Aaron Shenhar

• Ph. D.
• CEO - DLI - Diamond Leadership Institute and SPLWIN at Diamond Leadership Institute

We challenge the traditional view of project management. It is no longer sufficient to deliver a project on time, cost, and scope.

The exponential growth in technology and markets is forcing companies to intensify their innovation efforts and accelerate product introductions. As a result, more managers today are required to cope with a great deal of innovation in their projects. However, at this time, most innovation attempts still end up in disappointments. In fact, successfu...

The tragic collapse of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 could not erase the memory of one of the most successful projects in history. The project set standards of excellence in project management for years to come. Using a retrospective look at the construction management of the WTC during the 1960s and 1970s, we show how the vision of...

Past studies have often voiced concern that important megaprojects have repeatedly failed due to extensive overruns, misunderstanding of expectations, or both. In this article, we contend that this pattern may not be inevitable. In retrospect, despite painful delays, some megaprojects eventually achieved their longer-term objectives. In this study,...

In this interview with Aaron Shenhar, Jeffrey Pinto and Graham Winch, we probe the influence of Rodney's work on the field as it is, in terms of how it is developing now, and how it will develop into the future. Based on three questions asked by the interviewer Martina Huemann we get insights about 1) What these three leading scholars consider to b...

In recent years, organizational project management (OPM) has emerged as a field focused on how project, program and portfolio management practices strategically help firms realize organizational goals. There is a compelling need to address the totality of project-related work at the organizational level, providing a view of organizations as a netwo...

Understanding the link between project complexity and innovation is highly pertinent. Yet, the challenge of innovative complex projects has received limited research attention and little theory development. This article provides a retrospective analysis of the difficulties experienced by Boeing during the development project of its highly innovativ...

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

One of the most common myths in the discipline of project management is the assumption that all projects are the same and can be managed with the same set of processes and techniques. In reality, however, projects differ and “one size does not fit all.” Based on our previous research, we have learned that adapting the right approach to the right pr...

Not many studies have been conducted at the business unit level, and even fewer in the high-tech industries. Most studies use only one measure for success—financial performance. This article, based on data from an Israeli high-tech industry, argues that the success of business units is in fact a multidimensional concept. Four dimensions of success...

The discipline of project management has been used extensively for several decades in the construction and defense industries. Today, however, it is increasingly applied in a variety of industries and to all kinds of efforts including commercial product development. However, many technical managers find it difficult to capture the complexities invo...

As project management is becoming more strategic and business oriented, new and formal approaches are needed to address the changes in the profession. Strategic Project Leadership®1 (SPL) is a comprehensive, research-based approach to project management. It combines the strategic, business-related aspects of projects, the need to adapt a project to...

In high-tech projects, which we refer to as technology challenging projects, all or mostly new technologies are used. While an effective project manager may be the source for a project team's spirit, there are other possibilities, like the satisfying nature of the technical challenge of high-tech projects or the opportunity for new learning on the...

The conceptual and theoretical basis of systems engineering and project management are still in their early days. For example, almost all literature written in recent years in these areas tend to assume that all projects are fundamentally similar and their management consists of a universal set of functions and activities. Systems engineering books...

This paper summarizes ten years of empirical research on the ingredients of sustainable organizational success at different organizational levels. While multiple dimensions of corporate success have received much attention in recent years, few studies had spanned the entire spectrum of structural levels. Our cumulative studies have addressed three...

Modern project managers are aware that different types of projects need different styles of project management. A construction project is very different from a high-tech research program in several ways, including how each is managed. The NTCP “Diamond” framework (Novelty-Technology-Complexity-Pace) suggests classifying complex projects according t...

Successful projects are often characterized by a unique spirit. Phase one results based on 193 employees partaking in 60 projects across organizations, support a model positing that leader building activities affect employees’ emotions, attitudes and behavioral norms which are focused on expected project outcomes, termed project spirit. Spirit affe...

Project strategy is an emerging concept in the research literature on project management. Many authors suggest that such a strategy should be used by a project team as a guideline for effectively performing project activities. In this study, we explore how project strategy is used. We found that the project teams applied various forms of project st...

Strategic project management is gradually becoming a popular and growing trend within the discipline of project management. The general idea is that project management teams must learn how to deal with the business aspects of their projects, as well as better support their company's business strategy and sustainability, rather than just focus on me...

While the innovation literature has introduced over the years many conceptual frameworks for classifying innovations, there is yet little agreement among researchers on a unified framework for studying innovation. More troubling is the fact that most theoretical frameworks of innovations have had little impact on the way organizations conduct their...

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

The search for factors that lead to better project performance and success spans many years of research. The project management literature has dealt extensively with factors affecting projects' performance and. More recent studies have shown that the universalistic approach which assumes that all projects are similar may not be optimal for managing...

Divulgação dos SUMÁRIOS das obras recentemente incorporadas ao acervo da Biblioteca Ministro Oscar Saraiva do STJ. Em respeito à lei de Direitos Autorais, não disponibilizamos a obra na íntegra. STJ00084330 658.5 S546r

Almost every large system is initiated with an intention of building something, which has new value to its stakeholders. Yet, turning this simple statement into reality is often problematic since the concept of value is not always explicitly defined or structually incorporated in the formal frameworks of program planning and systems engineering. Qu...

When important projects fail, the investigation is often focused on the engineering and technical reasons for the failure. That was the case in NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) that was lost in space after completing its nine-month journey to Mars. Yet, in many cases the root cause of the failure is not technical, but managerial. Often the problem...

While entrepreneurship is one of the most studied topics in business research, findings have been mixed regarding the traits of entrepreneurs. Some of the confusion in the literature may be explained by findings such as John Miner's who identified four personality types capable of achieving entrepreneurial success (Miner and Raju, 2004). Indeed, se...

Traditional, well-established risk management techniques are not always working. The evidence is well-known: two of the most important and much anticipated commercial airplane development programs have recently suffered embarrassing delays in execution and delivery schedules. Airbus and its parent company EADS had to push A380s entry into service b...

The authors propose a model suggesting that project leader building activities which support instilling a project vision, artifacts and are guided by this individual's values, affect partakers' emotions, attitudes and behavioral norms that are focused on expected project outcomes, termed project spirit. Furthermore, spirit is proposed to affect par...

Summary form only given. Many project teams today realize that they need to develop their own solutions on top of the standard techniques in order to cope with their projects dynamic changes, uncertainty, or complexity. In fact, research shows that the conventional approach to project management provides the basic, although necessary, guidelines fo...

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

Projects are the engines that drive innovation and change. Yet they have been ignored for a long time by top managers. This is why many projects do not meet their objectives. To unleash the hidden potential that exists in projects, companies must learn how to manage them in a highly adaptive and flexible way. Once the new frameworks are adopted, pr...

As part of our continuous studies on the strategic approach to project management, this study focuses on combining the two worlds— project and business— by deriving specific and appropriate project strategies in line with business strategies or objectives. In this preliminary study, we centered our attention on the strategies of projects in pharmac...

Projects offer an enormous opportunity for achieving competitive advantage and/or value for the corporation. A project strategy is necessary to take advantage of these opportunities. One of the key elements of a project strategy is to have an appropriate strategic focus. Individual researchers used a standardized case study format to analyze the pr...

To function in an effective way, organizations must learn the principles of successful innovation that will fit their environment and mission. However, having the best and most innovative ideas is not enough. Successful innovation requires setting up well organized and well run projects that will put things in place in the most effective and effici...

In program management, several best practices have been developed from major aerospace and defense programs. In this study, we examined seven major defense programs. Our intention was to learn from these successful programs, especially about the concepts of program value. As a result, we are able to suggest the definition of program value, the form...

Project management is one of the fastest growing disciplines in organizations today. However, ironically, the statistics of project success suggests that most projects still fail and many projects do not accomplish their business results. This presents possibly a unique opportunity for substantial improvement. In this paper the authors offer their...

Project management is a complex activity and it involves, among other things, an attitude, style and philosophy. The main proposition of this article suggests that different projects must be approached by different managerial philosophies. The article presents a conceptual managerial classification of projects based on their technological uncertain...

A common mistake in assessing an organization's technological base is narrowing the review to matters of technical competence. Managers need a framework for assessing the much broader question of how well their organizations are positioned to derive competitive advantage from technology. A step-by-step guide is presented that leads managers through...

In this research we provide illustrations of the manifestation of spirit in high and low technology uncertainty projects, and explore how the shaping of spirit influences several paramount behaviors of partakers, that seem directly related to important project outcomes. The six projects we investigate originate in the space, pharmaceutical, food, c...

Abstract A comparison,between,neural networks,and linear regression analysis is used for identifying critical managerial,factors affecting the success of high-tech defense projects. The study shows that neural networks have better explanatory and prediction power, and it enables the exploration,of relationships among,the data that are difficult to...

The article consists of a Powerpoint presentation on a new project management (PM) maturity model. The areas discussed include: current PM Concept; seven principles in Strategic Project Leadershipreg; a new organizational culture; project goal categorization: assessing PM style; etc.

This paper introduces empirical findings based upon exploratory research of real-life case studies that illustrate the concepts of Project Strategy. Multiple raters classified their real-life case studies as to project type using project type definitions from Wheelwright and Clark's Aggregate Project Portfolio framework. The raters also classified...

From its inception in the early years of Apollo, NASA has prided itself on pushing the boundaries of science and engineering and knowing how to manage these types of projects. However, pushing the management boundaries requires a careful adaptation of risks, resources, and procedures, and projects must clearly assess the complexities and uncertaint...

Strategic Project Leadership® (SPL) is a new approach to project management that is focusing projects on creating competitive advantage and winning in the marketplace. This approach is particularly relevant to strategic projects that are initiated to create the company's future, including almost all R&D projects. In the traditional approach, projec...

Strategic Project Leadership®(SPL) is a new approach to project management that is focusing projects on creating competitive advantage and winning in the marketplace. This approach is particularly relevant to strategic projects that are initiated to create the company's future, including almost all R&D projects. In the traditional approach, project...

The premise of this paper is that systems engineering, and project management as well, are all but universal and that different projects should employ different management and organizational styles. While this idea is not new and many managers use their own ways for identifying project differences, this paper offers to use a more formal, research-b...

This paper introduces and defines the concept of project strategy. Nike's "just do it" is the prevailing attitude around projects. Schedule and budget dominate the measures of project success. To take advantage of opportunities, projects must be more than just tactical or operational. Building market share, extending product lines, increasing reven...

Measuring organizational success is a continuous challenge for both managers and researchers. While financial measures were in wide use for many years, new frameworks have emerged in recent years that extend organizational perspectives beyond traditional financial measures. Among them the Balanced Scorecard is one of the most popular new frameworks...

Measuring organizational success is a continuous challenge for both managers and researchers. While financial measures were in wide use for many years, new frameworks have emerged in recent years that extend organizational perspectives beyond traditional financial measures. Among them the Balanced Scorecard is one of the most popular new frameworks...

This paper examines the relationship between project planning efforts and project success. Three planning aspects are considered (requirements definition, development of technical specifications, and project management processes and procedures), along with three perspectives on project success (end-user, project manager, and contracting office). Th...

Studies on project success factors were typically based on subjective lists for respondents to check, or on a limited number of managerial variables and success criteria. This comprehensive study uses multidimensional criteria for assessing project success, and employs multivariate statistical analyses for identifying the common managerial factors...

Although the causes for project success and failure have been the subject of many studies, no conclusive evidence or common agreement has been achieved so far. One criticism involves the universalistic approach used often in project management studies, according to which all projects are assumed to be similar. A second problem is the issue of subje...

The defense industry has been experiencing a large draw-down during the 1990s. This has left many companies, large and small, in a situation where they had to examine the viability and future of their businesses. While large and medium-size companies were somewhat assisted by government policies and support, small subcontractors were often left alo...

In times of increased competition and globalization, project success becomes even more critical to business performance, and yet many projects still suffer delays, overruns, and even failure. Ironically, however, risk management tools and techniques, which have been developed to improve project success, are used too little, and many still wonder ho...

This article presents projects as powerful strategic weapons, initiated to create economic value and competitive advantage. It suggests that project managers are the new strategic leaders, who must take on total responsibility for project business results. Defining and assessing project success is therefore a strategic management concept, which sho...

One of the most common ways in which organizations create change is through the project organization. Projects can be seen as temporary, dynamic organizations created and disseminated within existing organizations, and while their extent of use is growing, their theoretical and conceptual understanding are still in their early days. Using a combina...

Not many authors have attempted to classify projects according to any specific scheme, and those who have tried rarely offered extensive empirical evidence. From a theoretical perspective, a traditional distinction between radical and incremental innovation has often been used in the literature of innovation, and has created the basis for many clas...

Summary form only given. While the study of organizational performance has been at the core of management research for many years, real issues still exist in the definition and measurement of organization performance. In this paper, dedicated to commercial for-profit organizations, we attempt to organize and integrate the empirical literature on pe...

The classic approach to explain project success has reached its limits. By introducing a new framework, which is called "strategic project leadership", Shenhar (2000), questions these limits and extends the borders to a modern approach of project management in the new economy. One major dimension of strategic project leadership is "project spirit"....

form only given as follows. The classic approach to explain project success has reached its limits. By introducing a new framework, which is called "Strategic Project Leadership," Shenhar (2000), questions these limits and extends the borders to a modern approach of project management in the new economy. One major dimension of strategic project lea...

This study attempts to reveal the effect of the contract type on the success of defense projects contingent with the level of technological uncertainty existing at the beginning of the project. Based on data collected on 110 defense development projects performed in Israel, it was found that when technological uncertainty at the start of projects i...

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework for a new research agenda for project management in the coming years. The idea is to focus research on the competitive potential of project management and promote deeper conceptual understanding, integrative practices, and wider-based education. Based on ideas which emerged in our previous studies...

Project organization - multivariate analysis.

Two major sectors of the economy—commercial and defense—are facing extensive change and are undergoing considerable downsizing. The defense sector was forced in recent years to adjust to a post-Cold War era and to find commercial uses for many of its military-related technologies, and the commercial industry is challenged by increased competition,...

A gravitational source of heat is added to secular cooling and the heat from the decay of radioactive elements to close the gap between heat loss and heat production for whole mantle convection. This unrecognized source of heat comes from viscous friction in sheet-like mantle plumes rising from the core-mantle boundary to create oceanic plates, cau...

Research literature on the management of projects has been quite slow in its conceptual development and still suffers from a scanty theoretical basis. One of the main impediments in the study of projects has been the absence of constructs and the little distinction that has been made between the project type and its managerial and organizational st...

In this study we attempt to answer two questions: Is there a natural way to classify projects and what are the specific factors that influence the success of various kinds of projects? Perhaps one of the major barriers to understanding the reasons behind the success of a project has been the lack of specificity of constructs applied in project mana...

The goal of this study was “to formulate guidelines for improving success prospects of converting the technological capability of the Israeli defense industry for use in the commercial marketplace”. A companies' culture and management attitude have been identified as the main obstacles to such conversion. Based on a survey of conversion activities...

Traditionally, the success of a project is assessed using internal measures such as technical and operational goals, and meeting schedule and budget. More recently, it has been recognized that several other measures should be used to define project success. These measures reflect external effectiveness: the project's impact on its customers, and on...

Systems engineering is developing rapidly, while new standards are created and new tools are being developed. However, the theoretical understanding and the conceptual foundation of systems engineering are still in their early stages. For example, although real-world systems exhibit considerable differences, there is very little distinction in the...

Summary form only given. The authors contend that it is possible to look beyond immediate project shortcomings for some pivotal dimensions that would enable better correlation between different types of project and appropriate styles of management. The authors suggest that all projects, or at least their major elements, can be typified according to...

form only given. What does project success mean? When a project is completed on time and within the original budget, is it a success? Or even when it fails to meet these objectives but succeeds in meeting its specified requirements, is it then a successfully completed project? The objective of this work is to develop a universal framework for the a...

Managers of today's capital projects are under pressure to complete complex projects under conditions of uncertainty in less time, without sacrifice to cost and quality and without leaving customers and users dissatisfied. Studying particularly skillful managers who are able to meet this challenge, the authors found a style of management that shift...

A traditional categorization of innovation as either incremental or radical has often been mentioned in the theoretical literature of innovation. A similar distinction has not become standard, however, in the project management literature and many publications on the management of projects tend to assume that all projects are fundamentally similar....

The main goal of this article is to identify managerial variables that are critical to the success of defense projects. This study analyzes 110 defense projects executed in Israel over the last 20 years. Some 400 managerial variables were collected, and 20 measures of success derived for each project. Multivariate analysis is employed to account si...

Applies a modular approach to the definition of management. Includes ten separate definitions and modules in an attempt to answer the relatively sweeping question of what management is all about. Various parts of the model could be used for different purposes. First, it may help managers understand the complexities of their job in various situation...

The classical literature has often used a low-high distinction between innovations as either incremental or radical. As product innovation is becoming increasingly important to organizational growth, this dichotomized categorization is probably too shy in capturing the diversity of existing trends. Similarly, the design literature has usually disti...

methods of estimation for success in project management.

Although real-world systems exhibit considerable differences, there is very little distinction in the literature between the system type and the description of its actual system engineering pursuit. We suggest here a new approach to systems engineering. It is based on the premise that the actual process of systems engineering must be adaptive to th...

project management in multivariate analysis.

Based on an exploratory, on-going field study we suggest in this paper a conceptual, two dimensional framework for the classification of projects and systems, and show how this framework can be used to distinguish among management styles and practices for various types of engineering projects. The paper provides empirical evidence of the difference...

multivariate analysis for project management studies.

The paper examines the extent of involvement of the key parties in project planning, focusing on the anatomy of decision making within the planning team that they constitute. The involvement throughout project life is analysed by planning stages, decision-making phases, and functional plans, a classification evolved in the course of three recent st...

This paper suggests a new model for analyzing the issue of management skills in modern organizations. The model is an update development of R. Katz's classical framework of 1955, and it attempts to surmount several ambiguities and limitations existing in Katz's early model. This update is particularly relevant in high technology organizations where...

finding critical managerial decisions.

Systems engineering is a multidisciplinary function dedicated to controlling design so that all elements are integrated to provide an optimum, overall system-as contrasted with the integration of optimized sub-elements. A systems engineer is a person who is capable of integrating knowledge from different disciplines and seeing problems with a “holi...

Why plan? Who should plan? What and when should one plan? These fundamental issues of construction planning raised by the authors 5 years ago, are revisited in this paper in the light of studies conducted recently within the construction industry. In the focus of this research program stood mature companies, advanced projects and competent and expe...

Suggests that an open-door policy is one of the means organizations use to improve communication with employees, enhance trust and motivation, and reduce the need for unionization, though it is problematic and difficult to implement. Points out that a major difficulty is employees' perceptions of the barriers that exist between them and management;...

The notion of Kolmogorov program-size complexity (or algorithmic information) is defined here for arbitrary objects. Using a special form of recursive topological spaces, called partition spaces, we define a recursive topology which uses a level of partition for approximation of arbitrary objects instead of the usual metric. It is shown that the fo...

The inherent differences that exist between an industrial organization and academia are usually a barrier preventing these two parties from working together. A case where these differences have been bridged is reported here. The case involved a study on advanced techniques for project management that was conducted jointly by a large aerospace compa...

The high-tech industry is usually treated as an homogeneous entity, without differentiating between organizations according to the relative importance of technology in their business strategy. This paper investigates the varying impact of technology on the success of strategic business units within the Miles and Snow typology. Although common wisdo...

Data on the business activity and its results, and the business strategy adopted by the business unit (using Miles and Snow typology), were gathered and analyzed to explore the main factors affecting the success of these business units. The research considered was directed at high-technology business units in the electronics and computer industry i...