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The competences of project managers are a vital role in projects success. An exten-sive literature survey was conducted to determine the constitution of an adequate knowledge base for would-be project managers. A detailed literature study was conducted. The literature review discussed how to assess project management competencies. Technical skills and social cultural skills were identified from the literature review. A comprehensive list of criteria was used to generate the critical success factors.Based on the critical success factors that were obtained from the literature in the content for the knowledge base was constructed. This research then started to address what constitutes certification requirements. Certification programs were identified globally for the study. This study identified what the certification programs offered. This research started by proposing a knowledge base and using the “grounded theory approach” used content analysis to compare the proposed knowledge base with project management certification programs. The study concluded with recommendations on the gaps that exist in project man-agement certification programs.

This research is addressing the causes and effects of project delays in the coal mining industry in South Africa. A literature review was conducted and it was found that the causes of delays are extensively researched in the construction industry with only limited reference to delays in the mining industry which are mainly risk based. The effects of delays are predominantly listed as timing and cost effects.

To contribute to the field of research of Projects as Social Processes, this research study will investigate the various aspects of social processes in the project environment. The study will be qualitative in nature and will use a case study methodology investigating the social processes experienced by the project managers of the various subsystems of Bombardier Transportation, as part of the Bombela Concession Company, in the delivery of the Gautrain Rapid Rail Link project. Project Managers were interviewed to understand how they experience the social processes taking place in the project environment as well as how they handle and approach these social interactions. The above methodology used in this exploratory case study is specifically used to develop a justification for enlarging the existing methodological Project Management Bodies of Knowledge (PMBOK) and the Life Cycle processes applicable to System Engineering to include Social processes.

As software systems increase in size and complexity, so does the need to predict and control scope, schedule, and costs. The United States General Accountability Office has acknowledged weaknesses in the software acquisition process. Industry data indicates that improving the software development process can have significant effect on a project team's ability to generate products within planned scope, schedule, and cost estimates. This thesis focus is on software maintenance, one phase of the Army's acquisition process, to demonstrate that stronger management practices are needed to make better predictions and assessments in those areas. Two software maintenance projects were evaluated for success in project management performance against CMMI practices. This research results in a set of recommendations and predicted benefits are provided for use by the organization as input to the next process improvement effort. / US Army (USA) author.

The main concern of a construction client is to procure a facility that is able to meet its functional requirements, of the required quality, and delivered within an acceptable budget and timeframe. The cost aspect of these key performance indicators usually ranks highest. In spite of the importance of cost estimation, it is undeniably neither simple nor straightforward because of the lack of information in the early stages of the project. Construction projects therefore have routinely overrun their estimates. Cost overrun has been attributed to a number of sources including technical error in design, managerial incompetence, risk and uncertainty, suspicions of foul play and even corruption. Furthermore, even though it is accepted that factors such as tendering method, location of project, procurement method or size of project have an effect on likely final cost of a project, it is difficult to establish their measured financial impact. Estimators thus have to rely largely on experience and intuition when preparing initial estimates, often neglecting most of these factors in the final cost build-up. The decision-to-build for most projects is therefore largely based on unrealistic estimates that would inevitably be exceeded. The main aim of this research is to re-examine the sources of cost overrun on construction projects and to develop final cost estimation models that could help in reaching more reliable final cost estimates at the tendering stage of the project. The research identified two predominant schools of thought on the sources of overruns – referred to here as the PsychoStrategists and Evolution Theorists. Another finding was that there is no unanimity on the reference point from which cost performance could be assessed, leading to a large disparity in the size of overruns reported. Another misunderstanding relates to the term “cost overrun” itself. The experimental part of the research, conducted in collaboration with two industry partners, used a combination of non-parametric bootstrapping and ensemble modelling with artificial neural networks to develop final project cost models based on about 1,600 water infrastructure projects. 92% of the validation predictions were within ±10% of the actual final cost of the project. The models will be particularly useful at the pre-contract stage as they will provide a benchmark for evaluating submitted tenders and also allow the quick generation of various alternative solutions for a construction project using what-if scenarios. The original contribution of the study is a fresh thinking of construction “cost overruns”, now proposed to be more appropriately known as “cost growth” based on a synthesises of the two schools of thought into a conceptual model. The second contribution is the development of novel models of construction cost estimation utilising artificial neural networks coupled with bootstrapping and ensemble modelling.

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited / The quality of software management in a development project is a major factor in determining the success of a project. The four main areas in which a software project manager can affect the outcome of a project are people management, requirements management, estimation/planning management and risk management. People management is the management area with the highest influence on project success. In this thesis a quality management metric (QMM) was evaluated with respect to its conformance with an established people capability maturity model (P-CMM). The survey elements of the QMM were mapped to the processes described in the maturity model. The analysis indicates a high level of conformance of the QMM with the P-CMM. The results of applying the QMM can be used to characterize the quality of software management. Based on the correlation of QMM survey elements to processes of the maturity model, the results can then be used to identify processes that need improvement to increase the likelihood of program success. Future work includes further refining and assessing the QMM. As new models in the field of software development management evolve, the QMM will need to be re-evaluated with respect to these new models. / Commander, German Navy

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Building (Project Management) / Successful implementation of whole lifecycle management (WLCM) for facilities depends upon the seamless flow of information between the development and operational stages of facilities, which in turn depends upon the ability of the project manager to integrate various requirements of project stakeholders (Edum-Fotwe, et al., 2003); (Meng, 2013); (PMI, 2008). Traditionally, design is separated from the facilities management (FM) stage, and concepts such as early FM involvement are advocated as instruments that can be used to achieve integration between these stages (Meng, 2013). Early FM involvement is the integration of FM practitioners in the design stage and thus, allowing for valuable FM information to be included at an early stage of development. However, most of the available academic literature on early FM involvement either focus on the significance of early FM involvement without specifying the actual framework, similarly where frameworks are defined, only focus in one particular function of FM such as maintainability, without regard for operability, serviceability and other aspects of WLCM (Liu & Issa, 2013); (Meng, 2013). Therefore, the basis for this research was founded on the realisation of the silo approach between project management (PM) and FM stages, and lack of comprehensive frameworks for early FM involvement, resulting in facilities that are costly to maintain and operate. This research sought to provide a comprehensive performance management framework (PMF) for early FM involvement, here after called the PMF, within the South African context.

In this thesis I propose that the literature on ambidexterity does not fully explore the detailed practices by which organisations and managers may achieve both exploitation and exploration. A systematic review identifies that studies have focused principally at the organisation-level, and there is a lack of both empirical and theoretical work at the micro-level of analysis highlighting how ambidexterity may be achieved in practical, complex, working structures. The research addresses these micro-mechanisms in the context of the management of projects, a suitable area in that it can be considered as using defined processes together with the flexibility to overcome particular issues that arise. The contribution of the thesis is that it presents an insight into the management of ambidexterity in such an environment, and identifies how multiple knowledge resources are utilised, together with the underlying managerial practices. The level of analysis is the project (specifically, IT-services projects in a major multinational organisation), using the manager as the unit of analysis. The research question is ‘How is ambidexterity achieved at the level of the project?’ This is an opportunity to explore a practical as well as a theoretical gap, in an increasingly important area of business operations. The first stage of the research examines the managerial role in terms of intellectual capital, using a variety of projects. This shows that the sub-components of IC (human, social and organisational/project capital) can each be understood as having co-existing, orthogonal, exploitative and exploratory elements, an important extension of existing theory. The forms of intellectual capital are interwoven not only with each other, but also with the processes of exploitation and exploration, and to conceive of them as separate is an insufficient theorisation. The findings from the qualitative approach are used to investigate the duality of these concepts and bring greater clarity to our understanding of their operationalisation. .This is followed by eight case studies, each using between three and five managerial respondents, together with project data, used to develop a more fine-grained understanding of ambidexterity in a wide range of industrial settings. This shows different managerial configurations (including ‘distributed’ and ‘point’ ambidexterity – an addition to current theory), together with five key managerial practices to enable project-level ambidexterity, identified in the context of project complexity, critical events and constraints.