[雙語翻譯]--外文翻譯--項目管理最近的發(fā)展和研究意義（原文）

1、J Syst Sci Syst Eng (Jun 2012) 21(2): 129-143 ISSN: 1004-3756 (Paper) 1861-9576 (Online) DOI: 10.1007/s11518-012-5190-5 CN11-2983/N ? Systems Engineering Society of China & Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 PR

2、OJECT MANAGEMENT: RECENT DEVELOPMENTS AND RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES Nicholas G. HALL Department of Management Sciences Fisher College of Business, The Ohio State University, USA hall_33@fisher.osu.edu (?) Abstract This pap

3、er studies the business process known as project management. This process has exhibited a remarkable growth in business interest over the last 15 years, as demonstrated by a 1000% increase in membership in the Project Ma

4、nagement Institute since 1996. This growth is largely attributable to the emergence of many new diverse business applications that can be successfully managed as projects. The new applications for project management incl

5、ude IT implementations, research and development, new product and service development, corporate change management, and software development. The characteristics of modern projects are typically very different from those

6、 of traditional projects such as construction and engineering, which necessitates the development of new project management techniques. We discuss these recent practical developments. The history of project management me

7、thodology is reviewed, from CPM and PERT to the influential modern directions of critical chain project management and agile methods. We identify one important application area for future methodological change as new pro

8、duct and service development. A list of specific research topics within project management is discussed. The conclusions suggest the existence of significant research opportunities within project management. Keywords: P

9、roject management, overview, recent practical developments, opportunities for research 1. Introduction A project is conventionally defined as a “temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service” (Proj

10、ect Management Institute 2008). Alternatively, a project can be thought of as a well defined set of tasks that must all be completed in order to meet the project's goals (Klastorin 2004). In a typical project, many t

11、asks are performed concurrently with each other. Another key feature of projects is the existence of precedence relations between the tasks. These relations typically define constraints that require one task to be comple

12、ted before another starts. Compared to many business processes, project management appears to be particularly difficult, from both theoretical and practical perspectives. From a theoretical perspective, the fundamental p

13、lanning problem of resource constrained scheduling is highly intractable. From a practical perspective, the two standard objectives in project management are defined to Hall: Project Management: Recent Developments and R

14、esearch Opportunities J Syst Sci Syst Eng 131 applications are nondeterministic. Not surprisingly, the processes of scheduling and budgeting the project are considerably more difficult for nondeterministic projects t

15、han for deterministic ones. A second distinction lies in the difficulty of estimating the amount of work that has been completed so far. While a rough estimate is visually available in the case of a skyscraper, it is typ

16、ically not available in the case of a software program. This lack of transparency about project progress makes it difficult to estimate time and cost variance relative to project progress, and without this information is

17、 it difficult to allocate resources that protect the performance of the project relative to its overall schedule and budget. A third defining difference lies in the time pressure under which projects are completed. By th

18、eir nature, traditional projects are often of lengthy duration, whereas modern projects can be much shorter, especially for new products and services. With short product and service life cycles, for example as in the con

19、sumer electronics industry, a delay in project completion can mean that a product is simply uncompetitive. In all the three examples considered above, the characteristics of modern projects make them substantially harder

20、 to manage, and especially to complete on time and on budget, than traditional projects. As discussed in Section 3 below, this has resulted in the development of new, alternative project management methodologies that

21、can more effectively deal with the difficulties of modern projects. Several reasons can be identified for the increasing importance of project management as a business process. Principal among these reasons are the follo

22、wing. 1. Project management effectively controls change, allowing organizations to introduce new products, processes and programs. 2. Projects are becoming more complex, making them more difficult to control witho

23、ut a formal management structure. 3. Projects with substantially different characteristics, especially in IT, are emerging. 4. Project management helps cross-functional teams to become more effective. 5. Com

24、panies are using project management to develop and test their future leaders. The dominant professional organization that supports project management is the Project Management Institute, which operates branches in 180 co

25、untries. This organization had a worldwide membership of less than 10,000 in 1980, but this grew substantially to about 50,000 by 1996. Today, PMI has about 550,000 members. There are few, if any, other business processe

26、s that can demonstrate three consecutive decades of exponential growth in interest, or such a large professional interest level today. The rapid growth in project management applications has also created bottlenecks in t

27、he job market. For example, in summer 2010, there were 10,000 unfilled jobs in IT project management in Asia alone. 3. Development of Methodology Although project management was not yet formalized as a business process a