Projektledaren & planen : en studie av projektledning i tre installations- och systemutvecklingprojekt

Sammanfattning: The IT industry is a growing sector in today's economy. System development forms a substantial part of this sector. System development is traditionally performed in project form. Planning system development projects is infamous for estimations which can be up to several 100 percent wrong. These projects appear to be chaotic when the static view of the project is related to the turbulence which characterises actually performing it. The project manager is the person who bears the greatest responsibility for "maintaining control" of the work under these condition. The aim of this thesis is to increase the understanding for how the project manager solves this task in practice, i.e. managing the project under dynamic conditions.The study consists of three system development projects where the project managers have been interviewed once a month during the period January to June, 1997. In total 17 interviews have been performed. Information has also been gathered from documents, meetings, electronic mail, etc.In the project manager's world work is pursued at a high tempo, where optimistic plans must be followed and problems that arise must be quickly solved. The focus is on the immediate present. In this thesis we discuss how the roles of the assignment and of the plan affect the project manager's way of running the project. The study shows that the nature of the assignment influences which principles the project manager uses to check the results of the work performed and in what forms information is exchanged with the client. Another observation is that the degree of uniqueness of the assignment, i.e. to what extent there is previous knowledge about how to perform it, influences how the project manager directs the project. The study shows that when the plan is given an unobtrusive role, profession-based, non-project-specific management gains greater significance. Certain limitations of plans are presented: only known activities are planned and it is difficult to make updates under dynamic conditions. Another limitation of plans which is often overlooked often involves the unconfirmed assumptions the plan is based on. These are central for the relevance of the plan, but are normally not followed up. The plan can be given an alternative role as a tool for mediating a common view to the team members performing the project. The members' actions can be co-ordinated through such a common view, with the risk of cognitive blockage in individuals arising.