Inter-relations of emerging practices in project launch: Project manager as focal actor in multi-tasked work environment

Abstract

In contemporary work life notable amount of work is done in the form of projects. They differ in scope, size, context etc. However, every project has a project manager. This research explores the work of a project manager during the start-up of the project.

The starting point of the research was that I was working as a project manager in an international company with the task of managing an internal development project. The research objectives can be divided into two parts. The first objective was to identify what sort of challenges a project manager faces during the project start-up and how they are solved. Secondly, I try to contribute and evaluate some project related scientific research areas by providing a personal perspective of a project manager on them. To learn how to be a better project manager and to contribute to the project management practices in my company are two additional goals.

Ethnographic approach was a corner stone of the research i.e. I observed the project I was managing almost for a year. I wrote a story about my experiences and then applied grounded theory methodology and ideas of the process-relational thinking to it. It meant that the issues identified in the story were seen as emerging practices and their relationships to the context and between each other were analyzed.

My thesis contributes to extant research and provides also practical implications. My story itself, identification and classification of the emerging practices and their relationships as well as recognition of some project management interventions and their impacts on the project can be considered as contribution to science. In addition, I present some normative suggestions that can be taken into account when developing project management practices in companies. All this is considered from the project manager’s viewpoint.