Important concepts in Project Management that should be possible to explain, and
to discuss with regard to how they are applicable and relevant in different contexts.
Please note that there are also a lot of other aspects that you should be able to discuss
although not mentioned here as key concept (examples could be success factors, balance
acts, conflict management, team motivation, evaluating options etc .)
From the textbook:
Project
Project portfolio
Program
Project network
The Triple Constraint: Time, Cost, Performance (or Time, Cost, Quality)
Concurrent development
Agile development
Business Case
Gates
Milestones
Charter
Sponsor
Stakeholders
Matrix organization form (and other forms mentioned)
WBS (i.e. Work Breakdown Structure)
Sum-of the-the parts check
Responsibility matrix/ Project-Involvement Matrix / Resource requirements
Uncertainty, Risk, Risk matrix
Project scheduling
Gantt charts
Network diagrams (such CPM)
Critical path
Float, free float, total float, negative float
Early-start schedule, late-start schedule
Probabilistic analysis (you should know the concept and how it is applied but do not
need to master the statistical techniques in this course)
Crashing, Crash costs
Fast tracking
Resource smoothing, resource allocation
Critical chain (and buffers related to Critical chain)
Earned Value, Cost Performance Index (CPI) and Schedule Performance Index
(SPI) (but you do not need to know all the other indexes mentioned in Exhibit 9.7 in the
textbook)
Project review (and the different forms of project reviews – although we will not ask
you to identify specific terms)
In the articles – you are expected to know the main ideas in each article and how these
main ideas are studied and validated in the studies. In general you are not expected to
learn about all the indirect references to other studies that are discussed in the articles.
Govindarajan & Gupta: Building an Effective Global Business Team (see also Toby’s
ppt)
Developing a global team, cognitive diversity and cognitive integration, building trust etc
Hao & Stjernberg: Creating cars and maintaining norms (see also Jan-Inge Eliasson’s
hand-outs and Hans Carlstedt’s ppt)
The role of meetings for developing and maintaining norms about mutual support, trust
(as exemplified by the concept “handshake”) etc., value and risk in fire-fighting spirit and
commitment,
Larson & Wikström: Organizing Events (se also Mia Larson’s ppt)
Project network and the political market square as a metaphor for the event management
context, consensus and conflict perspectives and how these concepts are related and how
they can be used to characterize different projects (such as the cases mentioned in the
Larson & Wikström article).
Lagerström & Andersson: Creating and sharing knowledge within a transnational team
(see also Katarina Hamberg Lagerström’s ppt)
Creation and sharing of knowledge, explicit and tacit and the combination of local and
global knowledge. Development of trust and the socialization of team members, and how
this is facilitated.
Mahalingam & Levitt: Institutional Theory as a Framework for Analyzing Conflicts on
Global Projects
Issues in global projects, and examples of problems that may arise. Institutions (in the
sense of beliefs, schemas etc that are taken for granted in a national, corporate or
industrial culture), and institutional conflicts (regarding norms, rules and/or
values/cognitive schemas)
Lundin & Söderholm: A Theory of the Temporary Organization
The concepts Time, Task, Team, Transition, and the Sequence and phases: Concept
formation, Development, Implementation, Termination and the relation to Action based
entrepreneurialism, Fragmentation for commitment building, Planned isolation and
Institutionalized termination.
Cimil, Hodgson, Lindgren & Packendorff: Project management behind the façade
What characterizes project operations and why has the project form become increasingly
important. What are some of the negative aspects of the project form.
Söderlund & Bredin: HRM in Project-Intensive Firms
The four challenges identified, i.e. the competence issue, the trust issue, the change issue
and the people issue, and how these were handled in the four cases that were studied.