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Project management research has evolved over the past five decades and is now a mature disciplinary field investigating phenomena of interest to academics, practitioners and policymakers. Studies of projects and project management practices are theoretically rich and scientifically rigorous. They are practically relevant and impactful when addressing the pursuit of operational, tactical and strategic advancements in the world of organisations. We want to broaden the conversation between project management scholars and other scholars from cognate disciplines, particularly business and management, in a true scholarship of integration and cross-fertilisation. This Manifesto invites the latter scholars to join efforts providing a foundation for further creative, theoretical and empirical contributions, including but not limited to tackling grand challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and global poverty. To this end, we identify five theses:1) Projects are often ‘agents of change’ and hence fundamental to driving the innovation and change required to tackle grand challenges.2) Much project management research leverages and challenges theories across disciplines, including business, organisation and management studies, contributing to developing new theories, including those specific to projects and temporary organisations.3) ‘Projects’ are useful units of analysis, project management research is ideal for scientific cross-fertilisation and project management scholars welcome academics from other communities to engage in fruitful conversations.4) As in many other fields of knowledge, the project management research community embraces diversity, welcoming researchers of different genders and various scientific and social backgrounds.5) Historically rooted in ‘problem-solving’ and normative studies, project management research has become open to interpretative and emancipatory research, providing opportunities for other business, management and organisational scholars to advance their knowledge communities.

This paper examines the correlates of optimism bias and its impact on World Bank project performance. We measure optimism bias in different ways using estimated Economic Rates of Return (ERR) of projects at approval and closure. We examine over 2,800 World Bank projects that were appraised between 1960 and 2019. We find that approximately 60% of projects in the sample were prone to optimism bias. Correlates of optimism bias include both project and country characteristics. Findings also indicate that the incidence of optimism bias reduces the chance of a satisfactory project performance rate at the time of evaluation by 17–20%. Recommendations include embracing complexity and uncertainty in considering projects for approval, providing organizational incentives for ensuring projects are successful rather than ERRs being accurate, shifting some resources from appraisal to implementation, and changing the nature of project supervision.

Purpose Worldwide, major projects often make the headlines as they suffer from a fourfold whammy of delays, cost blowouts, benefit shortfalls and stakeholder disappointments. It seems that error and bias can explain their underperformance. Which overarching explanation outweighs the other? It is the question this paper aims to address. Design/methodology/approach Insights are garnered from decades of research on thousands of major projects in developed and developing countries worldwide. In particular, two high-profile project cases, the Veteran Affairs Hospital in Aurora, Colorado (USA) and the Philharmonie de Paris (France), are explored. Findings The case projects show that error and bias combine to best explain project (under) performance. Applying best practices or debiasing project cost and benefit estimates is insufficient to prevent cost blowouts and benefit shortfalls. The confrontation of the two overarching explanations is not merely platonic. It is real and may lead to a media and legal battle. Originality/value This viewpoint calls practitioners to transcend the error versus bias debate and reconcile two key characters in the world of major projects: the “overoptimistic” who hold a bias for hope and firmly believe that, despite error down the road, many projects would, in the end, “stumble into success” as creativity may come to the rescue; and the “overpessimistic” who hold a bias for despair and think many projects should not have been started.

Dans l'ensemble, la gestion de projet souscrit à une perspective rationnelle et objective selon laquelle l’organisation est relativement libre de tensions politiques, psychosociales, et culturelles. Si ces hypothèses semblent être adéquates dans le cadre de la gestion quotidienne et routinière de l'organisation, elles peuvent être irréalistes et mêmes trompeuses dans le contexte de projets où les enjeux sont multiples et complexes et dans lesquels des individus et des organisations provenant de disciplines et d'horizons très divers sont appelés à travailler ensemble. En sortant ainsi des sentiers battus, cet article fait ressortir certaines insuffisances de l’approche rationnelle qui domine en gestion de projet et propose une lecture plurielle à travers le prisme orthodoxe rationnel du mandat, le prisme politique du mandant et le prisme psychosocial du mandataire. Nous illustrons ces perspectives et leur apports distinctifs en examinant des faits saillants qui ont marqué les jeux olympiques d’hiver de Vancouver en 2010, un projet connu et de grande envergure. Il en ressort que la perspective rationnelle du mandat ne s’avère appropriée que lorsque les critères d’efficience prévalent ex ante dans les organisations parente et cliente. Par contre, le gestionnaire aura plutôt intérêt à prendre en considération la perspective politique axée sur les mandants, lorsque les organisations sont elles-mêmes très politisées et ont des attentes divergentes à l’égard du projet; et, finalement, une perspective psychosociale axée sur les mandataires, lorsque les membres qui participent au projet jouissent de beaucoup d’autonomie et peuvent exercer un certain pouvoir discrétionnaire, sans craintes de représailles. In the main, project management subscribes to a rational and objective view of the organization, relatively free of political, psychosocial and cultural tensions. While these assumptions may be adequate for the day-to- day routine management of the organization, they may be unrealistic and misleading in the context of projects where the stakes are numerous and complex, and in which individuals and organizations from various disciplines and backgrounds are thrust together. On these unchartered paths, some of the shortcomings of the rational approach that prevails in project management come to light, as this paper takes successive outlooks on the project, viewed through the traditional prism of the rational mandate, the political prism of the principals and, finally, through the socio- psychological prism of the agents. We illustrate these three perspectives and their distinctive contributions by revisiting some controversial events that marred the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, a large and well- known project. What emerges is that a rational mandate perspective is appropriate when the criterion of efficiency prevails in both the parent and the client organizations. However, the project manager would be better served to take into consideration the political perspective —based on the principals— when the parent organizations are themselves highly politicized and have differing expectations regarding the project; and finally, a psychosocial perspective —based on the agents— should be undertaken when members participating in the project enjoy a great deal of autonomy and can exercise some discretionary power, without fear of reprisal.

En gestion de projet, le dépassement des délais ou des coûts est fréquent. Le contrôle de projet ou la mesure de la performance s’avère important. À cet égard, l’outil de mesure de performance disponible est la valeur acquise, laquelle repose sur une planification de base PERT / CPM. Dans un travail récent, Ika (2004), après avoir relevé un certain nombre d’erreurs pouvant être considérées dans la détermination de la valeur acquise, a proposé une méthode pour analyser la valeur acquise dans un contexte d’interdépendance des chemins, dans les conditions d’une distribution bêta de la durée des activités, d’un PERT avec deux estimations et de la méthode stochastique PNET (Probabilistic network evaluation technique). Dans cet article, nous présentons, à l’aide d’un traitement numérique, une procédure rigoureuse pour déterminer la distribution du nombre d’activités complétées sur un chemin ou sur le projet dans son ensemble à un temps t et établir un intervalle de confiance autour de la valeur acquise.