Abstract
The objective of this article is to determine whether a set of project management principles can be identified to serve as a common framework for developers and publishers of project management standards and guides. Twenty-two project management standards and other consensus documents were reviewed, revealing a common understanding across the globe of the requirements for effective project management. Potential statements of principles were extracted and clustered into four categories. The validated principles identified in each category were rewritten in a prespecified, consistent form. The resulting set of 12 principles should serve as a common basis for future standards and guides.
Introduction
Context of This Article
Over the last 50 years, considerable effort has been invested in formalizing the practice of project management by developing standards and guides, a significant number of which are based on stated or implied principles (Lichtenberg, 1989). Principles are an important focus, not only for practitioners, but also for students and those governing projects such as sponsors and steering committee members. Evidence for narrow and specific principles appears in the literature such as sustainability and collaborative work (Silvius & Schipper, 2020; Walker & Walker-Lloyd, 2019). However, no analysis of the degree of consistency of principles for project management has been found in published sources. This is in spite of the importance that principles play in fields as disparate as ethics (Ross, 1930) and artificial intelligence (Stahl et al., 2021), as well as the impact of agile principles on project management practices (Beck et al., 2001).
Objective and Scope of Work
The objective of this article is to address the question: “Can a foundational set of project management principles be identified, in particular from practice standards and guides?” The answer to this question will determine whether or not it will be possible, in the future, to increase the consistency between all relevant standards and other authoritative documentation. The article provides an overview—based on a set of commonly used standards, guides, and other published documents on project and program management—of how principles are currently written, used, and applied in project management.
Although all of the principles should be relevant to project management, their relative importance depends on the organization’s and project’s context and environment. In order, therefore, to allow the practitioner to select and apply the relevant principles and practices that are best suited to their specific situation, this article does not assume a specific definition of a project.
Methodology
The approach taken in this article is to identify principles that are viewed as underpinning project management practices by identifying commonalities across a range of standards and other authoritative documents developed through group consensus. This article does not judge any of those sources as more relevant than others. Further, the research excluded individual or small group opinions reflected in articles or journal proceedings and no attempt was made to resolve any potential gaps by proposing additional principles.
The following process was adopted for this study:
Investigate how principles are used in national, regional, and international project management standards, what those principles are, and the way the term principle is interpreted and applied, culminating in the derivation of a working definition of the term principle to be used in the subsequent analyses; Develop criteria for identifying project management principles not only by using the standards but also by drawing on a range of other authoritative documents; and Analyze the expanded set of published standards and other authoritative documents for consistency and, based on the criteria developed previously, derive a list of principles in a form compliant with the working definition already provided.
Background: Principles in Project Management Standards
Project Management Standards
International, Regional, National, and Government Standards
An international or national standard is an agreed way of doing or managing something or a set of agreed criteria for a product or service. Official standards, with international, regional, and national recognition, tend to come from four primary sources:
Key Features of Standards
To avoid ambiguity, in cases where drafting rules are provided, the key features of standards are:
A common pattern for the table of contents is used. The purpose of each clause is explicit. Explicit drafting rules and use of language are employed. Terms are defined where appropriate. A periodic review is undertaken to assess a standard’s ongoing suitability.
Standards need to make the purpose of each clause, and part of a clause, explicit by differentiating between mandatory and advisory elements. The differentiation is commonly referred to as:
In order to avoid ambiguity, terms that are critical for the use of a standard are defined unless the definition in the prescribed dictionary is adequate. Generally, standards should be free of jargon and trademarked terms.
Standardization Approaches
Overview
Within project management, there has recently been significant attention paid to the various drafting approaches for standards. At the international level, ISO 21502:2020 (International Organization for Standardization [ISO], 2020) includes an annex in which it declares itself to be “practice-based,” whereas the earlier ISO 21500:2012 (ISO, 2012) was “process-based.” In a similar vein, ANSI/PMI 99-001-2021 The Standard for Project Management (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2021) is “principle-based,” whereas the previous versions of PMI project management standards from 1987 through 2017 were “process-based.” The authors of the annex in ISO 21500:2012 have indicated that their practice-versus-process distinction was based upon their own consensus rather than upon a formal study of the possible types of standards.
For this study, the authors found it useful to add two approaches to the three introduced by ISO 21502:2020 and ANSI/PMI 99-001-2021, namely:
“Narrative-based”; and “Principles-based narrative,” a hybrid of “principles-based” and “narrative-based.”
While these two terms exist in the literature, they do not appear to have influenced ISO 21502:2020 and ANSI/PMI 99-001-2021.
The purpose of a standard can range from purely informative (such as a guide) to rigidly normative such as a safety critical process or product specification. The project management standards reviewed here are listed in Table 1. The categorization of drafting approach is based on that used for the majority of the document. Table 1 shows examples of previous versions of the standard and when the drafting approach changed.
Drafting Basis for Various Project Management–Related Standards
Key: “ss” denotes a superseded standard; “current” denotes a standard that is currently valid.
Narrative-Based Standards
The term “narrative-based standards,” introduced here, refers to sources that are informative and written as guides with themes for the main clauses dealing with specific project management–related topics. The topics as a whole represent the scope of the standard. Narrative-based standards have been published by the British Standards Institute (BSI) (2002) and ISO (2017; 2021a).
Process-Based Standards
Process-based standards use a formal process as the foundation for the content, with activities described with their inputs and outputs, often giving these specific names. Although the relevant process-based standards are not prescriptive in themselves, as they do not require the use of these processes, the processes themselves can be qualified as prescriptive in that they define absolute relationships, outputs, and sequences of activities. Process-based standards have been published by PMI (1987, 1996 [referred to as ANSI/PMI 99-001-1999 in this article]), and ISO (2012).
Practice-Based Standards
Practice-based standards avoid the rigidity of the process-based approach by describing the recommended or required practices. Practices are the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it. As such, these standards use practices to describe what needs to be done and why, as opposed to how to do something. How a practice is applied is left open to the users of the standard based, among other things, on the context, type, and complexity of the project being managed. This approach means a standard based on practices is very flexible compared with a process-based standard and so can encompass any compliant working methodologies, techniques, and terminology. A practice-based standard has been published by ISO (2020).
Principles-Based Practice Standards
Principles-based practice standards have the same features and advantages as practice-based standards except that they contain a list of overriding principles that apply at all times and that determine or constrain how the practices are to be undertaken. The advantage of adding principles is that they enable the user to apply the standard in circumstances and in ways the detailed content doesn’t directly address. Principles-based practice standards have been published by BSI (2019) and HM Government (2021a) and have a wide-ranging scope similar to the 2020 ISO standard.
Principles-Based Narrative Standards
Principles-based narrative standards only contain the principles and neither describe processes nor define any practices. The narrative is in descriptive form, as in the narrative-based standards described above. As they only include principles, they can be more difficult to apply since only the accepted objectives for the practice of project management and its core functions are described. In this approach (as in the principles-based practices approaches), the principles are intended to apply across the spectrum of project management. PMI (2021) is the only example of this format discussed here.
Project Management Principles
Use of the Term “Principle”
When discussing “principles” it is necessary to have a common understanding of what that term means in the context in which it is used.
None of the standards discussed in this section formally defines “principle” and only one of those discussed in the following section has such a definition. All others by inference rely on a common, accepted, use of the word as defined in a dictionary. The dictionaries provide several different conceptual uses of the term of which the most relevant are listed in Table 2. For example, is a principle a fundamental truth or is it a law? The two are very different: truth is a basis for decision-making, whereas a law includes the decision. Those definitions not considered in Table 2 are either specific to a discipline, such as natural sciences or psychology, rarely used, or obsolete.
Dictionary Definitions of Principle
Furthermore, in some cases, different standards issued by a given standards-setting organization specify varying definitions of the term “principle.” For example, the Project Management Institute’s The Standard for Portfolio Management uses one dictionary meaning, “the purpose of principles is to provide guidance for practitioners,” which varies from the definition given in its The Standard for Program Management, “[principles are] tenets that are held to be true and important” (PMI, 2017b, p. 7; 2017a, p. 2). ISO has over 50 definitions containing the word “principle” in their library of standards.
Where the term “principle” is not defined, some principles-based standards expand on the use of the term either within the standard itself or in separate documentation.
An example of this expansion is found in PMI (2021), in which the introduction says “principles that guide the behaviors and actions of project professionals and other stakeholders who work on or are engaged with projects.” In clause 3, it continues “The principles of project management are not prescriptive in nature. They are intended to guide the behavior of people involved in projects. They are broadly based so there are many ways individuals and organizations can maintain alignment with the principles. Principles can, but do not necessarily, reflect morals” (PMI, 2021, p. 3). In its preface, it adds “The principle statements capture and summarize generally accepted objectives for the practice of project management and its core functions. The principle statements provide broad parameters within which project teams can operate and offer many ways to remain aligned with the intent of the principles” (PMI, 2021, p. xi).
Another example is HM Government (2021a). This standard relies on the dictionary definition and no elaboration is included in the standard. The guide that accompanies all HM Government functional standards (of which project delivery is just one) explains its principles as follows: “Principles: the mindset needed to follow the standard.” The Handbook for Standard Managers builds on this to say: “sets the mindset needed to follow the standard - use the principles to define the shared assumptions, values and group norms your function wants to encourage” (HM Government, 2021b, p. 14).
The Way Principles are Written
The way principles are written differs among the standards, as shown in Table 3.
How Principles are Written in the Standards
Working Definition of Principle for this Article
The working definition of principle for this article is given below and is compatible with the corresponding dictionary definitions in Table 2:
“Principle: a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.”
As explained above and in Table 3, each standard has adopted its own approach to the way principles are presented. In order to enable the consistent collation of the set of extracted principles, and to ensure that each statement complies with the definition of the term principle provided above, they are rewritten in the following format:
<action > leads to < outcome > .
Criteria for Identifying Project Management Principles
Overview
This section builds upon the previous two sections, ascertaining whether a coherent set of project management principles can be identified and what the criteria should be for determining whether a statement is a principle or not.
Identifying Criteria for Principles in Source Documents
In order to gain an understanding of how principles are used and described in relation to project management, a set of standards, which had been developed using a consensus approach, was selected. Principles stated in the selected sources were analyzed to identify common themes. As described in the previous section, typical examples of sources include international and national standards for project management and related disciplines. Project management–related documents, which have gained international acceptance, were also used even though they are not formally recognized as standards.
To identify current principles associated with project management, each of the source documents was examined to find statements considered to be fundamental for project management. The reasoning for their being identified as such was also considered. Given that many consensus documents do not refer specifically to, or define, the term principle, the authors identified candidate principles by inference from the context in which they are used.
Candidate principles were evaluated against the definition of principle as described in the previous section and incompatible ones were eliminated. Specifically, the working definition ‘foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning’ was used as key to why certain actions are taken in project management practice. The analysis focused on statements describing the fundamental reasons “Why we do it” rather than “What to do.” This led to removing from analysis any statements describing specific practices, procedures, or methods.
For the remaining candidate principles, common themes were identified, enabling comparisons of differing expressions of similar concepts. Statements within each theme were compared in pairs, extracting common characteristics to identify areas of convergence.
Expanding the Document Set Used for Analysis
In order to explore the common understanding of a representative sample for project management practitioners worldwide, this article not only investigates standards published by recognized bodies but also other documents that were developed through broad consensus-building processes.
Numerous efforts have been made by individual authors to identify the principles of project management, including Holt (1983), Spirer (1984), Lichtenberg (1989), Bing (1994), Bondy (1995), and Wideman (2009). These, however, have not had a documented broad consensus and were not subject to public review, and thus were not selected as reference sources for this article.
Table 4 identifies the sources associated with each of the principles discussed in this section. Short titles are used here to identify the relevant source of any principle.
Sources Used in the Analysis
One challenge faced in the selection of sources was the multiple editions of some sources. For example, ANSI/PMI 99-001-1999 (PMI, 1996), which was revised in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2013, and 2017. ANSI/PMI 99-001-2021 states that these are all evolutions from PMBOK® 1987 (PMI, 2021). The authors of this article found that the 2000, 2004, 2008, 2013, and 2017 editions are not sufficiently different from ANSI/PMI 99-001-1999 to justify them being added as separate sources.
Sample Analysis
Table 5 shows an example of output from the analysis. The example relates to accountability and governance, as that is a feature in all the sources and serves to illustrate the differences among the source documents highlighted in the previous section.
Example of Analysis Output on Different Forms of Fundamental Statements
Key: √ denotes that the criterion is met; — denotes that the criterion is not met; denotes that the criterion may be met.
Criteria for Determining Principles
After reviewing the concepts in each of the principles described in the sources, a set of characteristics common to all project management principles was developed and specified. These characteristics were found to be consistent across all themes grouping candidate principles. This finding supports the conclusion that the characteristics of true principles are independent of the principle itself. On analyzing the characteristics, a set of criteria for testing principles was derived. These criteria were then used for testing a potential principle. The criteria are:
Analysis and Results
Data Collection and Clustering
Overview
The main challenge encountered during the literature review was that many of the sources did not explicitly have clauses, sections, or descriptions identified as principles. In many cases what was identified in some sources as principles is included in another source’s narrative content. Only 10 of the 22 sources, the Agile Manifesto (Beck et al., 2001), Disciplined Agile (Ambler & Lines, 2020), ANSI/PMI 99-001-2021 (PMI, 2021), APM Governance (APM, 2018), BS 6079:2019 (BSI, 2019), Equator Principles (EPFIs, 2020), GovS 002 (HM Government, 2021a), ISO 37000:2021 (ISO, 2021b), PMI Sustainable Development (Gareis et al., 2013), and PRINCE2 (Axelos, 2017) include statements explicitly identified as principles.
While the remaining sources considered do not specifically use the term principles, they do include statements that satisfy the definition of the term that has been provided here. These statements were identified and extracted for assessment against statements addressing the same or similar concept found in other sources.
The assessment of the extracted statements uncovered that, indeed, several concepts occurred in multiple sources in different forms and formats (see Table 3). The subsequent step in the analysis was to identify common topics and group corresponding statements into four focus areas discussed in the following subsections.
Focus Area 1
Each project is undertaken to bring about a change, and the need for that change stems from the sponsoring organization’s objectives. Not surprisingly, therefore, most sources discuss the relationship between the sponsoring organization’s overall objectives and the project it is undertaking. This concept occurs through the discussion of business cases capturing the intentions underpinning a project and required to authorize a project. There are also several references to value generation, organizational needs, and expected benefits from project execution.
Principles in this area include strategic alignment, continuing justification, and continuous improvement. These are discussed in more detail later.
Focus Area 2
Uncertainty is an area of focus in many of the sources, because projects exist in an environment where uncertainty is a fact of life. It is impossible to know with 100% confidence what circumstances might impact the project and its environment and consequently threaten achievement of the project’s objectives. This uncertainty exposes risks to the work effort as well as the organization or group undertaking or impacted by a project or its outcomes. Thus, as one would expect, many sources identified principles or included discussions related to uncertainty and risk.
Principles in this area include governance, resilience, and risk. These are discussed in more detail later.
Focus Area 3
Projects usually require the collective effort, skills, and contributions of people from a range of disciplines to manage, supervise, and undertake the work. Each person working on a project needs to understand their role; what deliverables, outputs, products, services, or outcomes they are responsible for; the associated quality expectations; from whom they receive inputs; to whom they supply outputs; with whom they will need to engage; to whom they are accountable; and many other facets of team coordination.
Principles in this area include team structure, teamwork, and organizational values. These are discussed in more detail later.
Focus Area 4
As projects require people with varied expertise working together in an organized fashion it is not surprising that systematic management of work was a common theme across most of the sources investigated. To achieve the intended results, the team must tailor their working methods, including processes and procedures for planning, monitoring, and controlling the project’s activities. The approaches used to manage and undertake the work need to be adapted to support the project’s objectives and context, the team’s capabilities, complexity, and characteristics of the stakeholder community. This includes defining and planning the work so that it can address stakeholders’ concerns and use their input to help the project team achieve the intended objectives. Specialized development and delivery approaches may be adopted as needed, such as predictive, adaptive, or hybrid approaches, which may be managed in the context of an appropriately tailored project life cycle.
Principles in this area include management, flexibility, and stakeholder engagement. These are discussed in more detail later.
Approach to Developing the Principles
After each of the candidate principles in the sources had been assigned to an applicable focus area, each area was analyzed to identify a minimum set of principles that represented all of these candidate principles and complied with the criteria identified in the section “Criteria for Identifying Project Management Principles” in this article.
Based on the analysis and applying the definition of principle from the section “Project Management Principles” and the criteria identified in the section “Criteria for Identifying Project Management Principles” in this article, a set of validated project management principles was identified. Each of the principles proposed below captures a common focus and corresponding concepts found in the analyzed sources. Each of the candidate principles has been reworked to comply with the working definition of a principle and the corresponding selection criteria and formulated in accordance with the template “doing A results in B,” consistent with the definition of principles as fundamental truths. The resulting set is now a compliant set of principles.
For each of the proposed principles, Appendix A provides select examples of corresponding statements from the sources. In addition, in a number of cases, additional potential principles that did not appear in enough sources to be considered representative are listed in Appendix B, with select examples of corresponding statements from source documents.
Common Set of Validated Project Management Principles
Strategic Alignment: Aligning a Project’s Objectives With the Organization’s Strategy Ensures the Project’s Outcomes Contribute to Achieving the Organization’s Objectives
Every organization has strategic goals, whether documented or not, and projects are undertaken to bring about the changes that the organization wishes to make to achieve its goals. A project’s specific objectives should be stated and documented at the start of the project. Alignment-related references in the analyzed sources include discussions of: organizing around products and services; being aware of the project’s relationship to the enterprise; ensuring a demonstrably coherent and supporting relationship between the overall business strategy and the project; developing an informed business case; being driven by needs and benefits; using a value generation model; and being aware of the wide range of perspectives that different groups and different people may have about the purpose of a project.
Continuing Justification: On-Going Confirmation That a Project Is Justified Contributes to Achieving Objectives and Avoiding Waste
The analyzed sources highlight that it is good practice to ensure a project is justified before it is started, and that such justification is confirmed as the project proceeds. Justification drives decision-making to ensure the project remains aligned with the organization’s objectives. Accordingly, projects are justified at the start of each new phase of the work or if a significant change to the objectives, plan, or proposed solution is proposed. Justification is often in the form of a business case, which specifies the following project features: strategic alignment; constraints and risk; economic, financial, commercial, technical, and social viability; the choice of solution; the business or societal changes needed; the delivery schedule; and the allocated budget. If a project can no longer be justified, it should be terminated so that its funds and resources can be reinvested.
Continuous Improvement: Capturing, Sharing, and Applying Experience and Lessons Learned From Previous Work Improves Current and Future Project Performance
Projects are characterized by uncertainty and new information and issues are uncovered regularly as the project proceeds. Teams learn from these new facts as they proceed and adjust their plans and working methods accordingly. Team members also bring their lessons from prior projects and carry those lessons forward to future projects. Teams and sponsors need to hold regular reviews; adjust the project’s objectives, scope, and plan; promote a culture of improvement; draw on lessons from earlier work; and share lessons. They also discuss updating the project management approaches and sharing lessons among teams.
Governance: Adopting a Proportionate and Appropriate Governance Framework Enables the Organization’s Governing Body to Control the Work and Manage the Risks
Governance frameworks set the boundaries within which a project sponsor, project manager, and team operate. These frameworks provide boundaries to ensure the project is aligned with the organization’s values, and aid the project team in achieving the project’s objectives. Often the governance principle is put into practice through a gated approach or a phased life cycle to enable formal controls at the start and end of phases. The management frameworks and controls put in place need to be proportionate and appropriate to the work being undertaken, the level of prevailing risk expected, and the benefits likely to be realized. Tailoring the governance frameworks to align with the circumstances to be encountered is considered good practice and not only reduces the management effort needed, but helps to maintain rigorous control of the risks involved with respect to the benefits expected.
Resilience: Embracing Adaptability Enables Project Teams to Accommodate and Manage Change
Uncertainty and change are factors that are constantly present in the business and organizational environments within which most projects operate. Organizations and project teams must continuously adapt to these changing factors, making the adjustments necessary for keeping the project on track to accomplish the goals for which it was undertaken. Actively embracing the need to adapt approaches, working relationships, and communication needs while seeking ways to accommodate and manage changes in a positive way gives project teams the greatest flexibility to respond appropriately as the need arises.
Risk: Ongoing Management of Risks, in Terms of Opportunities and Threats, Maximizes Positive Impacts and Minimizes Negative Impacts to the Project and Its Outcomes
The environments within which project teams operate are filled with uncertainty and risk. Each project team must address this uncertainty and manage the risks in a way that maximizes the probability that the project being undertaken can deliver the outcomes expected and ultimately lead to the value being sought by the organization or group initiating the effort. Risks can manifest themselves as opportunities or as threats to achieving the objectives. Risks may apply directly to the project work or even apply to the organization or group as a whole. Risk management is an essential component of project management and it encompasses the evaluation of opportunities and threats, developing responses, and implementing the planned responses as appropriate.
Team Structure: Maintaining a Clear Team Structure With Defined Roles Enables Team Members to Understand Each Other’s Responsibilities and Ensures That Role Holders With Delegated Authority Can Be Held to Account
Although a clear definition of the team structure and a description of the governing body’s expectations are necessary conditions for success, they are not sufficient. The analyzed sources discuss organizational structure, involving the right people in the right tasks, promoting accountability, defining responsibilities, and ensuring accountability to the organization as a whole.
Teamwork: Collaborative Working as Teams Between Individuals with Diverse Skills, Knowledge, and Experience Enables Them to Accomplish Shared Objectives Efficiently
Although communication of the team structure and expectations from the governing body is necessary, it is not sufficient, alone, to ensure efficient project execution. Team members must also take responsibility for working together to accomplish the project’s objectives and must work both flexibly and collaboratively to ensure that the objectives are met. The analyzed sources discuss a collaborative team environment, diversity of skills, and shared objectives. They also talk of collaboration between units and people at the same level in the organizational hierarchy; among people at different levels in the hierarchy; and among people in the team and partners, suppliers, customers, and stakeholders outside the team.
Organizational Values: Upholding Organizational Values and Codes of Conduct Creates a Culture of Respect and Trust
Effective project delivery requires that team members have a common commitment to the norms and codes of conduct within which the team operates. Norms are standards of behavior expected of team members in the performance of their assigned roles within the project. Alignment of a project’s governance and codes of conduct with broader community expectations and the organization’s policies, values, and objectives also helps promote collaborative cooperation across teams and stakeholders.
Management: Defining, Planning, Monitoring, and Controlling Work Maximizes the Likelihood of Achieving Project Success
Work on projects requires and consumes organizational resources to realize defined objectives that fulfill specific needs. These resources should be used efficiently to contribute to achieving the expected results and meeting the project’s success criteria. Multiple analyzed sources explicitly indicate that a project’s activities must be appropriately defined, planned, monitored, and controlled, and many analyzed sources describe specific practices derived from this principle such as management by exception or management by phases or stages. In addition, it is inferred from multiple analyzed sources that this principle is fundamental to most common project management practices such as scope management, cost management, and schedule management.
Flexibility: Tailoring the Ways of Working to the Context of the Project Maximizes the Likelihood of Success
Each project has not only unique objectives but also a context that can directly impact how the project is organized and its activities managed. The methods, processes, or practices that are effective for one project might not produce the same results on another project that operates in a different context. Tailoring the working approaches on a project to suit the specific context increases the likelihood of achieving the project’s objectives. Typical factors listed in the analyzed sources as considerations for adapting the work approach include the project environment and its objectives, stakeholders, governance, size, complexity, importance, capability, and risk. The most important practice derived from this principle is adopting appropriate approaches such as predictive, adaptive, or hybrid.
Stakeholder Engagement: Engaging Stakeholders at a Level Commensurate With Their Needs, Expectations, and Impact Fosters Trust and Contributes to the Project’s Success
The successful outcome of a project depends not only on the effectiveness of the project team but also on how stakeholders react during the project or as a result of the changes the project enables. Consequently, appropriate engagement strategies need to be defined and implemented to effectively engage the project’s stakeholders to maximize their support and minimize any adverse impacts. Several analyzed sources specifically indicate that this engagement should be commensurate with the stakeholders’ needs and expectations, as well as the importance of each stakeholder to the project. As most analyzed sources indicate that the project’s deliverables, outputs, and outcomes should meet the agreed needs and be validated by stakeholders, the project cannot be considered successful without acceptance from stakeholders that the project’s objectives have been achieved. Communications management and stakeholder engagement activities are examples of practices implementing this principle in day-to-day planning and management of the project.
Frequency of Occurrence
The discussion above identifies 12 principles, each of which is common to at least three of 22 sources. Table 6 summarizes the frequency of occurrence of the common principles in the sources.
GovS 002 (HM Government, 2021a) is the largest source of the 12 common principles, as it states 10 of the 12 principles. APM Governance (APM, 2019) is the next largest source, stating 9 of the 12 principles. ISO 21500:2021 (2021a) is the third largest source, stating 8 of the 12 principles. (Although ISO 21500:2021 does not explicitly contain content it calls principles, it does list a set of concepts, which are in a form similar to the principles in other documents; they have been treated as principles here.)
Frequency of Occurrence of the Principles in the Sources
Key: ✓ = explicitly covered in a stated principle; * = the intent is supported in the narrative, practice or other written form.
In nine of the 22 sources no statements were found that could be interpreted as clearly specified principles. Eight of these nine do, however, include narrative or practices that appear to support some of the principles.
The principle that is stated most frequently has to do with stakeholder engagement, stated in the form of a principle in 8 of the 22 sources. The next most frequently stated principles are strategic alignment, continuous improvement, and risk, which are stated in the form of a principle in 7 of the 22 sources.
The Relationship Between Principles and Practices
As defined here, principles “serve as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning.” Accordingly, the principles provide the reasons for those involved in project management to take certain actions within a project context. This view of the role of principles is common across all the sources that explicitly include principles.
In all except one of the principles-based sources, the principles are supported by practices or narratives describing what those involved in project management should do in relation to specific principles if they are to be effective in their roles. Those sources that do not include principles are defined directly in terms of practices or narrative content. Practices tend to be based on established and commonly used management approaches in a specific environment or methodological framework and are hence potentially more limited in scope than principles.
What is apparent in the sources is that the statements considered as principles are distinct from those described as project management practices or activities. The actual application of principles in day-to-day project management takes the form of practices that describe what needs to be done to obtain a successful outcome for a project. The main differences between principles and practices are:
A principle applies to project management as a whole, and therefore multiple practices may be derived from a single principle. A principle justifies a practice but does not dictate or suggest what each practice should be or how it should be defined or what a practice should cover. A principle can serve as a guide in situations where practices are missing or not fully described.
In this way, the principles are open to any approach being used. If this were not the case, they would not be universal, which is one of the criteria specified for testing each of the candidate principles.
While an exhaustive mapping of project management practices to the principles listed above is not in scope for this article, following is an example of the essential differences between principles and practices.
The management principle introduced in this article—Defining, planning, monitoring and controlling work maximizes the likelihood of achieving project success—states the reason for which project managers practice scope, schedule, cost, resource, and quality management and the processes through which these practices are implemented such as breaking down to scope of work, estimating, handling dependencies, assigning tasks, reviewing quality, and many more.
Understanding the principle describing the reason behind a project management practice enables those involved in project management to tailor the application of that practice to the context of the specific project. For example, in some agile approaches, scope is flexible and time and costs are fixed, whereas in many projects, the scope is fixed; in both cases, the work is being managed in a defined and controlled way—it is just that the circumstances differ. This leads to another principle, flexibility, which enables a modified version of that practice or a different practice rooted in the same principle to be used. At the same time, based on the governance principle, these practices should be applied in an appropriate and proportionate way. The interworking of principles, as in the above example, illustrates how the set of principles provides a cohesive foundation for the whole of project management.
Completeness of the Principle Set
The principles proposed here meet the criteria specified for a principle and occur, or are inferred, in a sufficient number of the sources analyzed to be considered established and relevant. The principles in the sources are those that people undertaking project management are expected to comply with, regardless of the methodology and delivery approaches they use.
Neither the principles in the sources nor those in the validated set proposed here are intended to represent distinguishing characteristics of project management. As such they cannot be used as a set of criteria, which if met, would define what project management is.
As noted earlier, concepts, often stated as practices, such as cost, schedule, scope, and quality management, have long been presented in project management standards and guides advising on the undertaking of functional management areas of project management. However, these concepts were not generally detailed in any stated principles as they are established practices for which the justification is felt to be obvious.
Conclusions
Overall Conclusion
As noted in the Introduction to this article, considerable effort has been invested by many organizations in formalizing the practice of project management by developing standards and guides to help novices and experts carry out their work more effectively.
This article draws together many authoritative sources to investigate the question:
“
The study has demonstrated that the chosen sources do provide the basis for a set of validated principles; however, the wording of each of the principles in the sources needed to be adapted to comply with the format and formal definition developed as part of this study.
Based on criteria adopted in this article, it was concluded that these 12 principles together comprise a set of validated principles:
Discussion
The following points were noted during the study:
Most of the sources analyzed in the study do not provide a definition of principle and assume that a dictionary definition could be used. As the sources were developed by consensus and subject to peer review, that implies a definition was not considered necessary for understanding the document. As the dictionary definitions are aligned but not identical, this issue has been addressed by developing a working definition, which is closely aligned to that in the Oxford English Dictionary. None of the sources provides any guidelines for the specification of a principle. For this article, however, criteria were developed and applied to ensure consistency in the analysis and as a basis for any future work. A small number of project management standards earmarked for analysis turned out to be unusable because they did not provide the basis for identifying any principle that complied with the criteria.
Although each of the validated principles is essential from a project management perspective, the set of validated principles may not be complete and cannot be used to define a project or project management. That is to say, if a project team complies with all of the validated principles, it should not be taken to infer the work being undertaken is a project.
Value to the Project Community
This study has demonstrated that despite being drafted by independent teams across the globe, the source documents demonstrate a common understanding of the necessities for effective project management. This feature represents an additional benefit from the development of international standards. The differences among sources derive from the importance different drafting panels place on each topic addressed and the context of their work. For example, at one end of the scale, drafting panels consider projects as a means of managing business and societal change, whereas others limit project management to solely the creation of outputs. The wider view on project management is in the majority and is growing.
It is intended that this article and the proposed set of principles be used to provide a common framework for developers and publishers of project management standards and guides. This framework should lead to a growing consensus and common understanding across the project management profession as to the principles that provide a foundation for effective practice.
While all principles apply to all or most types and sizes of projects, not all principles would be equally relevant in every case. With a common set of principles, project managers can apply the principles regardless of the approaches used, while paving the way for the creation of new, innovative approaches when required.
Identification of Areas for Future Work
This study is based on sources by well-established and authoritative organizations. However, none of the sources covers all the validated principles presented here, although one came very close. It is therefore suggested that this research could be expanded to include other lesser-known sources and thereby provide greater insight into approaches for ensuring projects are successful.
Further research could include:
Widening the research to determine if alternative criteria for testing principles are appropriate and, if so, whether that makes a difference to the results here; Widening the research base to analyze additional sources in order to further test and validate the principles derived from professional standards; Determining if a set of principles can be derived, which, if treated as criteria and met, would indicate that the work being undertaken is being managed as a project; Investigating the applicability of each of the listed principles to program and portfolio management, as well as other spheres of management; Mapping commonly used project management practices onto the set of principles listed here; and Investigating the need to define new principles, compliant with the stated criteria, in case the mapping cannot be effectively carried out and re-evaluating the resulting set of principles with respect to completeness and its applicability to current best practice.
We trust that these findings will be of benefit to future crafters of project management guides.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the participation and contributions by Jim Branden in the early scoping stage of this article. Dr. Lisa Blampied provided valuable assistance in reading each draft of the article and making numerous editorial comments.
Author Contributions
The authors confirm that they all contributed to the study conception and design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of results, and draft manuscript preparation. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Author Biographies
, launched in 2000. Regularly augmented, it is a comprehensive repository of freely available project management knowledge and wisdom theory and practice. He is author of numerous papers and several books, including A Management Framework for Project, Program and Portfolio Integration. He can be contacted at maxw@maxwideman.com
Appendix A. Selected Quotations From the Sources
The following lists quote a few of the principles as they appear in the sources and provide citations for additional supporting principle statements.
Appendix B. Insufficient Commonality
The following are examples of principles from the reference sources that were found to have insufficient commonality to derive general principles.
“Simplicity – the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.” (Beck et al., 2001) “Principle 1. Delight Customers—“…As disciplined agilists, we embrace change because we know that our stakeholders will see new possibilities as they learn what they truly want as the solution evolves. We also strive to discover what our customers want and to care for our customers…” (Ambler & Lines, 2020, p. 25) “Principle 4. Be Pragmatic—“Let’s be pragmatic and aim to be as effective as we can be.” (Ambler & Lines, 2020, p. 28) “Principle 6. Optimize Flow—“Looking at the flow of value enables teams to collaborate in a way as to effectively implement our organization’s value streams. Although each team may be but one part of the value stream, they can see how they might align with others to maximize the realization of value.” (Ambler & Lines, 2020, p. 31) “E1. The organization differentiates between change projects and business as usual (BAU) or repetitive activities (and their management) and is supportive of both.” (APM, 2018, p. 15) “3.5 Recognize, evaluate, and respond to system interactions.” (PMI, 2021, p. 37) “3.6 Demonstrate leadership behaviors. Demonstrate and adapt leadership behaviors to support individual and team needs.” (PMI, 2021, p. 40) “3.9 Navigate complexity. Continually evaluate and navigate project complexity so that approaches and plans enable the project team to successfully navigate the project life cycle.” (PMI, 2021, p. 50) “3.12 Enable change to achieve the envisioned future state. Prepare those impacted for the adoption and sustainment of new and different behaviors and processes required for the transition from the current state to the intended future state created by the project outcomes.” (PMI, 2021, p. 58) “5.8 Take a gated approach to projects. The outcome of a project is always uncertain and often requires investigative work to determine what outputs are required and whether different options for a solution are viable in business and technical terms. A gated approach should be taken by breaking the project into life cycle phases, each of which progressively adds to knowledge regarding the project and reduces risk. In this way, the amount of funding committed to the project is limited and only extended once continuation of the project into the next phase has been justified.” (BSI, 2019, p. 15) “Principle 9. Independent Monitoring and Reporting. …in order to assess Project compliance with the Equator Principles after Financial Close and over the life of the loan, the EPFI will require independent monitoring and reporting.” (EPFIs, 2020, p. 8) “Principle 10. Reporting and Transparency. [provides for additional client and EPFI ongoing reporting requirements].” (EPFIs, 2020, p. 8) “appropriate planning and management: work should be appropriately planned and quality should be actively managed.” (ISO, 2021a, p. 7) “9. the transition of capabilities to operations is planned and programme or project closure managed, with ongoing operational responsibilities agreed and accepted.” (HM Government, 2021a, p. 7) “5.4.6 Management policies. The governing body should develop or adopt, implement and monitor management policies, and if needed, procedures and processes for projects, programmes and portfolios, which should align with the organization’s management policies, procedures and tolerances, adapted as needed.” (ISO, 2017, p. 5)