An Overview of My Research

Preface:  Project Architecture

My research will be easier to explain using a concept I call project architecture.  In the field of systems engineering, the word “architecture” refers to the structure of the elements and relationships in a system that gives rise to its behavior in an environment.  The architecture of any complex entity may be viewed through several lenses.  Much of the research on project management uses only one of these lenses (that of the activities to be planned, scheduled, and controlled).  Like the blind men touching the elephant in the famous Asian story, using only one point of view cannot tell the whole story.  In an effort to better understand complex projects, I seek to study them from several points of view—especially the product, process, and organization perspectives.

• The product design literature refers to product architecture as the set of interrelated components comprising a product.  I consider the product domain more generally as the artifact designed by any project—e.g., the recipe for a new product or service.

• To create the product, a project must accomplish tasks.  These tasks collectively entail all the work done in a project.  I refer to all of this work as the process domain, and to all of the activities and their relationships as the process architecture (or activity network, or project process).

• In every project, people accomplish the tasks that create the product.  These people may do some tasks individually, but more often they work together in teams to accomplish tasks.  These people and teams also relate to each other—e.g., in reporting relationships in the organization structure, in social networks, in information exchange relationships, etc.  I call this set of organizational units (the smallest of which is a person) and their relationships in the organizational domain the organization architecture.

Orientation with these three domains and architectures—product, process, and organization—will facilitate the explanation of my research.  I refer to these domains collectively as the project architecture.

Research Areas and Streams

My research into project modeling and analysis may be organized into two areas and six streams:

AREA 1:  Modeling and analyzing individual project domains

STREAM 1:  Using the design structure matrix (DSM) as an architecture analysis tool

STREAM 2:  Modeling the process domain

STREAM 3:  Modeling and integrating the organization domain

STREAM 4:  Exploring dynamics in the product domain

AREA 2:  Modeling and analyzing overall projects

STREAM 5:  Modeling project progress, value, and risk reduction

STREAM 6:  Exploring project architecture and its adaptation

A descriptive overview of each stream follows.

STREAM 1:  Using the design structure matrix (DSM) as an architecture analysis tool

The DSM representation highlights iterations (cycles) in project processes.  Iterations have been shown to be one of the most significant drivers of project cost and duration.  The DSM has helped illuminate techniques for improved understanding and management of projects.  DSMs have also proven helpful for managing product designs and organization structures.

Sub-stream 1a:  Developing a taxonomy of design structure matrix (DSM) applications and analysis methods (key paper:  P6)

Sub-stream 1b:  Using the DSM to model and analyze the process domain (and in this way overlaps with STREAM 2) (key papers:  P5, P7, P8, P14, C4)

STREAM 2:  Modeling the process domain

Sub-stream 2a:  Modeling product development processes; includes work to lay out the key concepts for such models, survey the literature to classify existing models by their purposes, and leverage ideas from systems engineering in the product domain to the process domain (key papers:  P11, P13, P19)

Sub-stream 2b:  Resource-constrained multi-project scheduling—i.e., how to allocate resources across multiple projects so as to minimize the overall delay (key papers:  P21, M2)

Sub-stream 2c:  Modeling and simulating adaptive processes (overlaps with STREAMS 5 and 6) (key paper:  P20)  This sub-stream seeks to integrate traditional project management approaches with more recent ideas regarding lean, agile, flexible, and adaptive project management.  Rather than assume that a project can and should be planned entirely up front and then executed according to that plan, paper P20 presents the first framework for structuring an adaptive approach to project planning and control that continuously rebalances cost, schedule, and performance relative to goals to maximize value as a project unfolds.  Rather than just doing this theoretically or with an artificial project, it provides a general modeling and simulation framework and applies it to an actual project.

STREAM 3:  Modeling and integrating the organization domain

This stream entails efforts to model the organization domain and to catalog and explore approaches (called integrative mechanisms) to facilitate the interaction of the many teams that must work together on a large project (P2).  This stream also includes the development of a method, called design for integration (DFI), for designing large project organizations (P4).  (key papers:  P2, P4, O16)

STREAM 4:  Exploring dynamics in the product domain

Sub-stream 4a:  Modeling the dynamic nature of the value of enduring products to their stakeholders; many large, complex systems are designed to be used for decades or longer, but their value may degrade as new technologies and other options become available; system designers should take a long-term view of the likely trajectory of this value depreciation as they consider designing systems for adaptability (DFA) (key papers:  P15, P17)

Sub-stream 4b:  Applying real options theory to product design as a means of DFA (key papers:  P16, WIP2)

Sub-stream 4c:  Investigating the evolution of product architectures over successive product generations; colleagues and I are using the successive versions of open source software applications (the “fruit flies” of products) to search for patterns in architecture design and evolution (key papers:  C17, WIP1)

STREAM 5:  Modeling project progress, value, and risk reduction

Sub-stream 5a:  Identifying sources of uncertainty and risk in projects; divides project risks into six categories (cost, schedule, technical performance, technology, market, and business risks) and proposes causal frameworks for the relationships between the major risk drivers (key papers:  P3, C6)

Sub-stream 5b:  Exploring the relationship between progress and added value in ongoing projects with the reduction of uncertainties with negative consequences—i.e., risk reduction.  At their beginning, all projects face uncertainties about their final outcome and their ability to satisfy stakeholders.  Some of these uncertainties are more problematic than others.  A risk is defined as an uncertainty weighted by its consequences.  By reducing the risk of not getting a project’s desired outcome (which is presumed to be valuable to its stakeholders), a project makes valuable progress.  From this point of view, project management is active risk management, since every decision a project manager makes should serve to reduce the risk of not getting the desired project outcome.  This perspective is deployed in an approach called the Risk Value Method. (key papers:  P9, O14)

Sub-stream 5c:  Developing a framework for quantifying project value while accounting for uncertainty, risk, and new opportunities (the upside of uncertainty).  This framework provides a decision support capability for managers as they seek to balance cost, schedule, technical performance, and the risks and opportunities inherent in each of these areas.  On a slightly different research project which I nevertheless place in this sub-stream, I explored aspects of these ideas regarding the relationships between uncertainty, complexity, novelty, and value in the context of the complex manufacturing system for the F-22 aircraft. (key papers:  P10, P18, WIP4)

STREAM 6:  Exploring project architecture and its adaptation

This is my least developed stream to date.  It entails synthesizing findings from the product, process, and organization domains to arrive at a holistic framework and perspective for project management.  It will explore the simultaneous optimization of project structures from each and all of the domain perspectives, and how this optimization is likely to change over the course of a project.  So far, I have only produced a couple of papers in this stream, but it contains half of my current projects.  (key papers:  P12, O15, WIP3, WIP5, WIP6)