Project management practice is evolving. Beyond frameworks and templates, real insight comes from data, lived experience, and analysis of how work is actually delivered in organizations, and I’ve captured some of that in the research and surveys that I have done.
This section brings together original research, surveys, and structured insights related to project management. I’m not an academic, and you won’t find any prizes for research best practice on this page, but the surveys and analysis provide a lot of background information, context and color to the role of a project manager.
Rather than focusing on theoretical models alone, this research highlights what practitioners report, what organizations prioritize, and where gaps appear between guidance and real-world practice. Mostly, this research has informed my books.
Project management is often discussed in terms of methods and certifications. However, delivery success depends on how those ideas are applied in context.
Research provides:
Whether you are building a PMO, reviewing delivery maturity, or planning your own career move, research adds depth beyond anecdotal advice.
Use these insights to inform discussions with sponsors, strengthen strategy documents, or challenge assumptions about “best practice.” Project management does not exist in a vacuum. The more we understand how it operates across industries and roles, the better decisions we can make locally.
And if nothing else, it can make you feel like you’re not alone. Project managers all over the world struggle with the same things that you do.
Below you will find the full collection of articles that cover the surveys and topics I’ve looked at.
Laura Magahy is Managing Director of MCO Projects Ltd, which she established in 2000 together with a colleague. MCO is a project management, architecture and environmental engineering company, specialising in 4D planning, healthcare and sustainable development in the public and private sectors. She’s also the first woman in Ireland to hold the IPMA Level A…
Set your out of office email response if you’re out for a day or longer. Change your voicemail as well, especially if you’re at a crisis point in the project and you know people will be wanting to get hold of you. Know where your project team are, so that when people ask you have…
The construction of the new Scottish Parliament building is a good example of how things can go so wrong on a project. The innovative design was in its early stages when the procurement process started. Architects were bidding to deliver something within a specification of 20,740 m² and £50m. At this point, there were no…
Sometimes it is not the work that makes work difficult, nor the people. Today the challenge that made my day more difficult than usual was something much more mundane: the arrival of a new telephone. It came with a three-fold leaflet explaining how to do a multitude of things, except set up my voicemail. A…
Last week was all go, so I was glad to have last weekend in Villefranche-sur-Mer, looking at the houses set into the cliffs, making the most of a little bit of free time before the project kicked off. Launch week for any project is always busy, but it’s my favourite time. It’s the moment when…
This weekend I did something I’ve never done before. I dyed my hair. Call it a nearing-30 crisis, a moment of folly in Auchan, the inspiration of my sister’s perfect highlights… Anyway, armed with a box of little tubes, powders and liquids we set to work Saturday afternoon. I am generally quite risk-averse. I think…
The sales are on in Paris at the moment. The sales are government-controlled, so all shops have a sale at the same time and sales at any other moment are forbidden. On my way to the bus stop each morning I walk past 5 lingerie shops, full of plastic models with drawn-on stomach muscles and…
The web revamp project started at the beginning of June, and is being delivered in a relatively short period of time. “The site architecture and wireframe design are completed,” Seifer says. “The back end administration modules and front-end design are nearly complete. The site is on a development server, and will be launched within the next 30 days, along with the topic blogs.”
Why is it that some weeks make you feel like you’re drowning and in others you’re just driftwood in the sea of project management, bobbing along with not a care in the world? This week has been a drowning week. I have found myself with two miniscule projects to sort out, and the smaller the…
When Sophie Hopkins, 24, took on the role of project manager for the Fordhall Community Land Initiative, I have to hope she knew what she was letting herself in for. After working for months without a salary, she now gets paid from an EU grant but her days often don’t finish until long into the…
This post is late too. Sorry – it won’t become a regular habit, but here’s a warning for next Monday: as I’m getting the sleeper train back from Nice late Sunday night I doubt I’ll be in much of a state to post anything lucid after getting off the train and going straight to work….
After half an hour I was starting to notice that my fingers, wrapped around my block of ice glass, were no longer there.