practice model, not just simply altering factors from an existing model but accepting the change affects the relationships between the variables that directly impact and influence the change of the action.

Either a big or small theory should focus more on the phronesis and empirical results and reflection of the outcomes rather than constitute the inputs. There is less focus on generic but on specific results. Theory needs to reclaim its value, an overall perspective of understanding, explicit prediction (the future), and a concrete explanation of a phenomenon. To achieve the ultimate goals, the value and interest of phronetic planning research and collaborating with different professional experts to path the way of a unique and solid theory development that is significantly worthwhile in addressing actual problems in practice. Therefore, the best approach to improve project management practice is reflecting on the action and improving its theory with some “LUCK” element.