“To ensure that Project Management is recognized and used as the best way to deliver

objectives in all sectors of industry, government and the wider community.”

community.” ….IPMA
Vision
Our Objective
The IPMA mission is to be a global integrator, promoter and creator of value space where
international R&D project teams can exchange their ideas, initiate and start-up international
R&D projects and provide a framework for researchers and R&D organizations for sharing and
disseminating knowledge. Veikko Valila
President, IPMA
In the next planning period IPMA RMB shall work on development of the IPMA Global Project
management Researchers’ Value Space and Collaboration Platform which will be followed by
introduction of several R&D products and services.

“Congratulations on our First issue of R&D Newsletter be published

I hope it will be the special publication to promote the IPMA R&D.
Thanks for your effort! ”

Prof. Qian Fupei

Vice president,
IPMA

Two years ago Research Management Board (RMB) was formed and recently the
composition of RMB has been reconstituted with Brane Semolic as the chairman and
members drawn from wide spectrum of project management domain representing
various member countries. I have pleasure in introducing the RMB team to you all.
First two years of activities have gone into formulating the policy guidelines for RMB under overall direction
and guidelines of IPMA and preparing an agenda for actions. The RMB action plan has been briefly covered
in an article by Brane Semolic himself incorporated in this inaugural issue.

One of the agenda items for RMB is to release Newsletter to keep the IMPA member association ,
researchers and PM practitioners informed about what is happening in project management research
globally.

Within a short period of its existence, RMB has been able to institute research awards which were given at
the last world congress at Krakow. We have covered the function in this newsletter particularly for the benefit
of those who could not attend the congress. The news letter also carries the announcement for the research
award to be given at the next congress. And this time we are expecting much wider participation from all
over the world.

RMB is particularly focused to support the research activities globally in frontier areas of project
management and therefore, we are actively interfacing with all leading research institutions, universities and
industries. We will cover research report in short in our future issues. We will also cover the development
relating to global, regional and country level academic forum.

I gratefully acknowledge the support and help that I have received from both Mr.Veikko Valila, President
IPMA and Prof. Qian Fupei , Vice President IPMA. Prof Fupei has taken keen interest and followed up for
the timely release of the first issue and I thank him for the same.

This is just a beginning for RMB and we solicit your support to make our vision a reality.
1
 Dr.Brane Semolic
Chairman
Research Management Board

Why Research and Development

The profession of project management has been developing since WW II and it reached recognition
as independent profession in the beginning of the 21st century. The R&D is the backbone of the
every profession. We cannot imagine successful profession without proper R&D support which
provide new concepts, models, systems, products and tools.

Researchers provide new knowledge, which need to be integrated with business processes for
general commercial gain. Diffusion of new knowledge helps organization to become competitive .

In this age of “knowledge economy” organization's need to develop ability of creating “Learning
Organization” to cope up with ever changing knowledge dimension. Organizations therefore need to
develop internal capability to create new knowledge and integrate it into its own working
environment. Organization learning is thus a permanent ongoing process. New knowledge can be
outsourced or can also be the result of an internal research activity.

In the ever changing business environment of 21st century, the project management has become
one of the most important elements of an organisation. Enhancing only the technological
capabilities is not enough to survive in the global competition. The companies need to develop their
organizational competences on a continual basis to remain ahead. Projects and project
management represent some of the most important competencies to be developed and nurtured.

The IPMA Research Management Board Role : Our Agenda

In line with this mission the IPMA Research Management Board (RMB) will provide products and
services as follow:
 IPMA Research Awards,
 IPMA R&D Centers of Excellence,
 IPMA Journal on Advances in PM Research,
 IPMA International Academic Network,
 IPMA Academic Events,
 IPMA Website - Researchers’ Collaboration Platform,
 Marketing of Research Activities and products and more.
RMB Meeting in progress
Beside this we are trying to establish a strategic collaboration link with the other similar international
research organizations as EARMA, EURAM etc.
2
 Martina Huemann The International Project Management Association (IPMA) made its first awards for
Member excellent project management research at its conference in Krakow, Poland. The
Research Management Board Awards aim to promote excellent research to enhance project management.

These IPMA annual awards are aimed to

recognize significant contributions to the body
of knowledge of project management.

Categories included Young Researcher and

Research Team and entries were judged by
an international Jury appointed by IPMA’s
Research Management Board.

IPMA Research Award Winners ,

Krakow, Poland -2007

Manfred Saynisch and his team were honoured for the

international, interdisciplinary research project: “Project Management
2nd ” which is part of the long term research programme “Beyond
Frontiers of Traditional Project Management”. The researchers
directed by Manfred Saynisch have analysed and evaluated new
perceptions in modern natural and social sciences such as,
Manfred Saynisch evolutionary and chaos theory, self-organization, synergetic, non-
Research Award traditional logic, brain-research, social systems theory, constructivist
epistemology and theory of complex systems to develop new
insights, concepts and initial recommendations for new perspectives
in Project Management.

Eva Füssinger, winner of the award in the Young Researcher

category. Her work was on project orientation in Austria aimed to
analyze and Benchmark project-oriented companies. The purpose
of the project is to assess the degree of project orientation of
Austrian companies so that strategies for the further development
could be planned. The research project was part of an extensive
Eva Füssinger international research programme conducted by the
Young Researcher Award Projektmanagement Group.
3
Special commendations for outstanding research contribution in the Young Researcher category were
made to Johanna Kirsilä and Daan Vermeer.

Johanna Kirsilä of Åbo Akademi University and PBI Research Institute for Project-Based Industry,
Finland was honoured for her project on “Integration as a project management concept”. The
research analyzed integration as a project management concept in industrial system deliveries.

Daan Vermeer, from Eindhoven’s University of Technology, Department of Architecture, Building and
Planning, was honoured for his project “The effectiveness of performance requirements in 'Building
Schools for the Future projects”. His work discussed a perceived lack of clarity by private sector
organizations over the definition of Best Value for Money and Long-term Partnerships in relation to
the performance requirements in the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme in England.

Further awards in the team category went to Roland Gareis and his team for the long term
international programme on project orientation at international level.

Organized by the Projektmanagement Group, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Administration, Austria, this programme has successfully benchmarked the project-oriented nations
of Austria, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and South Africa. Maturity models for
analyzing project-oriented companies (“project-oriented company mature") and societies ("project-
oriented society mature”) were developed and more than 180 project-oriented companies were
analyzed and benchmarked. (www.poi.pmgroup.at).

Constanta Bodea and the SinPers team were honoured for the Romanian research project
“Innovative System for Personalized and User-centered Learning with Application to Project
Management (SinPers)” developed by the National Institute for Research and Development in
Informatics (ICI Bucharest), the Academy of Economic Studies from Bucharest and the Project
Management Association from Romania. The project brings new conceptual approaches and
technical solutions for teaching-learning process modeling, learner modelling and learning content
modelling. (www.ici.ro/sinpers/).

Jury, IPMA Research Awards 2007

Qian Fupei, China, IPMA, Vice President Research
Brane Semolic, Slovenia, IPMA Chair Person RMB
Miles Shepherd, UK, member of RMB, former IPMA president
Frank Ambari, USA, The George Washington University
Stanislaw Sroka, Poland, Chairman IPMA Worlds Congress Cracow

( * Reproduced from PM-Today,USA)

4
Brane Semolic, Professor and Head of the Project & Technology Management Institute
and head of European Master in Project Management (EuroMPM) at the Faculty of
Logistics, University of Maribo,Slovenia, . He has 30 years of working experience as
expert, researcher and consultant. Currently,Chairman of the Research Management
Board and particularly responsible for forging strategic alliances in research.
Miles Shepherd, has been involved with project management for more than 30 years in
leading roles with British Army, AEA Technology plc where he led a variety of projects in
UK, Eastern Europe and Russia and so on.. He has held Director level roles in
professional associations like Association for Project Management & IPMA. Miles is
responsible for academic events and standards.

Martina Huemann, is board member of project management Austria and faculty member
of the Project Management Group of the Vienna University of Economics and Business
Administration as well as research fellow at ESC Lille. Her motivation is to promote project
management research - to enhance the discipline and profession of project management.
Martina is responsible for the IPMA Research Awards.

Rajat K. Baisya, Professor of Marketing, Strategy, International Business and Project

Management and former Head of the Business School at Indian Institute of Technology,
Delhi. He has served in very senior capacities for 28 years in Industry with leading MNCs
and large corporations. He has over 200 research articles and two books to his credit. He is
responsible for marketing of research activities and products .

Pieter Steyn is Founder and Principal of Cranefield College of Project and Programme
Management. He was the former President of the Association of Project Management
South Africa (APMSA). He is also founder of consulting engineering firm Steyn & Van
Rensburg (SVR) and founder Chairperson of the Production Management Institute of
South Africa. Pioneered Project Management education at post-graduate level , UNISA.
He is responsible for developing IPMA’s reference models and concept design

Jan Betta, responsible for Project Management Program in Wroclaw University of

Technology, Poland. Independent consultant, head of PM Group in Lower Silesia region,
assessor of IPMA Project Excellence Award. Jan is responsible for international academic
network.

Lixiong Ou, Deputy Dean of Management School of Northwestern Polytechnical University

(NPU), Xi’an, China. He is also the standing director of International Project Management
Institute at NPU. He is Vice Secretary-General and executive director, Project Management
Research Committee, China(PMRC). His research work focus on C-PMBOK, Enterprise
Project Management (EPM) and Project Management Maturity Model. Responsible for
RMB website & researchers’ collaboration platform.

Matti Ahvenharju has more than 30 years of experience in international project

management business and more than 15 years of experience in project and portfolio
management development. Matti Ahvenharju has been active in international project
management professional networking and has extensive contact network globally to project
management professionals and associations. He is responsible for R&D product
development.
6