Looking Beyond Contemporary Project Management

Abstract

In our current approach to project management, the aspects of time, cost and quality still remain as predominant considerations. However, the perception of project success has changed over the years and many other factors are also considered important today. It is difficult to incorporate most of these additional factors due to the complexity in accommodating a large number of variables, some of which are not common to all projects and to all client organisations. The authors propose a powerful tool to address this difficulty, innovation management, which has the capability of accommodating new considerations under one group. It has not been possible to focus on innovation management at the project level previously due to the non-availability of comprehensive studies on the subject area. However, the authors have come up with a theoretical framework to identify mechanisms that facilitate innovation at the project level of a construction project, most of which could be applied to projects in general. Based on this theoretical framework, the authors propose to integrate project management and innovation management and provide suggestions as to how the concept of innovation management could be incorporated into project management within the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) project management framework (PMI, 2013).