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TopMotivation For The Study
Projects may be regarded as either examples of ‘a set of unified activities to create a predefined outcome’ or ‘a scene of war’ where conflicts are an essential part of the picture. Neither of these alternatives holds the full truth, but both have important elements which should be borne in mind when trying to understand how projects evolve. In this article we will look closer into how conflicts led to two case study projects achieving success or failure to a greater or lesser extent. Conflicts are not necessarily antagonistic, but many project decisions may easily be seen as a matter of someone winning and someone losing. Differences in interests are often quite obvious, with the outcome that some will gain and some will lose. To give a general example, the ‘iron triangle’ of time, cost, and quality which rules most projects (Atkinson, 1999) renders it necessary to make choices and compromise between the three aspects. The divergences between project stakeholders need not be antagonistic, however, and quite frequently what are regarded as opportunities for one stakeholder may prove to be disadvantages or even threats to another stakeholder. This study focuses on risk management of benefits or delivered functionality from the projects, and not of project costs or time scheduling. In particular, we examine how internal and external stakeholders influenced the studied projects, whether they increased or reduced the uncertainty as to the functionality delivered, and also how the projects and the base organization interacted. By base organization, we here mean the larger, permanent organization that the project will eventually be delivered to, i.e., the larger project owner organization. In this case, the base organization was Jernbaneverket (JBV), the Norwegian Rail Authority.
We selected two projects in a setting where the stakeholders are many and different, and where demands to the projects repeatedly changed quite substantially. Furthermore, we selected projects which had quite recently been finished, thereby affording fairly good and easy access to information from projects and stakeholders. We selected two railway projects close to the Norwegian capital, Oslo. In the same surroundings a few years earlier, a major railway project – intended to establish a high speed rail link to the capital’s newly built main airport – had experienced serious setbacks, resulting in large delays and budget overruns (Smedstad, 1997; NOU, 1999). This is an important part of the backdrop to the project setting.
To explore the size effects on the phenomena studied, one large and one small project were chosen. To focus the study, the following set of research questions was addressed:
Q1: How does the prioritization between the project’s functional deliveries versus its costs and time schedule influence the interaction between stakeholders and project management?
Q2: What is the influence on risk management from conflicts between stakeholders?