Cordova Research Group spent more than thirty years conducting pure and applied research for a variety of external customers. With the reduction, however, in R&D funding, Cordova decided that the survival of the firm would be based upon becoming a manufacturing firm as well as performing R&D. The R&D culture was close to informal project management with the majority of the personnel holding advanced degrees in technical disciplines. To enter the manufacturing arena would require hiring hundreds of new employees, mostly nondegreed.
For all practical purposes, there is no basic difference between program management and project management. But what about product management? Project management and product management are similar, with one major exception: The project manager focuses…
In the preceding sections the word “systems” has been used rather loosely. The exact definition of a system depends on the users, environment, and ultimate goal. Business practitioners define a system as:A group of elements,…
Why was project management so difficult for companies to accept and implement? The answer is shown in Figure 2–7. Historically, project management resided only in the project driven sectors of the marketplace. In these sectors,…
By the 1990s, companies had begun to realize that implementing project management was a necessity, not a choice. The question was not how to implement project management, but how fast could it be done? Table…
The growth of project management has come about more through necessity than through desire. Its slow growth can be attributed mainly to lack of acceptance of the new management techniques necessary for its successful implementation.…
During the 1940s, line managers used the concept of over-the-fence management to manage projects. Each line manager, wearing the hat of a project manager, would perform the work necessitated by their line organization, and when…