Systems Thinking in Project Management
A special issue of Systems (ISSN 2079-8954).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2020) | Viewed by 9062
Special Issue Editors
Interests: project management; systems thinking; complexity; team building; methodology
Interests: project management; systems thinking; careers; competence
Interests: leadership development for complex projects; complex adaptive systems
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Projects and programmes are frequently delivered within highly contested socio-political environments. These forms of temporary organization provide a fascinating context for the study of systems because of their dynamic nature. Usually designed around time-bound or evolving objectives, they are vulnerable to influence from, and influence by, their internal and external environments.
Project management education and practice have been shaped by systems thinking, from early interest in Systems Engineering, which informed the development of industry-wide practice guides and standards, to later interest in Soft Systems Methodology and the increasing interpretivist emphasis in the field. Project management is essentially practice-based. Further research into the application of systems thinking to project management will provide a valuable stimulus to the evolution of project management as a discipline.
Topics:
- Systems thinking approaches to conflict management in large-scale and protracted projects
- Problem structuring and solution-space definition in ill-defined projects
- Systemic exploration of emergent risk scenarios
- The systemic interaction between a project and the broader organizational context
- Application of systems thinking to megaprojects in politically contested environments
- How the application of system thinking varies with the size of projects
- Conscious and unconscious application of systems thinking in projects
- Systemic stakeholder engagement
- Resolution of complex social issues structured as a project
- Personal capabilities needed by project managers to think systemically
- Systems and patterns of communication in projects
- Contradictions and synergies between projects and organizations through the lens of systems thinking
- Systems approaches to multi-leader/multi-organizational governance of projects
- How systemic approaches to multi-methodology and pluralism can inform project management practice
- How deterministic and non-deterministic thinking have influenced project management
- How systems thinking is changing approaches to managing multiple stakeholders
- Systems thinking in project analytics
- Use of systemic analytics to manage complex projects in real time
- Visualising complex relationships through systems thinking models and techniques
- Use of systems thinking to manage geographically distributed projects
- Systemic approaches to managing programmes and portfolios
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Julien Pollack
Prof. Dr. Lynn Crawford
Dr. Kaye Remington
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Project Management
- Program Management
- Portfolio Management
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