European Management Journal Vol. 19, No. 1, pp.
92–100, 2001
Pergamon
PII: S0263-2373(00)00074-8
Beyond the Gantt Chart:
Project Management
Moving on
HARVEY MAYLOR, University of Bath
Large-scale engineering projects have traditionally
dominated the subject of project management.
Today, however, project management has become a
core business process for most organisations. This
paper argues that the academic subject and many
of the practices have lagged behind this change.
Particular problems are identified with the role of
strategy and planning, the units of assessment, the
planning process itself and the body of knowledge
of the subject. An alternative view of project man-
agement is proposed based on an integrative model
and areas for further development are identified.
 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Keywords: Project management, Gantt charts, Strat-
egy, Operations management
Introduction
During a recent study of new product development
practices in a wide range of firms, one of the issues
addressed was ‘Tell me how you manage projects.’
Many responses were to the effect of ‘If you mean,
“do we have a Gantt Chart for every project?” The
answer is no.’ It wasn’t what was meant, but the fact
that so many, both during this study and during the
many executive development courses I have taught,
viewed the Gantt Chart as representing ‘project man-
agement’ is indicative of a very limited approach to
the subject. The Gantt Chart alone is a blunt instru-
ment. In this paper, the traditional view of projects
will be compared with a new view — termed the
Beyond the Gantt Chart approach. This is a hybrid
approach, which combines best practices from prac-
titioners with leading-edge management theory, with
the objective of defining a way forward for the sub-
ject and the practice of project management.
Specifically, this paper reviews the current state and
potential future directions of project management
92
 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0263-2373/01 $20.00
and associated research activities. Projects are econ-
omically important, both as direct value-earners and
as means of carrying out organisational change.
Indeed, a shift in value-adding activity from repeti-
tive to project-based organisations has been noted
(Kerzner, 1998; Peters, 1999). In addition, the skill-
set of the project manager is very much in demand
(Fortune, 10/7/95, pp. 121–122).
It will be demonstrated that this economic impor-
tance has not been reflected in the level of importance
given to the subject area, both in academe and in
business. Currently, performance in business projects
is generally perceived to be poor (Atkinson, 1999). At
the same time, the subject appears to have failed to
capture the imagination of academics in the way that
knowledge management, for instance, has done. This
lack of wide-scale attention has resulted in the situ-
ation today where there is considerable potential for
the subject area to be developed, from both an aca-
demic and a practitioner perspective. This paper will
identify the areas where this potential exists and sug-
gests specific issues that could move the subject for-
ward. Such change has successfully taken place in
repetitive operations (both in theory and practice)
over the past twenty years; a key question is whether
this development can also occur in the project arena.
It will certainly require a fundamental re-think of the
nature of projects and the role of management in the
project environment, and how this differs from the
approach that has been used since the 1950s.
We conclude that many relevant issues are given
very limited treatment under the traditional
approach to project management and that this does
not fit with the context in which project managers
(regardless of whether they have that title) operate
today in many industries, not least those of the ‘new
economy.’ In particular, the need to make the subject
area a more inclusive discipline is argued. This paper
closes with a set of recommendations for exploration
to develop their application within this approach.
European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001
 BEYOND THE GANTT CHART: PROJECT MANAGEMENT MOVING ON
Is There a Problem?
Whether there is a need for a new approach depends
on establishing that there is indeed a problem with
the existing approach. The existing or traditional
approach is based on the computational planning
and control models originating in large projects from
the 1950s onwards, and used extensively by many
traditional project industries, predominantly contrac-
tors to the aerospace, defence and large construction
(Kerzner, 1998). The models are highly deterministic
and based on techniques — notably PERT. Whilst
these models have been refined significantly over the
years, they are not considered useful by a large num-
ber of world-class organisations. For example, con-
sider the approach taken by the Japanese automotive
firms in their new product development projects and
these methods and approaches are nowhere to be
seen (e.g. Clark and Fujimoto, 1991). Whilst whole-
sale adoption of Japanese working practices is not
being advocated here, the methods of Toyota (Sobek
et al., 1998) in developing new vehicles in half the
time of their western counterparts, are surely worthy
of study, particularly when they are so different from
more traditional project management. Given that
many of the current business needs more closely
resemble those of Toyota, operating in saturated,
hyper-competitive fast-moving global markets rather
than that of the cost-plus defence contractors of yore,
it is only appropriate that project management be re-
considered. Firms such as Hewlett Packard and
Motorola have done so with their practices making
the traditional approach look anachronistic. Clearly,
practice has moved ahead of the body of knowledge
in many respects.
In addition to the project context having radically
changed, there is even some doubt as to whether the
traditional methods are effective in many sectors.
Collins and Bicknell (1997) showed that problems
with IT projects were perennial. In the construction
sector, various reports have highlighted systemic
problems with the methods of management in the
industry (Egan, 1998). Indeed, one interviewee dur-
ing this work commented that, ‘The only way we hit
targets is if we continuously “adjust” the baseline.’
Shoot first and whatever you hit, call it the target.
Given that project managers usually have an input
to the original baselines, how these were constructed
is surely a topic for investigation.
There are clearly problems with the traditional
approach. The next question is whether other areas
may provide ideas for improvement.
Are Other Areas Doing Better?
Many repetitive operations have improved their per-
formance significantly over the past 20 years. In parts
of the automotive supply, electronics and retail sec-
tors, it is now common for deliveries to be demanded
European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001
within a very limited time period, at a cost that
decreases year by year, and with a level of quality
that is expressed in Parts Per Million (PPM). Twenty
years ago, deliveries were infrequent and often late,
cost escalation was normal and quality levels were
expressed in terms of % defective (or Acceptable
Quality Levels — AQL). This change in operations
practices and performance has been reflected in the
literature. Starr’s operations text (Starr, 1972) ignores
strategy, in favour of Operations Research (OR) with
manpower management covered in reference to work
study alone, and a heavy reliance on numerical
methods. In modern texts, operations strategy is a
key driver of the text and the role of OR has been
significantly reduced.
On the other hand, the chapters on project manage-
ment have changed little over this 20-year period.
Unlike operations’ rapid improvement, the problems
of projects seem to be repetitive. ‘War stories’ of pro-
jects that have run over time, over budget or both are
commonplace in the press. This apparent lag behind
operations as a whole is considered further in the
next section.
The Key Issues
Role of Strategy
Buttrick’s (Buttrick, 2000) analysis of project failure
shows that the lack of a clear strategy is a root cause
of failure. I would go further and say that more than
80 per cent of all problems at the project level are
caused by failures at a board level in firms to provide
clear policy and priorities. This is consistent with
Deming’s observation about product defects — that
the vast majority are caused by ‘the system’ rather
than by individual failure. The result of this at the
project level is conflict and confusion and ongoing
tension over resources — particularly where they
have to be shared with other projects. The traditional
approach to project management provides little help
in this respect, putting the project manager in a
firmly reactive position, with the causes of project
failure already built into the project because of
these conflicts.
Many firms believe that it is vital to provide focus
to the project resources through the prioritisation of
project resources and an aggregate project plan
(Wheelwright and Clark, 1992; Maylor, 1999). It
would appear that as Wickham Skinner showed in
manufacturing (Skinner, 1969), an organisation
which attempts a limited number of projects at any
one time is more likely to be successful than one that
attempts many (due to the effects of queuing and bad
multi-tasking — Goldratt, 1997). As with the devel-
opment of manufacturing strategy (production man-
agement re-invented as a strategic competence), the
same potential exists in project management. Cru-
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BEYOND THE GANTT CHART: PROJECT MANAGEMENT MOVING ON
Figure 1 Approaches to Strategy
cially, the business imperative now exists in sufficient
areas of business to warrant such development. The
comparison of the traditional and the BTGC
approach are shown in Figure 1.
As shown in Figure 1, the two approaches are sig-
nificantly different. Using a traditional approach, it
is often found that rather than aiming to create com-
petitive advantage through projects, project man-
agers are forced into the mode of trying to ‘minimise
the negative potential’ of projects (Hayes and Wheel-
wright, 1984).
Units of Assessment
In the literature on the traditional approach to project
management, it is striking that all of the project sys-
tems are geared towards assuring conformance to
budget, scope and time constraints. Higher level con-
siderations such as the need for excellence, continu-
ous improvement and achieving customer delight are
apparently outside the scope of the project manager.
This is a major weakness and one that is similar to
the manufacturing management approaches to qual-
ity management of the 1960s, where the emphasis
was on quality control and conformance to
standard/specification. The quality revolution in the
1980s and 1990s completely changed the agenda in
manufacturing, but this paradigm shift seems to have
passed project management by in both the literature
and many instances of practice. Whilst project man-
agers are judged by measures of conformance, the
modern project requires real performance. The follow-
ing discussion suggests further reasons for the cur-
rent state and the gap between repetitive operations
and project practices in this respect. Table 1 summar-
ises the comparison between conformance and per-
Table 1 Conformance and Performance Measures of Project Success
Time
Conformance As planned
Performance As short as possible
94
formance measures in the basic project success cri-
teria of time, cost and quality.
Manufacturing or Service Paradigms
The manufacturing approach to quality championed
conformance to specification as the metric for suc-
cess. This relied on quality being definable through
a precisely measurable set of characteristics. Whilst
this may work well for large-scale engineering pro-
jects, the modern project environment requires a
much higher degree of customer orientation, con-
sidering management of both perceptions and expec-
tations. Furthermore, many modern projects do not
have tangible outputs. Rather than applying product-
based measures of quality in such instances, service-
based definitions and derived measures are far more
appropriate. The contrast between the two is illus-
trated in Table 2.
Focus of Project Management Activities
Tatikonda and Rosenthal (1999) note that ‘Although
there is a substantial Operations Management [sic]
literature on the topic of project management the pro-
ject execution phase has received little attention in
this literature.’ Indeed, most texts implicitly suggest
that planning and systems are everything, and that
if plans and systems are put in place using the right
procedures, then the project will succeed. As this
literature appears to have been relatively stable over
the past 20 years, an opportunity therefore also exists
for a greater discussion of the role of managers in the
execution of projects. Further consideration suggests
another difference between the traditional approach
and current practices, concerning the nature of the
Cost Quality
As budgeted As specified
As cheaply as possible Maximising customer delight
European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001
 BEYOND THE GANTT CHART: PROJECT MANAGEMENT MOVING ON
Table 2 Manufacturing and Service Approaches to Quality
Manufacturing
Definition Product-based — a precise and measurable set of
characteristics
Attributes Performance, conformance, features, reliability,
durability, serviceability, perceived quality and
aesthetics (Garvin, 1984)
planning process, both the nature of the activity and
the tools and techniques.
The Planning Process
Scheduling and inventory control were key issues in
the operations management texts of the 1970s and
1980s, necessitating a grasp of an ever-expanding
array of numerical methods. Just-In-Time — and to
a certain extent the Theory Of Constraints (TOC) —
changed the underlying problem that these numeri-
cal methods had set out to solve. In project manage-
ment, the traditional approach is focused primarily
on detailed network scheduling approaches for pro-
ject planning (Tatikonda and Rosenthal, 1999), which
require increasingly complex tools and techniques to
optimise. Quite how effective these techniques are is
debatable given the number of high-profile failures
where they have been used extensively. Recent devel-
opments in the literature (specifically Goldratt, 1997)
may change the nature of the scheduling problem in
the same manner as occurred with production plan-
ning.
As previously discussed, project over-runs are con-
sidered the norm in many areas of commercial
activity. Given the level of failure in projects where
the classical techniques — particularly PERT — have
been used, it is time to call them into question. Rand
(2000, p. 175) speaks heresy in traditional terms by
asking:
Why should there be need for other methods for Project
Management to replace or maybe enhance CPM/PERT?
Self-evidently, CPM/PERT frequently does not work.
Goldratt (1997) questions our very understanding of
the problem of project scheduling, rejecting tra-
ditional methods of project scheduling on the basis
that:
1. There is too much uncertainty in plans — plans
require (and indeed infer) a high degree of cer-
tainty in time estimates to be representative mod-
els. He contends that whilst it may be possible in
the short-term to consider likely scenarios, longer
term there are stronger factors coming into play —
specifically uncertainty, which has to be managed
as you progress (requiring flexibility) rather than
pre-determined actions;
European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001
Service
Based on stakeholders’ expectations and
perceptions
Access, communication, competence, courtesy,
credibility, reliability, responsiveness, security,
tangibles, understanding/knowing the customer
(Parasuraman et al., 1985)
2. The nature of the distributions used for planning
are inherently flawed for two reasons: firstly
whilst delays will accumulate, any benefits from
an early finish in activities are rarely passed on;
secondly, estimates are often sandbagged or
include large amounts of slack time built in by
individuals to protect themselves resulting in local
time buffers, which do not benefit the project over-
all;
Goldratt’s solution is sufficiently different from pre-
vious approaches to warrant some further attention,
and uses the same logical basis — the Theory Of Con-
straints (TOC) that has been successfully applied in
manufacturing. References to applications are cur-
rently limited (Barber et al., 1999; Newbold, 1999;
Leach, 1999; Maylor, 2000), but as applications
increase and software support improves
(e.g.www.ProChain.com) this solution is likely to be
more widely used and be open to further evaluation.
Whilst there are clearly problems to be resolved here,
further evaluation of the tools and techniques used
by project managers is timely. The Gantt Chart is
probably the most widely-used of these. Whilst com-
puter-generated graphics and colour print-outs have
given Henry Gantt’s production planning bar chart
a perceived new lease of life by imbuing a sense of
certainty and they have retained their credibility
despite contrary evidence, particular problems arise
here. Firstly, the Gantt Chart is a useful tool for the
presentation of time information concerning plans.
This can be a presentation of predictions of future
timings or graphical representation of past achieve-
ments and disasters. It does not cover the reason why
such planning is carried out — to enable modelling
and analysis of project systems. Secondly, it encour-
ages a one-step approach to planning. As a result of
the presentation capabilities of modern planning
packages, the visual quality of colour charts means
that they gain an implicit credibility. This can result
in staff being unwilling to challenge the charts, and
so they gain a momentum all of their own. Thirdly,
they encourage the project manager to over-control
the project rather than devolve the responsibility for
the time-plan to team members. With the increasing
power and availability of the PC, and increased func-
tionality and interfaceability of the software, there is
the tendency for the project manager to become not
just ‘keeper of the charts’ but also computer operator.
This will often occur in a vain attempt to keep the
95
BEYOND THE GANTT CHART: PROJECT MANAGEMENT MOVING ON
computer version of the project plan up to date.
Many consider the predominance of planning
software not to be as helpful to the profession as the
vendors of such systems would have us believe.
Indeed as the projects director of a large construction
company recently commented, ‘I believe that com-
puter-based project management software has set the
subject back 20 years.’
Many truly excellent organisations do not use the
PERT approach to planning projects. One of Hewlett
Packard’s UK plants uses whiteboards and Post-It
notes for project planning at the top level with indi-
vidual sub-project managers free to use computerised
planning software at the task level. This approach is
an adaptation of the principle so well demonstrated
by Japanese manufacturers in planning and schedul-
ing — that of ensuring visibility. To assist in moving
towards more visual methods of planning, there are
may tools and techniques available to the project
manager. Deployment flow charts are just one such
example, which allow whole processes to be mapped
simply (Maylor, 1999; www.teamflow.com). These
are fundamentally different from the ubiquitous
Gantt Chart — and are used for bringing the subject
of project management to the boardroom, by provid-
ing better descriptions of project-based business pro-
cesses. In addition, they facilitate communications
and analysis appropriate at this level.
Definition of Project and Project Management
A project is often simply defined as ‘a one-off
activity.’ This definition was applicable for large
engineering projects taking carried out over long per-
iods of time, but for today’s environment, causes
some problems of its own. Firstly, it infers a degree
of novelty that is often mis-placed. Today, project
management is concerned with a much wider range
of durations and levels of complexity. Secondly, it
discourages the role of consideration of projects as a
business process, focusing instead on the technical or
physical aspects of the work involved. Projects today
are a core business process for most organisations.
The traditional view may still be current for some
sectors, but it is argued that the business process
view is superior. For example, during discussion of
the role of the Deming Cycle (plan – do – check – act)
as applied to project management, managers from a
construction firm commented that ‘…our projects are
unique, there is no role for review.’ Further investi-
gation showed that the same mistakes were made
over and over again in projects. This was predictable;
like hedgehogs squashed on the road, the lack of
evolutionary feedback in this system means mistakes
will be repeated. Discussions with managers from a
very different firm showed that most projects started
with the consideration of the documented reviews
from previous similar projects. The need to improve
the process was paramount. This was reflected in lev-
96
els of success comparable with the best in the world
today. The difference between the two cases shows
the benefits of treating projects as a business process,
that can be improved and the learning managed from
each time the project is run.
Treating a project as a process, in the traditional oper-
ations sense of a conversion process, leads to a search
for similarities rather than differences between pro-
cesses. The underlying conversion process, and there-
fore the task for management, has strong similarities
across many industries and many types of project
activities. Firstly, at the individual task level, it is
likely that there is little novelty. Indeed it is likely
that there are many repetitive operations being con-
ducted. Whether this is designing a new product or
implementing an IT system, there are elements that
are common to many activities. The conventional
approaches of operations management to the design,
analysis and improvement of these processes are
indeed highly useful rather than inappropriate, as the
conventional definition would have us believe.
When the definition of the project is focused on the
physical product, two other characteristics generally
accompany it. The first concerns the view of what
constitutes ‘project management.’ The second con-
cerns the role of the project manager. On the first
issue there has been much debate, though this
appears to have missed the central point concerning
organisational needs of project managers. Turner
(1999) considers the need for project management to
distinguish itself from general management for fear
of losing its identity. The problem with this approach
is that it is not backed by any level of professional
uniqueness, rather than a jealous guarding of the
‘tools of the trade.’ Given the (lack of) success of
these tools, as discussed in previous sections, there
is surely room for a different approach. This comes
when one considers the role of project managers in
modern organisations. It is much wider than the con-
ventional consideration of the subject leads us to
believe. For example, Tatikonda and Rosenthal (1999)
show project management as involving a large num-
ber of disciplines and draw upon the literature of
organisational theory in particular to expand the dis-
cussion of issues faced by project managers.
I suggest that this is a more generally applicable
model and one that has been ignored for too long. A
project can be redefined as a finite activity, which is
a point of convergence for business functions, theor-
etical disciplines and all parts of the value-stream.
Projects differ from repetitive operations in that they
are more likely to involve inputs from other functions
and this is a key to broadening the subject base.
Maintaining project management as a specialism that
ignores this unique requirement to integrate knowl-
edge and resources will keep the subject irrelevant to
both aspiring and high-performing organisations.
The consideration of the role will be continued here,
and the integration of academic disciplines discussed
in the following section.
European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001
 BEYOND THE GANTT CHART: PROJECT MANAGEMENT MOVING ON
Gray and Larson (2000), p. 13) contrast an integrated
approach with that of the piecemeal approach to pro-
jects. ‘Piecemeal systems fail to tie projects to the
overall strategies of the firm. Piecemeal project pri-
ority systems fail to prioritise project selection to
resources and those projects that contribute most to
the strategic plan. Piecemeal tools and techniques fail
to be integrated throughout the project life cycle.
Piecemeal approaches fail to balance the application
of project planning and control methods with appro-
priate adjustments in the organisation’s culture to
support project endeavours.’ They might usefully
have added many more issues that are the victims of
piecemeal approach to project management — more
are covered in the following section.
Evidence as to why there is such a piecemeal
approach to project management must consider the
element of management training and education. Dur-
ing a recent study of new product development man-
agers, of 43 interviewed, none of them had had any
training in the area of project management. It was
clear that people were given projects to manage
(generally a cross-functional task) as a reward for
good functional performance. It was not generally
recognised that the skill-set of a manager was any-
thing other than that learned by experience. Given
that the issue of ‘learning from experience’ has
already been shown to be a weakness of the current
approach, this is hardly a good basis for either indi-
viduals or organisations to be progressing from. The
promotional issue has been noted previously, though
appears not to have been resolved. It has resulted in
many calling project management the accidental pro-
fession (Kerzner, 1998).
Together with an apparent lack of training of project
managers, it was recently reported that project man-
agement was an option on only two of the top 11
European MBA programmes (Goffin, 1998). As a core
value-adding activity this seems out of step with the
needs of practitioners and students, most of whom
are/will be involved, if not full-time, then at least for
part of their time, in project activities. Consideration
of this particular problem shows that this could be
due to a number of factors. Firstly, unlike operations
management, the subject is still dominated by
numerical ‘skill’ issues. Secondly, with the current
literature available on project management, the litera-
ture is not sufficiently strategically relevant to
encourage high-level debate.
Project Management as an Integrative Academic
Discipline
Turner (1999, p. 329) notes that ‘Project management
lacks a strong theoretical base. Yes, there is an exten-
sive body of knowledge, including many familiar
tools and techniques. However the Project Manage-
ment Body of Knowledge [sic] is not based on a series
of premises from which a strong, consistent theory is
European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001
derived, but more on conjecture. The Body of Knowl-
edge is based more on empirical evidence than cer-
tain knowledge.’ If project management does indeed
lack a strong theoretical base it is perhaps because it
has been trying to establish its own domain within
the management arena, but with little success. All the
well-developed theories of management are within
one or more specialisms that have many years of
dedicated research and development behind them.
The academic discipline of project management has
so far missed the very point of its existence. It should
not strive to become a specialism that develops its
own grand theories (those concerning planning have
already been questioned in this paper), but to echo
the role that project managers take in practice and be
the integrators of knowledge and theory from all the
other disciplines. So what are the grand theories of
integration and what are the great and the good in
project management doing to promote them?
Specifically — the academic discipline of project
management should be aiming to be the point where
all the relevant knowledge is brought to bear on the
problems being faced. This is completely consistent
with the nature of project management of being
‘where the rubber hits the road.’ Table 3 shows
examples of these areas of contact with project man-
agement and some of the issues that are pertinent to
the subject. This also shows that there is a significant
body of theory to be drawn on for our purposes and
it is not necessary to re-invent that particular wheel,
but focus on the task of making project management
the point of integration. Whilst this is achieved to a
limited extent in the project management bodies of
knowledge cited in the following section, there is sig-
nificant potential for these interfaces to be developed
and greater integration of the work of these special-
ists to take place.
Other areas that have significant bodies of knowl-
edge that are highly pertinent include quality man-
agement, information management (not just IT), per-
formance measurement, organisational change,
knowledge management, management science
(though this has already been extensively used) and
operations management.
Within the project management arena there are a
number of formalised ‘bodies of knowledge’ which
are relevant to this discussion. These are reviewed in
Turner (2000) and include those of the International
Project Management Association (Caupin et al., 1999),
the Project Management Institute (Duncan, 1996) and
the Association for Project Management (Dixon,
2000). Firms from the ‘traditional projects’ sector
heavily influence these documents and these formal-
ised bodies of knowledge contrast markedly with the
live, rapidly moving but often tacit bodies of knowl-
edge that exist in many high-performing firms. With
the change in the nature of project management to
encompass a wider range of activities comes the need
to re-invent the bodies of knowledge. In particular,
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BEYOND THE GANTT CHART: PROJECT MANAGEMENT MOVING ON

Table 3 Issues for Integration

Area Relevant issues

Strategy
Human resources
Organisational behaviour
Marketing
Supply-chain management
Financial management
Role of strategy in projects and projects in strategy; policy deployment; aggregate planning;
policy and focus; creating competencies and competitive advantage; leveraging knowledge
and capability.
Selecting, managing and leading teams; motivation; empowerment; pay and control systems;
skills development; job design.
Work structures and systems; communications; systems of authority, responsibility and
resource allocation.
Customer and stakeholder needs analysis; expectations management; ongoing provision of
cues; management of marketing communications; post-project perceptions management.
The integration of suppliers and customers into project teams; establishing long-term
relationships and developing networks of organisations (see following section).
Systems for evaluation; systems for planning cost, credit and budgetary control; financial risk
evaluation; auditing systems.

there is an opportunity to make application contin-
gent on the type of project being undertaken.
Conclusions
different approach to strategy, assessment, planning
and the subject of project management itself have
solved many of these problems. These solutions have
been synthesised into the Beyond the Gantt Chart
approach. The comparisons between this approach
and the traditional are summarised in Table 4.

Projects represent an economically important set of

activities. In developing the argument for a forward
move in the subject area, some underlying problems
are identified with the universality of the traditional
approach. High-performing firms, taking a radically
Areas for Further Research
If this approach is to be itself developed further,
work involving practitioners and academics should
be carried out under the following headings:

Table 4 Summary of Beyond the Gantt Chart Issues

Traditional approach BTGC approach

Role of strategy
Unit of assessment
Prevailing paradigm
Focus of project management
activities
The planning process
View of project and project
management
Role of academic subject
Projects are reactive
Conformance to plan/schedule
Manufacturing — quality is a
definable and measurable set of
characteristics
Planning
Employs predominantly tactical
tools — typically CPA/PERT/Gantt
Project is unique activity and project Project is a core business process which draws on
management can only draw from
things directly concerned with
project management
Subject defined by formalised bodies Subject is a live and rapidly moving body of
of knowledge, heavily reliant on
generic standards which assure
conformance; driven by traditional
project-based industries — in
particular heavy engineering,
defence, construction
Projects contribute to and form part of organisational
strategy
Performance/excellence; project success measured by
appropriate process and outcome measures
Service — quality is based on exceeding stakeholders’
expectations
All activities from planning through to post project
review and marketing of project performance
Whole range of tools and approaches applied as and
when needed at strategic, systems and tactical levels
similar processes for experience; project contains
many elements of repetitive work. The project is a
convergence point for theoretical disciplines, business
functions and all parts of the project value-stream.
Project management is an integrative discipline
knowledge updated by experience and regular testing;
regular trials of ideas from other sectors; recognition of
content through achievement; driven by cross-sectoral
practices, generating new ideas and adding to the
knowledge base on the application of existing ideas.
Academic input focuses on providing methods for
integrating the necessary knowledge into projects from
strategy, HRM, OB, marketing, SCM, operations and
finance.

98 European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001

 BEYOND THE GANTT CHART: PROJECT MANAGEMENT MOVING ON
1. Develop a set of normative models of practice and
performance in project management representing
current ‘best practice’ comparing this with the tra-
ditional models. This is necessary if there is major
change to be made to the current bodies of knowl-
edge, and to find in different business sectors, who
are the leaders. As was expressed by a colleague
of mine recently — ‘Every sector needs its Toyota’;
2. Better integrate project performance and business
drivers — notably the role of policy deployment in
business. Project performance management clearly
needs development in the light of the move from
conformance-based measures and the popularity
of approaches such as the balanced scorecard
(Kaplan and Norton, 1992);
3. Knowledge structuring — the knowledge-base at
present is too wide and poorly structured
resulting in confusion for practitioners. Benefit
would be gained from some attempt to structure
the knowledge available (e.g. on strategies,
theories, conflicts, what has worked and what has
not) and to represent projects in a more integrative
and contingent manner, rather than the stepwise
approach of current efforts;
4. Knowledge management — the implications for
project management need to be addressed as there
are many aspects of organisational learning where
project managers have a unique contribution to
make;
5. The role of TOC in projects — specifically an
evaluation of TOC and whether the benefits are
as widespread as claimed, or are more limited to
particular contexts;
6. Stakeholder management and stakeholder market-
ing — the role of project managers in managing
stakeholder expectations, perceptions and involve-
ment in the project process is poorly understood
and consequently ignored by many project man-
agers.
All of these are integrative areas, drawing further on
the bodies of knowledge of established subjects and
combining them with the needs of the various project
management environments. The role of the project
management academic is in this integration process.
However, a critical approach to these developments
is required. Promoting panacea after panacea will
neither grow credibility for the academic subject nor
improve the practitioner processes it purports to sup-
port. Both the current and future issues deserve seri-
ous consideration and the potential for this consider-
ation to yield significant benefits is high. It is an
opportunity that must be taken.
Acknowledgements
Dr Kate Blackmon at the University of Bath School of Manage-
ment for her insightful comments on an earlier draft of this
paper.
European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001
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HARVEY MAYLOR,
School of Management,
University of Bath, Bath
BA2 7AY, UK. E-mail:
mnshm@manage-
ment.bath.ac.uk

Dr Harvey Maylor is
Lecturer in Operations
and Project Management
at the University of Bath
School of Management
and a Visiting Professor at Kasetsart University,
Bangkok, Thailand. Amongst his publications, Pro-
ject Management (Financial Times, 1999) is the
leading text in the area. He has worked with organis-
ations from both public and private sectors as a
trainer and consultant, and has received funding for
his work in project management and new product
development from industry, UK government and the
European Commission.

100 European Management Journal Vol 19 No 1 February 2001