Project Management Theory and the Management of Research Projects

Project management theory and the management of research
projects



Abstract
The management of a research project is full of uncertainty and complexity. Research has substantial
elements of creativity and innovation and predicting the outcome of research in full is therefore very
difficult. In addition, the relationship between the research project manager and the project
participants is characterised by an asymmetric distribution of knowledge where individual researchers
know a lot more about the potential – negative and positive – of their research contributions than the
project manager does. Furthermore, researchers in a project may have many competing demands on
their time and they may find themselves competing against each other for individual scientific priority
or the right to patent a research result. Given these and other inherent difficulties of managing a
research project this paper addresses two questions in particular: 1) What kind of guidance may a
research project manager get from existing project management literature? 2) What kinds of changes
or additions are needed to build a project management model for research? In dealing with these
questions the paper gives an outline of some of the basic tools and assumptions of existing project
management theory and compares these to conditions in research. Based on this, the paper discusses
the task of the research project manager and the interpersonal dynamics of a research team with a
view to giving some pointers to what a research project manager can do to create the best possible
conditions for a successful research project.








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