Designing Project Management

Designing Project Management

Heintz, John L. (TU Delft Design & Construction Management)
Lousberg, Louis (TU Delft Design & Construction Management)
Wamelink, J.W.F. (TU Delft Management in the Built Environment)

Saari, A. (editor)
Huovinen, P. (editor)

Management in the Built Environment

2016-05-30

In this paper we introduce the concept of Designing Project Management. On the basis of our earlier work, we suggest that there is still a gap between what is known from recent project management literature and what project managers can structurally help in the effectiveness of their work. Assuming that project management is a form of solving wicked problems, we propose a designerly way to solve these problems. To this end, we introduce the Project Design Cycle, consisting of the elements Awareness, Design, Performance and Reflection. This cycle has been studied in a purely exploratory study. Result of the study is that these elements are sometimes recognized, sometimes not, that the order of these elements has been hardly recognized, that the difference between Reflection-in-action and Reflection-after-Action has been recognized and a distinction seems to occur between a 'large' Project Design Cycle through the overall project management and a 'small' Project Design Cycle in the daily management. We finally conclude that more training in the cycle is necessary because this will possibly lead to a more effective project management.

project management theory
project management education
design thinking

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:6d8501f5-4f5f-4123-90fb-d5920d8c293e

Tampere University of Technology

978-952-15-3743-1

WBC16 Proceedings: Building Up Business Operations and Their Logic Shaping Materials and Technologies, III

CIB World Building Congress 2016, 2016-05-30 → 2016-06-03, Tampere, Finland

Institutional Repository

conference paper

© 2016 John L. Heintz, Louis Lousberg, J.W.F. Wamelink