Terence Cooke-Davies

This article illustrates one aspect of the concept of “fit” between an organization's implementation of project management and its organizational context by exploring how the underlying drivers of an organization's strategy might influence not only the nature of the projects that it undertakes, but also the appropriateness of the arrangements that it makes to manage those projects. Using a model conceptualized from the literature on strategic management, an analysis of four organizations that have made significant investments in project management over the past 5 years supports the hypothesis that the degree of “fit” between an organization's strategic drivers of value and the configuration of its project management system influences the value it obtains from project management.

Few topics are more central to the art and science of managing projects than "project success". It would seem to be self-evident that every person involved in the management of a project will be striving to make it successful. In the world of the twenty-first century "success", like its close relative "winning", seems to be an unquestioned "good". So surely there can be nothing too difficult about measuring project success? Unfortunately, behind this rather obvious-sounding question, there lies a seething mass of complex assumptions and inter-related concepts that have led one author almost despairingly to ask, "Measuring success - can it really be done, and if carried out, what purpose does it serve?" Difficulties abound for many reasons: the different viewpoints, interests and expectations of groups of stakeholders involved in any given project; the subjective nature of perceptions of "success"; the tendency of perception...