Developing a Project Management Framework for a Case Company

Abstract

Projects are present in today’s working life across all industries and levels of organizations’ hierarchies. Projects are undertaken in contexts from low to high complexity and with different requirements in order to create value for the customers of the projects. Different approaches for managing projects are available, from principle-based and informal all the way to formal and process-based approaches. Despite the differences in context and projects, the newest literature prioritizes tailoring the project management approach to fit the needs of the project undertaken and the organization conducting the work. This thesis studies the current state of the management of internal projects in the case company through a quantitative questionnaire focusing on proposing actions on the discovered challenges and reviewing the experienced strengths. The goal of the development work is to create a system-level framework to conceptualize the interactions of components of the project management framework and give implementable solutions to the challenges discovered. The results of the thesis suggest that although aspects of organizational alignment and value creation are clearly linked to the projects in question, challenges in specific parts of project management practices and processes are still present. The developed solution is an excel-spreadsheet based project management framework-template created with resources from the Project management body of knowledge and the SFS-ISO standard 21502 and other related literature.