Project Characteristics and Project Management Methods

How do senior executives develop a portfolio of project management methods that enables their organizations to carry out successfully projects whose unique characteristics and circumstances call for specific management methods? The following project characteristics (see Table 2) were found to play a determining role in shaping top management approaches to project management:

Table 2. Project Management Model

Project’s Characteristics		Project Management Systems
Size		Infrastructure requirements: staff, outside expertise, cash flow, level of technical expertise. Hierarchical level of control
Impact		Greater involvement of users-clients in decision-making Need for participatory and informal structures
Ambiguity & Uncertainty		Need for feedback mechanisms, for increased speed of experimentation, for multiple phases to allow for partial reversibility, for incremental approaches and intensive communication
Complexity		Pressure to break the original objective into multiple sub-systems Need for quick dissemination of information for quality communications Need for centralization & modularization
Project Life Cycle		Control progress of every project Management of conflicts Management of transitions from phase to phase
Strategic Importance		Screening and selection of projects