External and internal flexibility – aligning projects with the business strategy and executing projects efficiently

Nils O.E. Olsson

International Journal of Project Organisation and Management, 2008, vol. 1, issue 1, 47-64

Abstract: Flexibility represents a challenge in project management. For an increased understanding of project flexibility, a distinction between internal and external project flexibility is proposed. Internal project flexibility relates to flexibility within a defined scope – how requirements are to be met. External project flexibility refers to the adjustments in the project scope – what requirements are to be met. An external flexibility perspective builds upon a growing interest in the project owner perspective, highlighting the continuous alignment of projects with the business strategy. An internal flexibility perspective draws on the emerging approaches for project efficiency. This paper elaborates on these two different perspectives on flexibility in project management. A combination of qualitative and quantitative information has been used. Two main sets of data have been used, including frontend assessments of governmental investments and the analysis of a number of private and public projects.

Keywords: project flexibility; changes; cost; front-end management; project context; stakeholders; governance; business strategy; strategy alignment; project management; government investment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=20028 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijpoma:v:1:y:2008:i:1:p:47-64

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Project Organisation and Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().