Abstract

Contemporary Issues in Project Management : The aim of the study is to determine areas that can contribute to the success or failure of the project. We have paid attention to two issues in our study: issue of lack of creativity and the disconnect of the organization and the constituents. Optimism bias and exaggeration of business cases are only two of the major problems that were discussed in this literature review; further elaboration was given by the discussion on defining the status of project success and decision making concerning the planning fallacy.

A desktop analysis of the manner in which these questions are addressed, the interrelations among them and the influence they have on the successful performance of a particular project is considered as means of addressing these questions. In spite of the multiple factors that influence the performance of a project being only loosely linked together by uncertainty, the authors, nonetheless, come to the conclusion that project management is premised in a deterministic view of the world that is focused on control and certainty.

The study findings state that project managers should place less emphasis on the process and more focus on the outcome in case they want to minimize the incidence of the group which fails to meet customer expectations.

Introduction

According to Successful implementation, a development initiative was defined as being free of failure, which is necessary to have the plan to be multiplied within the given timeframe; success is the attainment of the intended outcome. The linguists in us also know that project management refers to the process of managing the start to finish of a project to insure timely delivery, on budget complete and being of the quality demanded by our customer.

The core differences between research projects and development projects can be described as the inability to design a result in the former as well as the specified needs in the latter, as it will be shown in the main body of this book. Distribution of limited resources is another challenge to be tackled.

Very few advances on project management and the study of innovation have been shared with other fields. Scholars have given less concern on the issue of how and why some is more imaginative than others (either utilitarian or stratified). Because innovation management effectively becomes a project within organizations; it is important to understand how the correlation between the two works.

The use of project management nowadays, (mostly referred to as project management) is employed to carry out projects in practically any market imaginable. Knowledge organizations Professional organization The most common professional institutions like major professional associations have built knowledge bases, and continue to conduct research and improvement of project management methods and standards. Compared to this, the field of project management is relatively young, and it does not have a universal definition (Pellegrinelli, 2011, p.234).

According to APM, project management is, “the application of procedures, practices, knowledge, expertise and experience to generate project objectives.” According to Kerzner, project management is simply the planning, organizing, directing and managing of corporate resources towards a relatively short term aim to achieve proclaimed goals and objectives. On the basis of these criteria, it is apparent that some of the initiatives can utilize some support of techniques, procedures, and strategies. The practicality of traditional project management practices and its limitations is being reconsidered since they have failed up to now to provide the anticipated reward (Joslin & MULLER, 2015).

Project management as it is defined by Gardiner is the combination of business, management and operational establishments in generating organisational benefits through complex and unpredictable real life projects and programmers. According to Hodgson and Cicmil, the concept of project and profession of project management have been social constructed (2006, quoted in Pellegrinelli, 2011, p.234).

This fact has consequences to the manner in which we perceive projects since projects are intangible as they are socially constructed, as Maylor (2010) notes. Human beings are indeed critical in the successful formulation and implementation of a project because it is only individuals who come up with a problem and institute a project.

The inability to achieve a universally acceptable definition of the concepts of a project or project management is not surprising; the fact is that people perceive these things in different ways not only individually but also bare on the project itself, the organization and industry. This is another piece of evidence that falls in support of this argument of a lack of role of theory in project management. The decision to research deeper into this issue as a piece of the literature review has been made due to its possibility to explain why a project can fail and define approaches to giving it more successful outcome in the future.

This paper will concentrate on the three fields of project management, research, development and innovation, and innovation. The growing level of attention to these problems can be explained by their consideration in national agendas, as well as strategy papers by the companies.

The relationship between technological innovation and the growth in GDP is testified to by many articles published in the economics literature. Over the last 20 years, productivity and economic growth rates increased dramatically because of the rising emergence of new technologies, sectors of the economy, and managerial approaches. Activities of research and development (R&D) are no longer associable with innovation. Innovation and better understanding of the world is only possible through research and development. Innovation is also going on in the low-tech areas of the world, not just the high-tech agencies of advanced economies but in fact also in low-tech sectors of countries attempting to come up to the West.

However, innovation research has a lot to do with research and development (R&D) and innovation relations.

An increasing number of professionals chose to plan their work around personal projects as opposed to working them on an ongoing, functional basis and the trend towards individualisation of work is resulting in the projectification of the globe. Project management must be used in R&D. The majority of present-day methods of project management developed out of the management of research and development, usually of a military nature (Lorell, 1995). The Public Sector Research and Development (R&D) Project Management (PRINCE2) methodology is by far superior to the rest (UK OGC, 2005).

The above reasons should differentiate research and development works with the innovation initiatives. Formal R&D spending might or might not be the source of innovation and technology might not be the engine of innovation.

Innovation

Innovation refers to the voluntary search and use of novel ideas and subsequently the creative integration of the readily available knowledge with the aim of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage over others. More so, innovation and R&D projects are distinct among other types of projects. Through this, the act of handling innovation in a project with application of project management tools and techniques should be given its own branch of research: Innovation Project Management (IPM).

Even though research on innovation places its focus significantly on the details of creativity, and teamwork, the challenges of working on innovation during projects are not much focused on. Through his brilliant article, it could be argued that the literature confuses innovative ideas and project management as various problems.

This is a valid point that is made by Anbari (2005). However, as the following section will reveal, there has been in recent times significant scholarly undertaking with regards to the nexus between creativity and project management. There are written policy documents (e.g European Commission, 2004, 2006) formalising this idea of innovation initiatives. Nonetheless, there is a deficit of further studies (theoretical and empirical). The purpose of the research is to reduce that gap between innovation studies and Project management by identifying the point of convergence between the two literatures and proposing new conceptual models and typologies with regards to each of the subjects.

Paucity of data, unreliability of data, and a shortage of data contribute to poor research on innovation and project managements. Lack of enough data on how the PM activities were conducted by corporations and governments denies an investigation of PM on a macro-scale. Lack of clarity in definition of certain projects, together with the absence of transparency which underlies most companies, is a significant cause of stress at work. Case studies and other related surveys, which could be characterized as specialized and small-sample surveys, have had a wide application in the field of project management. It is no secret that the discipline of PM is lacking in methodologically sound empirical research studies (Soderlund, 2004).

Literature Review

Failure to manage innovation could provide worthwhile management in future, which must be analyzed. The more successful innovation activities experienced by businesses, the greater the shareholders received and the more skilled worker were. The relationships of various organizational characteristics on the performance of an organization in this sector of innovation is discussed and the connection between innovation and project-based organization is examined.

Various opinions exist on the determinant of the success or failure of an internal project. Self-elaboration questionnaire is a common instrument in the study of management. Some of them consider the large scale and attempt to consider what combination of factors leads a project to succeed or not whereas others limit themselves to individual case studies and what an individual case study possesses that leads to success in management. According to Toby Cooke-Davies (2002), further research is needed to pin point these specific factors that constitute innovative businesses. The outcome of the creative works retells The clue to life and how to live it.

The level at which the business is creative will determine its capacity to break into new markets, expand the market share, and how it can be differentiated with competitors. Given that nowadays the focus of business competition goes global, the necessity to be innovative on a regular basis is even greater? This can be attributed to the fact that within a very short time, the market value of legacy services and goods drastically depreciates when it finds itself in the presence of increased technological innovations and extreme competition in the world.

Businesses could also use a more innovative way of conducting business in terms of manufacturing output, market performance, customer brand impression, and in the long term competitive advantage. The ubiquity of creativity in the modern life has prompted researchers to spend most of the past 20 years trying to define the concept of creativity as well as the impact it has on productivity. Even though their chances are low, businesses can also be successful in case they decide to branch out and be innovative (Kuratko et al., 2005).

Innovative genius could come in handy in product development, improvement of processes, management and planning at large in the company. According to Schumpeter (1934), very many examples of innovation were given, which featured new goods, industrial practices, supply chains, markets, and even organizational structures. The term innovation was first coined by Peter Drucker in 1985 when he wrote that the term was being used to refer to the process of creating more capabilities or increasing the amount of investment returns. OECD Oslo Manual (2005) gives guidelines on how to identify and measure the innovation activities and data collection and utilisation which has resulted in a standardised description, identification, and classification of the innovations at business level.

Theories

There are two rival theories that are trying to explain the phenomenon when some of the internal initiatives succeed and the others fail. Management practices are investigated with the help of self-elaboration questionnaires. by Nicholas Bloom Jeanne Van Reenen(2010). On the contrary, others examine what makes a project successful or unsuccessful by investigating cases and management requirements. There is a need to have more research and draw a relationship between the nature of innovative firms and the innovation carried by said firms as indicated by the work of (Cooke-Davies, T. (2002).

The product innovation can sometimes be triggered by finding new information or by the discovery of new applications of known fields of study or an existing technique, or a combination of well-known disciplines. Both the tangible and intangible goods and services can exist in the product market. Alternative trends like growing competition across the world, shorter lifespan about products, and new tastes to gain popularity contribute to the development of the problem of the creation of new goods.

Relationships among the employees, customers, and suppliers are the lifelines to all firms (Akova et al., 1998). We term a process innovation when we have a relatively new or more efficient form of manufacturing or distribution. Discussions are made on changes in hardware, software and/or technology that are a major factor in the industry.

Implementation of process innovations can serve many more diverse purposes that include reduction of costs associated with each unit of manufacture or distribution product, increasing quality of products or even to create and market entirely new and enormously superior goods. As Fagerberg et al., (2004) argued, process innovation could influence revenue and employment growth the least compared to new commodity launching activities because its main intention is the reduction of costs.

Optimistic/Unrealistic, planning fallacy

The planning fallacy is a certain form of cognitive bias that was developed by psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979. They envisioned it as the propensity to erroneously estimate the time of the future task completion in the future displaced to utility in the unreasonably optimistic conditions of performance.

Planning fallacy can be described as an aspect in which an individual underestimates or forgets the time needed to do a job sometime in the future. They can even experience this influence despite the possibility that they have a knowledge on the truth that the identical jobs that had been performed previously would have remained longer than expected. It only seems biased when the inclination of one to engage in a certain behaviour is being judged; the attempts of other individuals in terms of forecasting the accomplishment of certain chores is prejudiced for the negative. Misplanning comes as a result of coming up with over-optimistic projections of the timetable.

Three broad types of positive misperceptions will be outlined yet, it does not seem to be the only variety (other misperceptions include self-serving bias, wishful thinking, are just a few; Krizan and Windschitl, 2009; Shepperd et al., 2008). The optimism of the naves can be described as the tendency to perceive the world positively; one perceives the positive image of a person and, in general, of the world (e.g., Langer & Roth, 1975);

The need to have the illusion of control, the exaggeration of the individual capacity to govern outside, independent events (1) and the better than average effect or illusion of superiority, overestimation of positive personal qualities as well as those of past behaviour and enduring characteristics (Shepperd, Carroll, Grace, & Terry, 2002, p. 65). Unrealistic optimism and optimism bias were often used interchangeably by the authors of the present paper along with the other authors in the field.

Discussion and Conclusion

Funding issues may hinder initiatives (Flyvbjerg, 2006).   In respective fields, Flyvbjerg, Garbuio, and Lovallo have connected faulty judgment, paranoia, and dishonesty.   Its predecessor made ridiculous predictions about which business would prevail (Buehler, Griffin & Ross, 1994).   Start by inflating project advantages compared to other business case approaches.   The wrong initiatives may be authorized, compromising their benefits, credibility, and durability.

It is often avoided in project management literature because of the supposition of a prior company plan, one with clear objectives and constraints, and the customer expectations undecided. The Transportation Department has applied reference class forecasting to mitigate the shocks of overconfidence (soliciting third party information). However, as a real fact the managers usually utilize inefficient policies towards project management, comprising of risk management to determine and mitigate the factors leading to cost escalation and schedule overruns.

With sufficient information available, researchers may test how the project management aims at steering innovation. Ideas that endeavor to popularize scientific innovations often fail in the process and scholars in the field of innovation know this very well. Most projects may be incomplete due to abandonment during development process, end up to be more costly than expected or time delay in the realization of the project.

Manufacturing facilities must innovate to compete. Industry may improve processes via process innovation, technology, and organizational transformation. Due to rigid infrastructure and IT systems, your company must innovate to boost output. This technique may provide companies an advantage with new technology, administration methods, and manufacturing process changes (Reichstein & Salter, 2006)..

Conclusion and Recommendation

Innovation research and project management agree little.   Researchers have concentrated more on functional or hierarchical organizational configurations than on project innovation.   Companies are prioritizing innovation project management.   Since experts vary on project success factors, project management may be at a crossroads.

A research project involves different kinds of planning, administration and scheduling than one of a development project. There can be differences between the type, magnitude and quality of inputs and the results that can be achieved but organizations still require result-based research. A research project should be well managed and these needs a lot of influence and persuasion skills in addition to the ability to unite a huge number of professionals over a given objective.

Time and money constraints are considered.  Most projects follow project management norms and presumptions since all recommended tools, methods, and strategies are based on the deterministic worldview that projects are predetermined and under management and control.  Cost and time predictions, project scope, business case, and outcomes were likely examined and quantified.

Mistakes like the planning fallacy and deliberate deceit may ruin a project.  Poor results are not unexpected since improper initiatives might be passed.  Due to the unpredictability of projects, non-deterministic studies are increasingly studying risk, complexity, and uncertainty as project failure reasons.  Given its nature, emergencies are also unknown.  Project managers must be flexible yet laser-focused on project results to cope with unforeseeable project difficulties.  It may be time to switch paradigms.

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