Projectification and its consequences

Globalisation is challenging almost every aspect of the political, economic, social and technological environment. Organisations, whether public or private, have to adapt their strategies and operations to stay competitive and efficient.

As the world changed from an industrially-driven to a more knowledge-driven economy and the pace of continuous change became more intense, organisations adopted a project-based mode of operations on a broader scale, and ‘projectification’ became more wide-spread.

(Ekstedt, 2009)

Organisations in all types of industries are finding that traditional organisational structures, including functional departments, business units and divisions set up for managing high-volume throughputs of standardised products and services and for making decisions in a relatively stable technological and market environment, are no longer adequate. In the rapidly changing and increasingly turbulent and uncertain environment they face today, organisations are finding that some sort of project organisation is better suited to the kind of one-off or temporary problems that they have to deal with.

(Maylor et al. 2006: 664)

• Ability to deploy the project consistently with a consistent set of processes
• Reduction of risk and maximisation of opportunities through the use of tried and tested and proven processes
• Greater likelihood of achieving the desired result
• Encourages teamwork and allows people to share ideas which provide inspiration and boost creativity
• Optimal, effective, and efficient use of resources
• Knowledge retention and learning from failure
• Satisfying the differing needs of the project’s stakeholders

Your task

Look at one of the two suggested readings (available in the see also section).

What are the potential negative consequences of projectification for organisations and their employees?

Share your thoughts in the comments section and discuss with your fellow learners.

References

_{Cleland, D. I. (1994). Project Management: Strategic Design and Implementation. Wiley}

_{Ekstedt, E. (2009). A New Division of Labour: The “Projectification” of Working and Industrial Life. In M.A. Morea and S. Negrelli (eds.), Building Anticipation of Restructuring in Europe. Peter Lang}

_{Lindgren, M., and Packendorff, J. (2009). Project Leadership Revisited: Towards Distributed Leadership Perspectives in Project Research. International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 1(3), 285-308}

_{Maylor, H., Brady, T., Cooke-Davies, T. and Hodgson, D. (2006). From Projectification to Programmification. International Journal of Project Management, 24(8), 663-674}

_{Pinto, J. (2010). Project Management: Achieving Competitive Advantage. (2nd ed.). Pearson}