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This research involves predicting the future of project management based on current trends in
the market, our conclusion was made from studying two research papers. As per current trend
there is a huge wave welcoming the idea of Big data in project management, however it is not
Organizations are adopting big data patterns to capture, manage and derive value from
massively large data sets (e.g. Hadoop and NoSQL platform) for some of their projects to get
best yields.
On the other hand, we compared traditional methods and Agile project management methods.
We realized that agile approach is gaining success due to the way it works. It is about
embracing change, even in the later stages which tells that it is having the real-time information
to tightly manage time, cost and scope. In this methodology complexity is reduced by breaking
down a, for example 12-month project, into smaller chunks called Sprints (2-4 weeks time)
Our research is about merging Lean practices and Big Data with Agile project management. Our
approach is proposed to tackle the issue of complexity and other drawbacks of traditional
project management methods such as delays in projects, budget over runs etc.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Project managers have yet to embrace wholeheartedly the advantages of big data. Big data is
getting popular in every major industry, report claim they are present in all major projects
Here is one of the case study for big data in one project:
Council suspected people at virtually 4,900 addresses were claiming incorrectly, but physically
house-to-house inspections would have been too costly and tedious. They came up with a
solution for it, a sizably voluminous data number-crunching exercise. They hired big data
The solution was to visually examine credit and other financial information, such as
indemnification history and payment activities, and use specialist software to verify this data
with the data the council already had on each of the property. They came up with the ranking
table after this analysis which provided them with a more pellucid picture to target the houses
By utilizing immensely colossal data in this way, they could determine which properties had
illegitimately been registered as vacuous, and subsequently reduce the caliber of council tax
In fact, Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council could relegate 434 houses out of 4,900 as highly
liable to be occupied and a further 1,313 as plausibly likely. This categorization availed them
prioritize the subsequent physical inspections, starting with those with the highest chance of
being occupied. Hence, they were able to reduce the tax fraud in a small span of time.
Almost 50% companies in US have initiated big data in the workplace and for their project but
few of them have been managed to reach the business goal due to its complexity and huge
investment.
In the first journal , Why Big Data? Towards a project assessment framework, the work revolves
The research is providing the base for the calculation in a Big Data spectrum. The calculations
will be an absolute measure that could simplify the decision making and help the organizations
Combining these three fundamentals it is easy to access big data requirement, feasibility and
Once the framework is built the complexity level can be calculated based on volume, velocity
and variety of the data. It is helpful to decide how several data formats can be collected and
analyzed in real time and hence help in making a better decision on investment.
With Big data project assessment framework (BigDAF), organization will be able to use their Big
Data project per dimension, volume, velocity and variety. With this framework, a management
research team will measure and understand the real challenges regarding big data investment.
In the second journal Does lean & agile project management help coping with project
complexity? the authors are discussing about 2 existing practices and how their fusion will help
deliver projects successfully. They start by explaining the most common problem Project
managers face in the construction industry, and how it could be overcome with their hypothesis
and analysis. Its a common practice in most projects of any industry to not finish on time and
run over budget. In the article, they have explained such a problem exists because of
projects. The authors mention that there are various factors that contribute to the above said
problems; they have categorized the factors to internal and external causes. External causes are
factors that are beyond project teams control for example financial turmoil, weather etc.
However, the internal causes are results of action from the client/consultant, resources
management etc. These factors along with the complexity make it hard to complete the
projects successfully. Even though the above mentioned are the reasons for the failure of
projects some researchers claim it is the poor management of projects that leads to these
failures. All above mentioned issues is paving way for requirement of a new and fresh
methodology.
Its mentioned in the article that project complexity is evolving rapidly and the predominant
and existing techniques of projects management are not capable of handling the changes and
difficulties we are going to face in future projects. Project management practices had started in
the 50s and havent evolved much. The first industry to implement project management was
Aerospace and defense industries, these industries were flexible and not complex. However,
these days various fields and industries are implementing project management. As the
complexity increased it became hard to predict our project timeline, outcome and other project
variables. Lean approach focusses on attaining more with less. The wide spread awareness of
Lean practices and its benefits has encouraged every industry to implement it. Even though its
implementation is little slow now we believe it will pick up momentum and will be very
common practice for all Engineering projects. The report claims there are indication confirming
the successful application of Lean approach to project management in complex and difficult
areas; this verifies our ideology of using this for future complex projects.
The second approach mentioned in the article is the agile project management approach.
Agile approach can be defined as a practice to increase the relevance, quality, flexibility, and
business value of project solutions. Presently it is widely used in the software industry, but we
believe the ideology can also be implemented in other fields. This approach has overcome the
setback of traditional project management techniques such as budget over runs, missing
deadlines, low quality output etc. Even though there are various agile practices most of them
share some similar objectives such as: incremental planning that uses the most recent and
readily available information, building in quality upfront, addressing technical risks as early as
possible, delivering frequent and continuous business value to the organization, entrust and
empower staff, encouraging ongoing communication between the business areas and project
team members, and increase in the clients involvement. The above-mentioned points make
this method widely applicable and explain why it could be used to use in complex Engineering
In the next part of the section the critique for the literature will be mentioned.
Critique:
In the upcoming years, a unified and structured platform architecture for Big Data projects will
Defining a logical architecture of the layers and components of a big data solution is important
since the characteristics of each data type is different (unstructured data- Eg. social media
Once the data type, content format, data source and data consumers are well defined the
The right architecture doesnt depend primarily on technical details of functionality checklists
The above table shows various industries business case differs from each other regarding big
The second literature, Does lean & agile project management help coping with project
Complexity had conducted a questionnaire and shown the co-relation amongst the practices
and complexity. The first table plotted the fusion of these practices against different types of
complexity; detailed scenario analysis was made to understand the figures from the survey.
Various factors as to why such an outcome was concluded and it pointed to various problems
survey was limited to specific industry and was conducted among Dutch citizens only
For table 2 they had plotted each practice and merged approach against complexity but
this time they analyzed how it reduced or simplified the complexity. From this analysis one
thing was very clear both practices had its merits in different ways and some of these merits
went hand in hand. Such an observation made us come with the hypothesis that this
combination is the future of Project management. Even though this approach covers
various sectors of the management there were certain gaps they didnt close; amongst that
was the gap of experienced professionals required to finish the tasks, this observation made
us conclude 2 things one being the quality of projects will be higher than normal and the
second was the cost of hiring specific experienced and qualified project managers would be
burdensome on many companies. There is also the fact that these practices have not being
implemented in other industries. Some industries are afraid of implementing such practices
as they are afraid of the cost involved, what they fail to realize is the return they get from
successfully completing the project while keeping the customer satisfied. The customer
satisfaction is guaranteed as they are actively involved in the project in various parts. In our
current economy, these requirements will make harder for everyone. Those observations
made us come to our conclusion of choosing big data along with the lean and agile project
management practice.
Conclusion:
When we look at the bigger picture a combined implementation of these practices can help
in resolving problems we face while applying traditional project management methods. The
reason why we wanted to combine the methods is because all the techniques have their unique
strengths and weaknesses a combined initiative would cover their gaps and ensure successful
completion of projects. The reason why we believe such an existing technique not being
implanted in wide scale is because of the cost of using technology to implement the technique.
With every passing day technology become cheaper and we predict such a move would help
and enforce widespread application of Lean, Big Data and Agile project management approach.
References:
1: Portela, Filepe, Luciana Lima and Manuel Filepe Santos, Why big data? Towards a project
2: Raconteur. (2016). Big data: the next big thing in project management - raconteur.net.
3: Hussain, A. and Roy, A. (2016). The emerging era of Big Data Analytics. Big Data Analytics,
1(1).
4: Sohi, A., Hertogh, M., Bosch-Rekveldt, M. and Blom, R. (2016). Does Lean & Agile Project
Management Help Coping with Project Complexity?. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences,
226, pp.252-259.