Project management minitrack - focus: effective leadership and technology support for today's project management environments

As we enter the next millennium, organizational pressures continue to increase toward rapid and accurate market response. New developments must often be planned and managed in an environment of fast changing technology, markets, regulations, and socioeconomic factors, as well as within team-based organizations that rely on resource and power sharing. Modern project management provides the process template for effectively executing these ventures, while information technology provides many of the tools for dealing with the enormous complexities of tracking, integrating and controlling these projects. Sophisticated people skills are critically important for managing effectively in such a complex organizational environment. The six papers collected in this minitrack provide a small sample of field research that spans across a wide spectrum of issues and best practices, which address the challenges of project managers' in today's complex business environment. "A Project Management Model Based on Shared Understanding" by Cederling, Ekinge, Lennartsson,Taxen and Wedlund provides an useful insight into the intricacies of today's project environment. The paper also challenges the traditional approach of phased project execution, which often leads to a "linear implementation mentality," neglecting the important need for cross-functional sharing and integration. Based on field research, the author suggests specific managerial actions which shift the team focus toward a project-context understanding, underscoring the team's capability to function in a unified and interdisciplinary fashion.Such a shared understanding is especially crucial in "Geographically Distributed Project Teams" as discussed in "A Dimensional Analysis" by Evaristo and Scudder, and in a field study by Lassenius, Nissinen and Rautiainen, which focuses on "Improving Multi-Project Management in Two Product Organizations."With the continued growth of information technology and its applications, many new IT-based project management tools have emerged, ranging from software for project planning/tracking, to web-based project support systems. These new technologies have provided a contemporary framework and many specific tools for building the multi-functional linkages and communication channels, essential for successfully integrating today's complex projects.Three papers address the important role of IT and its management implications for effective project execution and control: "Managing Projects through a Corporate Repository" by Hefner discusses TRW's experiences and best practices in using web-based systems for on-line project reviews and management reporting. "ViCA - A WWW-Based Tool for Visualizing Project Status" by Kilponen and Vanhanen, and "IS Leadership Roles," by Gottschalk examine additional dimensions of Internet-supported project management, including activity-based measurements of IS/IT project performance.Taken together, this group of selected field studies suggests, that successful management of projects in today's challenging business environment requires both, appropriate tools, techniques and processes, and sophisticated people skills. Effective project leaders are social architects who understand the interaction of organizational and behavioral variables and can foster a climate of active participation and minimal dysfunctional conflict.They also build alliances with support organizations and upper management to assure organizational visibility, priority, resource availability, and overall support for the multifunctional activities of the project throughout its life cycle.