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Project Synthesis Essay

Decent Essays

According to the PMI (2013, p. 3) PMBOK Guide, a project can be defined as a temporary endeavour which is carried out with the intent to achieve a desired outcome. The life of projects is generally expected to follow a developmental pattern called the project life cycle that includes a pattern of development; that pattern has widely been recognized as the process groups identified in the PMBOK Guide: the initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and the closure (Kerzner, 2009, p. 44). The formal project period does not encapsulate the whole process (idea generation often precedes the formal project and diffusion into the environment often happens much later) but that is different from project to project (Lindgren & Packendorff, 2011. p. 54). The concept of a project and its existence can be traced back thousands of years, whereby looking back at the history …show more content…

6) notes that uncertainty and change are usually involved in projects. The reason for using projects as a work approach is often the ability coping with uncertainty, related to novel factors within the processes or context of the company or the goals that need to be reached. Kuura et al. (2014, p. 518) note that projects are connected to innovation and have always been used to create or deal with change, even though not all projects and SMEs are entrepreneurial. Projects have been promoted as a powerful, widely usable vehicle for integrating diverse functions, enabling the efficient, timely and effective accomplishment of goals, by using flexible, independent and knowledgeable people in temporary teams (Lindgren & Packendorff, 2011, p. 52). Projects are used to cope with risks and it has been stated that if a company does not fail in any projects, it is not taking enough business risks (Cooke-Davies in Morris & Pinto, 2007, p. 227). Maylor (2010, p. 6) also adds that projects are usually also social constructs with parts that are integrated within the project to create a system of

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