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Traditional vs. Modern Project Management


Methods. Theory and Practice

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Spalek, S. Traditional vs. Modern Project Management Methods. Theory

and Practice. Smart and Efficient Economy: Preparation for the Future

Innovative Economy, 21st International Scientific Conference, 21st

International Scientific Conference, Brno University Technology, Faculty of

Business & Management, Brno, Czech Republic 19-20.05.2016, 2016, pp.

499-506. [Web of Science Proceedings Paper]


21st International Scientific Conference Economics and
Management
TRADITIONAL VS. MODERN PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODS.
THEORY AND PRACTICE
Seweryn Spalek*
Silesian University of Technology/Faculty of Organisation and Management, Akademicka 2A, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland

Abstract

Purpose of the article The purpose of the article is to investigate the relationship between traditional project management
(TPM) and modern project management (MPM), with a special focus on agile project management (APM). Moreover, the
results of the studies on the application of APM in non-IT companies are presented.
Methodology/methods Based on the literature review, the descriptions of TPM and MPM methods are given. Furthermore,
the questionnaire-based survey is applied to obtain relevant knowledge on the application of APM methods in the non-IT
companies.
Scientific aim The scientific goal of the article is to ascertain the prerequisites for applying the TPM and MPM methods in
the organisations, with a special focus on non-IT companies. Moreover, the conducted survey shed some light into the current
state of application of APM methods in non-IT companies.
Findings The TPM methods have been developed since the sixties and are suitable for application in large, long-term
projects in a stable environment. The prerequisite for their application is the ability to plan, in detail, the project ex -ante,
while MPM methods seem to more accurately match the clients needs, especially if the requirements have the tendency to
change frequently over time. However, the result of the study showed that the application of APM methods is very limited,
even if the companies reported that they mostly operate in turbulent environments.
Conclusions The MPM methods, with a special focus on APM, are a good alternative for non-IT companies seeking new
ways of managing projects in a turbulent, client-oriented environment. However, the results of the studies revealed the
limited application of APM methods in non-IT companies. They outlined directions for further research that should try to
answer what hampers APM application in non-IT companies. Moreover, research dedicated to select industries should be
performed.

Keywords: TPM, APM, APM, traditional project management, modern project management, agile, survey, company, non-IT,
waterfall.

JEL Classification: M2, M11, M21, O31, O32,

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +48322777305; fax: +48322777361


E-mail address: spalek@polsl.pl

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Introduction
Project management, as a scientific discipline, has been developed since the 1960s (Kerzner, 1987). At that
time, projects were largely independent endeavours with a relatively long implementation period, calculated in
months or years. Their level of complexity was usually high and, therefore, budgetary concerns were a
significant factor. As a result, the main effort was put into the detailed planning of tasks and then controlling the
implementation of the projects in relation to former assumptions (Kerzner, 2013; Wyrozebski & Spalek, 2014).
The waterfall approach was widely applied in the running of projects (Ji, Sedano, & Ieee, 2011). Hereinafter, this
way of managing projects is assumed to be traditional project management (Hebert & Deckro, 2011;
Pellegrinelli, 2011; Robichaud & Anantatmula, 2011; Saynisch, 2010; Spalek, 2015).
The turn of the century brought new challenges as the number of projects significantly increased, creating
multi-project environments in companies (Formentini & Romano, 2011; Hofman, 2014; Spaek, 2012a). In the
search for new ways of dealing with that situation, the concept of project management office (PMO) was
introduced (Hobbs & Aubry, 2008). PMOs were established to play different roles, e.g. improving industrial
engineering (Spalek, 2013), brokering knowledge (Pemsel & Wiewiora, 2013) or supporting innovations (Artto,
Kulvik, Poskela, & Turkulainen, 2011). However, despite their broad-serving purposes, PMOs, as a new
organisational structure, were not able to address all the challenges that companies face nowadays. The
turbulent, global environment put additional pressure on companies to significantly reduce the time spent on the
development of new products (Kach, Azadegan, & Dooley, 2012; Relich, 2015; Spalek, 2014b) and to customise
their services to clients needs (Gil, 2009; Liberatore & Pollack-Johnson, 2013). Moreover, companies started to
more carefully calculate their level of investment in project management (Rudzianskaite-Kvaraciejiene,
Apanaviciene, & Butauskas, 2010; Spalek, 2014a). As a result, new methods of managing projects had to be
developed, which are hereinafter referred to as the modern project management approach (Curlee, 2008;
Shenhar, 2001).
The purpose of this article is to discuss the major characteristics and highlight the key differences between
traditional and modern project management methods. Moreover, the results of the empirical studies should allow
one to glean insight into the application of modern project management methods in company practice.

1 Traditional vs. Modern Approach to Managing Projects


Although traditional project management methods are well established, having been developed over a long
period of time, it seems that they are no longer sufficient to overcome the challenges that companies face
nowadays, regardless of their country of origin (Spalek, 2014d). The shorter time- to- market demand, cost-
cutting tendencies and increasing pressure on innovations are of high interest in companies. Moreover, this
tendency will most likely strengthen in the future and traditional methods like the waterfall approach, with
detailed ex- ante planning of costs, time and scope, are not flexible enough to meet the expectations of the
turbulent environment they operate in.
The traditional project management methods are focused on work- breakdown structures - WBS (Zhang,
Wang, & Zhan, 2013), Gantt charts (Eppinger, 2001) and detailed budgeting, including the earned value
technique EVT (Goh & Hall, 2013). Moreover, the triple constraint idea (time, money, scope) prevails in
managerial projects practice (Basu, 2014). Furthermore, project managers should monitor and control the
outcomes against the plan in the following areas (PMI, 2013):
Project Integration Management
Project Scope Management
Project Time Management
Project Cost Management
Project Quality Management
Project Human Resource Management
Project Communications Management
Project Risk Management
Project Procurement Management
Project Stakeholder Management
Several tools and techniques, like the critical path method CPM (Kim & de la Garza, 2005), or program
evaluation and review technique - PERT (Makhloof, Waheed, & Badawi, 2014), have been developed to support
the traditional project management approach. The set of traditional methods is also successfully used nowadays

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(Shen, Smith, & Ahmed, 2010). However, their application is limited to certain types of long-lasting endeavours
which run in stable environments.
The birth of modern project management can be traced back to the year 2001 when Agile Manifesto was
proposed (Erickson, Lyytinen, & Siau, 2005). The basic idea came from the software development sector and
some other industries are now trying to adopt it (Conforto, Salum, Amaral, da Silva, & de Almeida, 2014). The
set of modern methods in project management includes, but is not limited to, SCRUM, XP, LEAN, TDD, ADD,
SOLID, Pair programming, RUP, ASD, APF, DSDM (Dyba & Dingsoyr, 2008; Fitzgerald, Hartnett, & Conboy,
2006; Gary et al., 2011; Polesie, 2013; Santos, Flentge, Begin, & Navarro, 2011)
R. Wysocki (2011) distinguishes the Linear, Incremental, Iterative, Adaptive, and Extreme models in project
management life cycles and positions them over the Traditional, Agile, Extreme and Emertxe approaches in
Project Management. At present, agile project management (APM) is of the utmost interest to scientists and
practitioners alike, as it can cover a wide range of activities in the organisation. Therefore, APM receives
detailed treatment in the article through extensive deliberations.
APM, at its core, is oriented around the clients needs and finding ways of meeting the clients expectations
as a key concern in the project outcomes. APM sees small project teams working closely with the client in order
to tailor the product to his or her needs . That approach allows businesses to not only react quickly to oftentimes
rapidly changing client needs but also to respond to the shifts coming from the turbulent environment. An
overview of the key differences between traditional and agile project management is shown in Table 1.

Table 1 The key differences between traditional project management (TPM) and agile project management
(APM)
Area of interest TPM APM

A high quality product is worked out by


The product can be fully described at the
Basic assumptions small specialised teams on a continuous
planning phase of the project
improvement basis.
Management style Autocratic, Prescriptive Affiliate, Democratic

Knowledge management Explicit Tacit

Communication Formal Informal

Organisational structures Bureaucratic, Highly formalised Flexible, Cooperative


On-going control of the achieved sub-
Quality control Planned in time in details
results toward the clients expectations
Source: Dyb, Dingsyr 2008, s. 833-859; Serrador, Pinto 2015, s. 1040-1051

Although APM receives a lot of attention, there is an ongoing discussion on its actual contribution to the
success of the company (Serrador & Pinto, 2015), and the ability of companies to run projects according to the
agile rules only. Therefore, the newest approach sets out to incorporate some elements of agility into traditional
project management or, while running big, complex programs with TPM, tries to extract from within the
program, some projects which can be implemented with pure APM methods. The latter approach seems to be
attracting an increasing number of supporters in the academic community. However, there is still some confusion
as to if and to what extent APM is appreciated by the companies in their managerial practice, with a special
focus on non-IT sector firms. The reason for focusing on non-IT companies is that APM was developed for IT
project purposes and IT firms are strong proponents of APM, while some scientists see the potential for APM
application outside IT-based enterprises.

2 Traditional vs. modern project management methods in practice


There is a plethora of evidence that TPM is widely recognised and applied in companies managerial practice
in many industries besides IT, like R&D (Chandrasekaran, Linderman, & Schroeder, 2015), governmental
(Young, Young, & Zapata, 2014), transportation (Tian & Demeulemeester, 2014), construction (Almahmoud,
Doloi, & Panuwatwanich, 2012), higher education (Neverauskas & Stankevicius, 2008; Spalek, 2012b) or power
(Tan & Wang, 2012). In addition, the success factors of APM are also widely discussed (Mueller, Geraldi, &
Turner, 2012; Spalek, 2014c). Nevertheless, evidence of APM applications in non-IT industries and related
success factors are very limited (Conforto, et al., 2014; Serrador & Pinto, 2015).

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A recent study conducted by A. Komus (2012) on 236 mostly German (65%) companies, revealed that Agile
methods are mostly (65%-81%) applied in IT- related activities. However, only 16% of the entire sample applies
purely Agile constructs, whereas 3% are represented by non-IT projects. Although, when it comes to a mixed
TPM-APM approach, the percentage is slightly higher, but IT projects still prevail in different TPM and APM
combinations. The study (Komus, 2012) showed that the application of agile methods in non-IT industries is
developing but there is still room for improvement, a fact which inspired the author to investigate related matters
further.

The study on agile management practices


To plug the gap of knowledge on the application of the agile methods in the industrial environment, the
survey was undertaken. The study was conducted in 2015 and its goal was to put the spotlight on agile practices,
with a special focus on non-IT companies. The research method was questionnaire-based and it consisted of
metrics (gathering the data on the participating companies) and, in the second part, its goal was to answer the
research question (RQ): whether there is knowledge and application of agile methods in the industrial
environment. The survey addressed select companies already practising the traditional project management
methods and running several projects a year for at least five years. As a result, 30 questionnaires were received,
out of which 27 were dedicated to non-IT projects. The project revolved around the following areas:
production/technology, energy, mining, construction, transport and logistics, trade, pharmaceutical,
telecommunication, consulting, finance and banking, media and advertisement, public administration, non-
governmental organisations, insurance, tourism and sport.
80% of interviewed companies were medium and large ones, employing more than 50 workers. 70% of them
indicated that their business environment is turbulent. Moreover, the intensity in managing projects, understood
as the number of projects run by the companies in comparison to all companies forms of activity, was measured.
The study showed that the majority (43%) claimed to have a large intensity meaning that the number of
projects in the company is significantly high, supporting key company strategy. 20% indicated that intensity is
very large as the projects are the key activity of the company (project- oriented organisation). Furthermore,
20% reported that projects are significant for the company, which is assumed to be medium intensity. Only in
17% of cases was the intensity small incidental, a few projects run by the company (Figure 1).

Figure 1 The intensity of projects in the surveyed companies

The interviewees were asked if they had heard about agile project management methods. The vast majority
(70%) answered no they did/do not know this term at all. 23% of them had heard of the term but had no idea
what it is about. Only 7% knew the term agile project management, but none of them had a good knowledge of it
(Figure 2).

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Figure 2 Survey answer of the question: Have you heard about agile project management?

Furthermore, the respondents were asked if their organisation applies agile project management methods in
practice. 40% of them indicated that they do not apply APM in their company, 7% admitted to doing it
sometimes and 3% mostly. None of the organisations reported the application of APM to all projects. Moreover,
50% of respondents didnt know if the company applies APM methods (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Survey answer to the question: Do you apply agile project management to projects?

3 Discussion
The studies revealed that, although knowledge of agile project management is spreading among academics, it
comes up somewhat short of expectations regarding its application in non-IT companies. Even if the company
reports a turbulent environment, which is a prerequisite for exploring new other than traditional project management
methods, the organisation has very limited knowledge of APM methods. Furthermore, the number of non-IT companies
applying APM in practice is significantly low. Moreover, if they apply APM, it is most often as a sub-part of bigger programs
run with traditional, mostly waterfall project management methods. Only a few companies decide to run single projects
solely in accordance with the APM approach. This situation shows that there is significant room for disseminating APM
methods among non-IT companies and endorsing their application in different forms and scope.

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Conclusion
Traditional project management methods have been developed and improved over the decades. Therefore,
their broad application in companies is indisputable. However, in modern turbulent environments, they seem to
be insufficient according to the new challenges organisations are facing. The need for time- to- market reduction, cost-
cutting and enhancing client satisfaction generate new demands in managing the projects. The answer to this demand seems
to be modern project management methods, including the agile approach, which looks like the most suitable for non-IT
industries. However, the study revealed that the application of agile project management methods in the companies is very
limited. This situation can be caused by many factors which need to be further investigated. The conducted questionnaire-
based survey is limited by its sample size, but its results indicate further research directions. One of them should definitely be
focused on trying to answer the question: why are APM methods barely recognised by non-IT industries? Another could
investigate knowledge of APM at the top-management level. Finally, research procuring knowledge from different
sectors with a bigger sample size would be advisable.

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