Mastering Project Leadership : Insights from the Research

This is a collection of essays from key researchers in the field of project management who describe what they feel are the most impactful findings from research. In the challenging and competitive world of project management, project managers need all the insight they can get. Leading researchers share what they believe are the most important findings from the research being done today. These cover pressing topics confronting project managers, including hybrid methodologies, schedule overruns, schedule estimation, project efficiency, and managing local stakeholders. Highlights include the following:

• Jeff Pinto and Kate Davis explore the “Normalization of Deviance” (NoD) phenomenon within various organizational settings, focusing on projects. NoD involves the gradual acceptance of deviant practices, diverging from established norms, and often leading to detrimental outcomes.
• Francesco Di Maddaloni investigates how local communities’ stakeholders are perceived, identified, and categorized by project managers in major public infrastructure and construction projects (MPIC). His chapter helps project managers to have a better understanding of a more inclusive and holistic approach to engage with a broader range of stakeholders.
• Lavagnon Ika, Peter Love, and Jeff Pinto suggest that error and bias combine to exact a toll on major projects, offer theoretical insights, and outline practical recommendations for project managers.
• Jonas Söderlund offers managerial guidelines for leveraging deadlines as powerful tools for generating project success.
• Pedro M. Serrador looks at empirical studies that link planning quality to project success, emphasizing its importance. He also discusses the downsides of excessive planning, particularly in dynamic environments and research and development projects.

Pedro M. Serrador, MBA, PhD, P.Eng., PMP, ITIL, PMI-ACP is a writer and researcher on Agile, AI and management topics. He is an adjunct professor at the Northeastern University, Boston and University of Toronto, Canada.

He is also the owner of Serrador Project Management, a consultancy in Toronto, Canada. He specializes in technically complex and high risk programs and projects, vendor management engagements, and tailoring and implementing project management methodologies; he has worked on projects in the financial, telecommunications, utility, medical imaging, and simulations sectors for some of the world’s largest companies.

He is an author of books and articles on project management and is also a regular speaker at conferences. He was the recipient of the PMI 2012 James R. Snyder International Student Paper of the Year Award, the Major de Promotion Award for best PhD Thesis 2012-2013 from SKEMA business school and the 2022 Most cited paper of the year award from Project Management Journal.

He holds a Hons. BSc in Physics and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada; an MBA from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland; and a PhD in Strategy, Programme & Project Management from SKEMA Business School (Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Lille, France).