Introduction
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Summary
Projects tend to have a complicated life (or “behavior”) of their own with plenty of out-turns, going off track, and, in the end, targets set may be realized anywhere but on target, from near misses to near hits. Therefore, the project behavior phenomenon abounds in project management theory and practice. However, while scholars see the need to understand project challenges within the context of project behavior, they fail to follow the trail to its defining principles. Against this backdrop, this handbook focuses on the observance of the project behavior phenomenon in which there are systematic deviations between project initiation and execution. This introductory chapter explains what project behavior is and why it matters for project management scholars and practitioners alike. It reviews the key principles of project behavior and how they each connect to project complexity, risk, uncertainty, and performance, from both a scholarly and practical standpoint. It provides not only a historical context for the different theories of project behavior but a typology. As well, it offers a summary of the chapters in the handbook and discusses how they advance project behavior theory and practice.
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- Cambridge Handbook of Project Behavior , pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
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