Meaning and action in a multi-project environment. Understanding a multi-project environment by means of metaphors and basic assumptions

Abstract The “management by projects” strategy chosen by many companies to organize their product development function brings in a need for focusing on multi-project issues. The project management literature on multi-project management put strong emphasis on certain aspects (planning, scheduling and control), because the perception of the multi-project environment in the literature is based on certain assumptions (stability, predictability, a top-down decision process etc.). This article will question these assumptions due to research done in the product development function of two Danish companies. Here the top managers tried to adapt to highly changing conditions and quite often it led to changed focus points and project priorities. The project managers did not wait for top-down orders (as implicitly assumed by most of the multi-project theory). Instead they carried out actions themselves to attract resources and attention for their own projects. The relation between the projects could often be characterized by competition leading to suboptimization and an insufficient level of knowledge exchange. Some of the mentioned observations can be referred to as unintended consequences of a management by projects strategy. In order to change unwanted action patterns in the companies it is important to get to know which perceptions are the underlying assumptions for the actions taken. To shed light on that, a couple of metaphors in use in today's project management theory and in project management practice are introduced. Furthermore, the aim of the article is to call for more reflection on multi-project issues in turbulent environments.