A crescente busca pela utilização do gerenciamento de projetos enquanto diferencial estratégico no mercado atual e, mais recentemente, a procura pelo gerenciamento de projetos formal e estruturado, como parte da estratégia competitiva da organização, associadas à popularização do termo maturidade, justificam o conceito de maturidade em gerenciamento de projetos e a existência dos modelos de maturidade em gerenciamento de projetos. Existem atualmente diversos modelos de maturidade no mercado. A maioria deles está alinhada a um guia de conhecimento, que é utilizado como medida comparativa na avaliação do nível de maturidade da organização, e classifica o estágio de maturidade da organização em cinco níveis. Difere dos demais o modelo Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®), proposto pelo Project Management Institute (2003). Ao invés de ser concebido como um modelo de níveis de maturidade, tem como enfoque três elementos (conhecimento, avaliação e melhoria), através dos quais o modelo se auto-atribui a capacidade de vincular projetos à estratégia organizacional. O presente estudo procurou avaliar a contribuição da maturidade em gerenciamento de projetos para a seleção de projetos de acordo com a estratégia organizacional. Quanto ao método de pesquisa, foi utilizado o survey, tendo como fonte de evidência um questionário auto-administrado web-based. A população de interesse do pesquisador foi composta pelas organizações estabelecidas no Brasil que se utilizam do gerenciamento de projetos; a amostra da pesquisa foi constituída de profissionais da área de gerenciamento de projetos da rede de contatos do pesquisador. As 78 respostas válidas obtidas com o survey foram submetidas às análises descritiva e inferencial. Em relação aos resultados obtidos, foi possível comprovar que a utilização do modelo OPM3® para avaliação do nível de maturidade da organização influencia a prática da seleção de projetos relacionados à estratégia organizacional. Não foi possível provar que a prática da seleção de projetos relacionados à estratégia organizacional seja influenciada pela existência de processo de formulação da estratégia ou pelo estágio de maturidade predominante na organização para cada domínio (projeto, programa e portfólio). Em se tratando das limitações do estudo, citam-se a pequena quantidade de empresas brasileiras onde o questionário de Auto-Avaliação proposto pelo OPM3® foi utilizado e a obtenção da visão da organização através da percepção do respondente (em alguns casos as questões exigiam uma resposta subjetiva). Por sua vez, a principal contribuição obtida com a pesquisa refere-se à identificação de elementos facilitadores da seleção de projetos relacionados à estratégia organizacional. Como contribuição secundária, pode ser citada a ampliação da quantidade de pesquisas acadêmicas realizadas com apoio de tecnologia para o recebimento dos dados, neste caso, email e hospedagem na Internet. Outras contribuições referem-se à proposição do modelo teórico para a pesquisa e à realização da pesquisa de campo em si, esta última permitindo a obtenção de dados sobre empresas nacionais no que tange ao gerenciamento de projetos e à utilização do modelo OPM3® para avaliação do nível de maturidade. / The increasing use of project management as strategic differential in our market and, most recently, the search of formal and structured project management, as part of organizational competitive strategy, in association with the maturity concept popularization, justify the concept of project management maturity and the existence of project management maturity models. There are many maturity models at the market. Most of them are aligned with a project management body of knowledge, used as reference to the organizational maturity level evaluation, and classify the organizational maturity stage into five linear levels. The Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®), developed under the stewardship of the Project Management Institute (2003), is different. Instead of being designed as a system of levels of maturity, it focuses on three basic elements (knowledge, assessment and improvement), through which the model assigns itself the capability of join organizational strategy and projects. This study aimed to evaluate the contribution of project management maturity into bridging strategy and individual projects. The research method used was the survey, and the measurement instrument was a web-based self-assessment questionnaire. The population frame was composed by Brazilian organizations that use project management; the research sample was composed by researcher networking professionals used to work at project management area. The 78 valid responses obtained through survey were analyzed by descriptive and statistical inference. Regarding the results, it was possible to prove that OPM3® model application in order to assess organizational maturity level acts on the project selection according to organizational strategy. It was not possible to prove that project selection according to organizational strategy depends on the formulation process of the strategy or the organizational maturity stage for each domain (project, program and portfolio). Among the study limitations, there was the small quantity of Brazilian companies that had used Self-Assessment tool provided in OPM3® and the collection of organizational view through the respondent perceptions (in some cases the questions requested a subjective answer). On the other hand, the main research contribution was the identification of helpful agents of project selection according to organizational strategy. As a secondary contribution, the growing in academical research using technological support to data collection, in this case, e-mail and web-based, might be mentioned. Other contributions refer to the theoretical model proposed to the study and the field research itself, this one allowing data collection about project management and the use of OPM3® model to maturity level assessment in Brazilian companies.

A teoria de gerenciamento de projetos (GP) tem sido alvo de proposições de novas abordagens, como o gerenciamento ágil de projetos (GAP), resultando em novas práticas, técnicas e ferramentas, ainda pouco identificadas e caracterizadas quanto ao seu uso. Não há definições precisas e instrumentos que possam distinguir o uso por problemas como nomenclaturas e falta de identificação de características observáveis. Isso diminui a qualidade das pesquisas na área. Visando preencher essa lacuna, descrevem-se as práticas de gerenciamento de projetos existentes, classificando-as em termos de abordagem de gerenciamento de projetos empregada (tradicional e ágil), de forma a permitir a identificação da abordagem utilizada por uma organização. Restringiu-se o problema aos temas escopo e tempo em virtude do tamanho significativo da teoria. Para isso, empregaram-se os métodos de Revisão Bibliográfica Sistemática e do estudo multicasos do tipo incorporado em empresas de excelência em gestão de projetos. Foram analisadas duas empresas que assumem adotar abordagem tradicional e ágil respectivamente. O resultado apresenta a lista de práticas identificadas na literatura e um referencial do tipo inventário, possibilitando a identificação das práticas em empresas reais e sua categorização quanto à abordagem utilizada. A análise das práticas empregadas permitiu também identificar as características essenciais que distinguem as duas abordagens: plano de projeto em duas etapas; uso de desafios e metáforas para delimitar o escopo; a ausência de sequenciamentos de atividades; detalhamento de cronograma em intervalos de tempo pré-estabelecidos (iteração); controle do andamento a partir de resultados concretos e; controle do escopo com priorização periódica pelo cliente. Tal resultado contribui para os estudos sobre o tema. O inventário proposto e os resultados encontrados permitem que os pesquisadores da área avaliem o gerenciamento ágil de projetos de maneira mais consistente, aprimorando as pesquisas na área. / The theory of project management (PM) has been target of propositions new approaches such as agile project management (APM), resulting in practices, techniques and tools, still little identified and characterized as their use. There aren\'t precise definitions and instruments which can distinguish the use of problems such as lack of identification classifications and the observable characteristics. This reduces quality research in the area. Aiming to fill this gap, we describe the management practices of existing projects, classifying them in terms of project management approach applied (traditional and agile), to allow the identification of the approach used by an organization. It was restricted the problem to the scope and time themes because of significant size of theory. For this reason, employed the methods of systematic literature review and study multicase companies incorporated in the type of excellence in project management. We analyzed two companies that take the traditional approach and adopt agile respectively. The result shows the list of practices identified in the literature and a reference-type inventory, enabling the identification of actual companies and practices in their categorization on the approach used. The analysis of the practices employed also made it possible to identify the essential characteristics that distinguish the two approaches: project plan in two stages, use of metaphors for the challenges and define the scope, the lack of sequencing activities; detailed schedule at intervals pre-established (iteration); tracking progress from concrete results, scope control with periodic prioritization by the client. This result contributes to the studies on the subject. The proposed inventory and the results allow researchers to assess the agile project management more consistently, improving research in the area.

Cross-company product development projects are often managed without clearly defined project goals and without an alignment of these goals to an organisations strategy and objectives. With a shift towards more decentralised and distributed development teams, and an increasing level of collaboration, project transparency is reduced and status measurement more difficult due to a lack of transparency. To overcome these difficulties, the quality of collaboration in the automotive manufacturing industry needs to be improved. The understanding of unifying goals and of the mutual purpose to produce new products is essential for efficient and effective collaboration. A methodological study in the automotive industry as part of this research lead to the conclusion that a strategic scorecard method based on the Balanced Scorecard concept by Kaplan and Norton is capable to improve cross-company project management and reduce existing difficulties in typical product development collaboration, such as communication or collaborative risk management. A common definition of project goals, leading and lagging indicators to measure the status, and defining corrective action are core elements of the Collaborative Project Scorecard concept. This thesis identifies the current problems and difficulties in automotive project management and explores solutions to improve its efficiency and effectiveness based on the Collaborative Project Scorecard. It is shown how the concept is derived from business strategies for an improved alignment of project goals with business objectives. A project impact analysis facilitates the development of project strategy maps to increase transparency of goal impact interdependencies. Furthermore, based on the results of workshops, surveys, and interviews the Collaborative Project Scorecard concept is applied to typical automotive product development projects and the identified advantages and limitations are evaluated by an application to a crosscompany project of an automotive supplier and a manufacturer. The development of the Collaborative Project Scorecard is followed by a software implementation of the results. The integration of a collaborative project management model that has a focus on time, task and communication management enables the project manager to create operational indicators that can be controlled on a strategic level by the Collaborative Project Scorecard. Additionally, it is shown how risk management and performance assessment are supported by the concept. Advantages, benefits, and limitations of the methodology are identified and further application scenarios suggested.

<p>Software projects are known for their failure rate, where many are being delivered late, over budget or being canceled while in development. The reason to it is changing requirements and intangibility of the software. Being so abstract it is difficult to imaging all the aspects of the software at the requirements stage. Also technology is playing a major role since processing power, storage space, and data transfer speeds are improving from year to year.</p><p>Agile methodologies are addressing projects with unclear requirements making process of implementing new specifications along the project much easier and less costly. However the success rate of the software projects did not improve much since the introduction of Agile methodologies. This thesis is looking at what type of projects fit different methodologies and what are factors which practitioners should take into account when selecting methodology for a particular project,</p><p>The thesis opens up with introduction which sets the research question and provides a brief background to the research topic. In subsequent chapter literature review is conducted to find out what does literature and other researchers have said on the same topic. Third chapter discusses underlying research philosophy and discusses the data collection tools. Next chapter discusses the findings of the research. Interviews has been conducted with project management professionals from Sweden, US, UK and Canada. It was identified through the analysis of patters that Agile methodologies are not well suited for projects involving databases, embedded development and computationally complex projects. Through the analysis of the questionnaire several project characteristics were identified which suit Agile methodologies better than traditional ones: unclear requirements, high risk of failure etc… In the last chapter the thesis concludes the findings and its theoretical and practical implications.</p>

<p>Syftet med uppsatsen är att ge en bild av hur generella projektledningsmetoder används inom reklambranschen. Vi ville undersöka vilka aspekter av projektledningen som kan påverkas av de speciella förutsättningar som finns i reklambranschen. Varje reklamprojekt innehåller en skapandeprocess, och vi ville se hur sådant påverkar projektledningen.</p><p>Vi sammanställde först ett antal generella projektledningsmetoder för att få en teoretisk bild av hur projekt kan bedrivas. För att ge läsaren en inblick i reklambranschen och hur reklam skapas, beskrev vi även reklam ur ett teoretiskt perspektiv.</p><p>Med utgång från vår teori, genomförde vi en kvalitativ studie av sju reklambolag i Karlstad. Vi gjorde djupintervjuer med en projektledare från respektive byrå, under vilka de fick beskriva sitt projektarbete. Det empiriska resultatet från intervjuerna jämfördes sedan med den teori som låg till grund för undersökningen.</p><p>Undersökningen visade att reklambyråerna i stor utsträckning använde sig av projektledningsmetoder, i vissa fall utan att de själva var medvetna om det. Förstudien är inte särskilt omfattande från byråernas sida. Det är istället kunden som genomför det mesta av det arbete som vi skulle kalla förstudie. Planeringen av den kreativa arbetsprocessen var i de flesta fall så ostrukturerad som vi på förhand trott. Vi märkte även från vissa byråer en ovilja att strukturera planeringsarbetet, något som verkade bero på branschtraditioner. Efter att planeringen för projektet är gjord och idén tagits fram, har reklambyråerna ofta en produktionsledare som styr genomförandefasen. Projektledarna har då en marginaliserad roll, vilket är en skillnad gentemot gängse metodbeskrivningar inom akademin och näringslivet. Även om det fanns brister i planeringsarbetet, hade byråerna väl utarbetade rutiner inom andra delar av projektarbetet, framförallt för acceptansproceduren mellan byrå och kund.</p><p>Byråerna visade genomgående brister när det gäller rutiner för erfarenhetsutbyte mellan projekt. Slutrapporter skrivs inte, och lärdomar stannar därför hos dem som deltagit i det specifika projektet. Det riskerar att göra reklambyråerna beroende av att medarbetare stannar inom företaget.</p> / <p>The purpose of this essay was to study to which extent project management methods are used in advertising projects. We wanted to investigate which aspects of project management can be affected by the special conditions characterizing the advertisement business. All advertising projects demand a process of creation, and we wanted to see how that can affect the project management.</p><p>In order to create a picture of how projects can be run from a theoretic point of view, we made a compilation of a number of general project management methods. To give the reader an insight in the advertisement business and in how advertisement is produced, we also described advertisement from a theoretic point of view.</p><p>With our theoretic view as base, we carried out a qualitative study of seven local advertising agencies. We made in-depth interviews with project managers from all seven agencies respectively, during which they described their project processes. The empirical result from the interviews was then compared with the theories that formed the basis of the study.</p><p>The study showed that the advertising agencies to a great extent used project management methods, in some cases without themselves being aware of it. The agencies’ feasibility study is not especially comprehensive. Instead it is the clients that perform most of the work that we associate with feasibility studies. The planning of the creative work process was in most cases as unstructured as we had expected. We also noticed unwillingness from some agencies to make the planning process more structured, something that seemed to be due to business traditions. After the project planning is done and the idea for the campaign has been developed, the agencies often have a production manager to control the project execution phase. During the execution phase, the project manager has a marginalized role, something that differs from an academic view of project management. Even if the agencies had deficiencies in their planning processes, they had well elaborated acceptance procedures.</p><p>All agencies lacked routines for exchange of experience between projects. Final reports are not written, and lessons learned stay within the project team. This leaves the success of the agencies depending on their co-workers staying in the company.</p>

<p>As the world is becoming more and more globalized, business has to take the global marketplace into serious consideration. This is not just about new markets to sell products in, but also where to locate production and where to source resources from. With the launch of new communication technology it has also become easier and easier to cooperate across national borders without having to meet face-to-face. This has led to an increased demand on project managers concerning how to manage the communication within their project teams since they now can have members located in different geographical locations.</p><p>The main purpose of this research was to develop a deeper understanding about how project managers are managing communication within virtual teams. This was firstly done by through a literature review of the present knowledge in the field identifying five sub topics of interest.</p><ul><li>Communication channels<strong></strong></li><li>Skills for effective communication <strong></strong></li><li>Dealing with technology<strong></strong></li><li>Dealing with differences in culture and language<strong></strong></li><li>Managing trust and relationships<strong></strong></li></ul><p>These sub topics were used through the rest of the thesis as the structure of the argumentation. The empirical research consisted of a deductive interview study of four respondents within the ICT sectors in Sweden and Denmark.</p><p>Through the analysis and the conclusions all the topics were discussed in detail, where we got to know more about how they can be used to manage communication in virtual project teams. Something that came up in the analysis was the role of corporate culture in dealing with challenges in virtual communication, which in the end was suggested as a main topic for future research.</p><p>Different communication channels showed to be good for different things, both in terms of the efficiency of the communication but also for things such as facilitating engagement and accountability. There seem to be no clear understanding of what skills are required for efficient work in virtual teams, both in the present knowledge in the field and among the respondents. For managing technology it showed to be important to make sure that the technology works, that the team members know how to use it and why, and to find ways to warm up the media by making it more personal. Differences in culture and language were found to best be dealt with by building trust within the team and creating an understanding of the existing differences. Asynchronous communication showed to be effective for dealing with bigger language problems. The solutions for managing trust and relationships mainly revolved around social communication and getting to know each other better in the beginning, and around regular and predictable communication in the long run.</p>

The recent increase in international projects has resulted in higher risk along with difficulties in control and coordination. Effective project management can therefore be seen as being essential to the success of projects. The purpose of this paper is to understand how a large multinational company currently handles these issues. This paper conducts a case study that will look at the relationship between contingencies and their effects on project risk management. The findings show that although project risk management handles contingencies in standard projects it still requires improvement within complex projects. Therefore, based on research into agile project management a concept is proposed as an alternative for the case company to select project management method.

As global markets transcend nationalities in search for key advantages in cost,quality and flexibility, the once unbridgeable limit of geographical location isovercome by faster Internet speed lines, online services and tools that allowindividuals and businesses to interact regardless of space and time. This thesis studies the transition from traditional project management to virtualenvironments and the impact that this new paradigm has over dispersed teamsand their interactions among themselves and the project manager. The focus of the study lays on the concept of motivation within virtual projectmanagement and the role of the project manager to overcome the specificchallenges of this new working scenario. Additionally, parallels are drawn on themotivation features that virtual project management systems offer to projectmanagers as well as team members. This study shows the importance of bridging the difficulties of motivatingdispersed teams and how traditional techniques of motivation have a muchlesser impact on team members. The idea of progress and self accomplishmentare brought forth as the strongest motivators for dispersed teams. Finally, this study exposes the shortcomings of current projectware as a tool tomotivate teams and explores the idea of applying gamification techniques tothese software packages to lift the motivation responsibilities off the shoulders ofproject managers.

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Software projects are known for their failure rate, where many are being delivered late, over budget or being canceled while in development. The reason to it is changing requirements and intangibility of the software. Being so abstract it is difficult to imaging all the aspects of the software at the requirements stage. Also technology is playing a major role since processing power, storage space, and data transfer speeds are improving from year to year. Agile methodologies are addressing projects with unclear requirements making process of implementing new specifications along the project much easier and less costly. However the success rate of the software projects did not improve much since the introduction of Agile methodologies. This thesis is looking at what type of projects fit different methodologies and what are factors which practitioners should take into account when selecting methodology for a particular project, The thesis opens up with introduction which sets the research question and provides a brief background to the research topic. In subsequent chapter literature review is conducted to find out what does literature and other researchers have said on the same topic. Third chapter discusses underlying research philosophy and discusses the data collection tools. Next chapter discusses the findings of the research. Interviews has been conducted with project management professionals from Sweden, US, UK and Canada. It was identified through the analysis of patters that Agile methodologies are not well suited for projects involving databases, embedded development and computationally complex projects. Through the analysis of the questionnaire several project characteristics were identified which suit Agile methodologies better than traditional ones: unclear requirements, high risk of failure etc… In the last chapter the thesis concludes the findings and its theoretical and practical implications.