Ad hoc Articles

M.C. Bekker & H. Steyn

Project governance has become part of the project management vocabulary. As a formal definition of the term lacked, it has been used in various contexts that caused confusion and misunderstanding. This paper provides a formal definition for ‘project governance’ based on a Delphi study. Combining the results from the Delphi study with existing corporate governance principles led to a concept project governance framework that was validated and developed further by means of two primary case studies and 15 secondary case studies. The end result is a final project governance framework that provides a practical checklist for the governance of major capital investments.
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T.J. Bond-Barnard & H. Steyn

Paper reports on a survey with 160 respondents that explores whether the perception of practitioners involved in projects in developing countries – regarding variables of an existing model that predicts trust, collaboration and success in a project – differ from those of their counterparts in developed countries. The results of a Mann-Whitney U test indicate that the model of project management success, verified in previous research, is applicable to both projects in developing and developed countries. The main finding of the study is that proximity (the extent to which a practitioner is co-located with his team members) is greater for developing countries than for developed countries.
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T.J. Bond-Barnard & H. Steyn

A South African national programme to repair government infrastructure uses a contact centre (or call centre) to facilitate and manage communication. An important question is: How does the contact centre benefit the programme and its projects? This study discusses the findings of a survey that quantified the benefits of the programme when the communication between team members in the programme was improved by using a contact centre. The results show that, by using a contact centre to improve the communication between project team members, their perception of communication effectiveness, quality of project deliverables, service delivery, and customer satisfaction of the programme dramatically increases.
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M.L. Barry, H. Steyn & A.C. Brent

Quantitative management research on the African continent is often hampered by the lack of large data sets and the unreliability of electronic as well as conventional communication. This paper advocates the use of qualitative methods, in particular the focus group technique, to overcome these difficulties. The focus group technique has been extensively used in social sciences research and in this paper its use in management research is investigated and applied. The paper further advocates the use of triangulation to improve the reliability of qualitative management research. An example of the selection of renewable energy technology in Africa is used as basis for this investigation..
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H. Steyn

While project performance is generally evaluated in terms of the “iron triangle” of schedule, cost and quality performance, guidelines for project quality management are lacking. Practitioners developing complex engineering systems employ several techniques to manage quality but project management literature merely emphasizes quality management processes and provides few guidelines regarding appropriate techniques. Where these techniques are addressed, they tend to be borrowed from high-volume production and statistical quality control, while providing few guidelines for the management of quality on non-repetitive project endeavors such as system development.
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K.-H. Rutsch, P.J. Viljoen & H. Steyn.

Project selection and the development of a portfolio of projects in line with corporate strategy is an important task of managers of research units. The projects selected have to meet the appropriate time frame for completion and delivery, a suitable risk profile and other distinct factors in order to pursue corporate objectives successfully. The authors believe that R&D project portfolio selection approaches required or applied in the process industry differ from the approaches used for selecting new product development projects, on which most literature is focused.
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D. Nhubunga, H. Steyn & S. Pretorius

Project sponsors play significant roles at the stage gates of project life cycle models (PLCMs). However, research on the roles that sponsors play at stage gates, and the attributes required of the sponsor, are sparse.

This study investigated the roles played by government and municipal sponsors at the PLCM stage gates of a water utility, and identified the attributes that the sponsor should have as well as the challenges they face. A case study approach was employed, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders.
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Brighton Tshuma, Cornelis Cristo van Waveren & Herman Steyn

Abstract
Project management offices (PMOs) play both mediating (facilitating) and moderating (supporting) roles in knowledge transfer (KT) between projects. The mediating role of the PMO has been addressed elsewhere while this article investigates the supporting role of the PMO in the transfer of tacit and explicit knowledge. The article thus contributes to the scant literature on the supporting role of PMOs in KT. Cases of five PMOs were investigated through 15 semi-structured interviews and three KT enablers were identified namely:
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S. Pretorius, H. Steyn & T.J. Bond-Barnard

Abstract
With increasing ‘projectification’ of organizations, the relationship between project management maturity and project success is likely to become more pertinent. However, consensus on this relationship is lacking. This paper investigates the relationship between project management maturity levels and project success. Purposive sampling was used to distribute an online, structured questionnaire and, for economic reasons, it was decided to stop the survey when 600 responses were received.
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H.K. Mittermaier & H. Steyn

Despite the current economic climate, the South African mining and engineering industry is experiencing a very promising future, with a large number of capital projects in the offing. It is inevitable that pilot plant development will form part of this future as a risk mitigation technique. This study found that, even though the terms pilot plant and project management maturity are familiar within the industry, no link between these two could be found in the literature. A number of maturity models exist; and one developed by PMSolutions was selected to perform an assessment of the current level of project management maturity within the South African mining and engineering industry pertaining to the development of pilot plants.
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Project managers work in a large variety of different industries of which Construction and IT are frequently mentioned, but Facility Management (FM) is an area that also employs many project managers. The FM discipline involves the management of existing buildings and equipment of organizations over the entire economic spectrum and the whole lifecycle of a facility. Facility managers can be seen as operations managers and project managers that specialize in the management of facilities of all organizations that own or use facilities, especially facilities in the built environment. They ensure that the facility contribute optimally to the strategic goals of the organization.
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Herman Steyn

In this paper traditional project management methods such as PERT and CPM as well as fast tracking and systems approaches viz. concurrent engineering and critical chain are reviewed with specific reference to their contribution to reduce the duration of the execution phase of engineering projects. Each of these techniques has some role to play in the acceleration of project execution. Combinations of approaches are evaluated by considering the potential of sets consisting of two different approaches each.
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