|
The ProjectCraft Site |
|
|
ProjectCraft is a concept that reflects the need for those who work in a project environment to recognise and learn the craft skills demanded by the practice of projects.
While mainstream project management emphasises the mechanistic tools and techniques (the things you can read in a manual) ProjectCraft is about capabilities in action - how expert experienced people go about their actual work.
ProjectCraft concerns everyone whose life is touched by the world of projects: investors, strategists, project managers, trainers - all of you!
|
 |
The Book:
published by Gower in May 2007
You will find further information and a sample chapter on the publisher's online catalogue
What people say - commendations
|
|
What is ProjectCraft ? It is about:
-
recognising the complexity of projects and their social and political context - mainstream management techniques cannot address the challenging problems faced daily by professionals working on real projects
-
shaping projects that are sound and make sense: recognising diverse agenda and practices, stakeholder relations, politics and power - projects with drumbeat
-
treating value creation as the prime focus of
all projects, programmes and portfolios
-
taking on board a broader conceptualisation of projects: multidisciplinary, having multiple purposes, not always pre-defined, fluid and permeable, and open to renegotiation
-
and above all, developing reflective practitioners who can learn, operate and adapt effectively in complex project environments
|
|
What's going on? |
|
Journal Article 'The Craft of Project Shaping':
A paper by Charles Smith and Mark Winter has been published in the International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, volume 3, issue 1, Jan 2010. For details follow link.
The purpose of this paper is to look closely at the actuality of project formation to investigate the performance of project shaping - those acts performed by individuals to make that form of ‘sense’ that constitutes a new project, and to propose a framework for mapping the skills of those individuals who are directly involved in shaping projects. We use a sensemaking approach from illustrative narratives in order to propose a model of how a project outcome is shaped.
Significant factors in project formation are: the timing of the conversion of work into controlled project form (the control model of projects), the role of factional interests and power structures (tribal power), the alignment of project scope with a need for transformation (transformation and value), the fast production of tangibles such as project mandates that embody the project essentials (enacted reality), and responsiveness to the dynamics of the wider social context (external dynamics - peripety). |
 |
|
New Directions - Project Identities:
A framework is put forward for investigating the possibilities for project identities: the ways there are of being a performer in the world of projects. My concern is that mainstream project management thinking acknowledges only one form of identity: the machine-like owner of the technical tools of project management, dispossessed of any personal interest or ambition, applying the tools in a supposedly ‘objective’ manner to the single end of meeting project requirements.
If practitioners are to adopt a broader understanding of the conception of projects, they must expand their conceptualisation of identity beyond that one-dimensional sub-human puppet caricature, the mainstream Project Manager. The framework being developed is founded in the principles of sensemaking in organisations. My overall plan is examine examples of individuals in difficult project situations, making sense of their complex environments and taking action, and then to extract from their stories the evidence of their identities - the nature of the people who they claim to have been performing such actions. |
|
Article:
A short article "To Project and Serve", introducing ProjectCraft, appears on the Chief Executive Officer web site - Link
|
|
|
Bleaklow Moor - a typical project terrain?
Can you find your way? |
More information:
Visit the craft page for ideas and discussion
... for example project fraud
Support services:
how proficient
is your organisation at ProjectCraft?
Further resources: web sites, papers, journals, books
ProjectCraft origins:
the reflective practitioner, sensemaking in organisations, the rethinking project management network
About the people: Charles Smith, associates, and those he has worked with to develop the concepts presented on these pages
|
|
Contact me at: charles@projectcraft.org.uk
|
|