How standard are standards: An examination of language emphasis in project management standards

PA

PE

RS

6 September 2007 � Project Management Journal � DOI: 10.1002/pmj

INTRODUCTION �

This paper examines tendencies of emphasis in standards for projectmanagement developed in different countries. Standards for pro-ject management have contributed to the professionalization of project management by encouraging common benchmarks for com-

petence between practitioners. Initial standards development in projectmanagement was conducted independently by different countries and project management associations. However, collaborative work is currentlybeing progressed toward development of international standards. Thispaper contributes to an understanding of the relationship between projectmanagement performance-based standards through an analysis of differ-ences in language use between the standards of different nations.

Understanding variations in language use is of vital importance to anunderstanding of cultural difference. Through language, we give transferablemeaning to the world. Our use of language structures our perception and thepossibilities available to us for transferring those perceptions. This paperexamines the use of words within the different project management stan-dards, using established statistical linguistics techniques.

It is easy to assume that within a field such as project management,where profession-specific terminology is common, that different peopleattach the same meaning to a particular word. However, this is not necessar-ily the case. A standard is not a single and unvarying thing interpreted by different cultures in the same way. In light of endeavors to develop interna-tionally applicable project management standards, this paper examines justhow standard the project management standards actually are.

Internationally Applicable Project Management StandardsInterest in global perspectives on project management has been growingover the last decade. Crawford (2004a) documented this stream of deve-lopment, citing reasons for interest in a global approach to the project man-agement body of knowledge, qualifications, and standards as: demand byindustry for standards that are applicable for selection and deployment ofpersonnel in global operations; demand from practitioners for global recog-nition of qualifications; concern for international competitiveness; and thethreat of fragmentation of project management due to competition, notcooperation, in the development of standards and qualifications.

Incentive to develop globally applicable project management stan-dards also came from outside the profession. The North American FreeTrade Agreement signed in 1993 and the World Trade Organization’s GeneralAgreement on Trade in Services from 1994 required the “. . . development of policies that evaluate professional competence based on fair, objective

How Standard Are Standards: AnExamination of Language Emphasisin Project Management StandardsLynn Crawford, University of Technology, Sydney, AustraliaJulien Pollack, University of Technology, Sydney, AustraliaDavid England, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

ABSTRACT �

In light of current work toward the developmentof global standards for project management,this paper analyzes differences between aselection of various countries’ existing projectmanagement standards. The analysis is con-ducted using computational corpus linguisticstechniques, resulting in the identification ofsimilarities and differences between the stan-dards of five countries.

KEYWORDS: standards; project manage-ment; global initiatives; text analysis

Project Management Journal, Vol. 38, No. 3, 6–21

© 2007 by the Project Management Institute

Published online in Wiley InterScience

(www.interscience.wiley.com)

DOI: 10.1002/pmj.20002

September 2007 � Project Management Journal � DOI: 10.1002/pmj 7

criteria and transparent (publiclyknown) procedures” (Lenn, 1997, p. 2).These agreements put pressure onestablished professions and their pro-fessional associations to considermutually acceptable standards in coop-eration with other countries and toactively plan for reciprocal recognitionas a minimum.

Four different initiatives to developglobal project management standardsare discussed here: the Global PMForums; the Global Working Groups;the Global Alliance for Project Perfor-mance Standards (GAPPS); and theOperational Level Coordination Initia-tive (OLCI).

Global Project Management ForumsWork toward the creation of globalstandards for project management firstbecame an issue in 1994, where at thePMI Seminars & Symposium in Van-couver, Canada, there was a meeting ofrepresentatives of the North America-based Project Management Institute(PMI), the International Project Manage-ment Association (IPMA), the UnitedKingdom-based Association of ProjectManagers (APM), and the AustralianInstitute for Project Management(AIPM). At this meeting . . . formal cooperation on several global issues,including standards, certification andformation of a global project manage-ment organization or confederation”were discussed (Pells, 1996, p. ix). Aseries of Global Project ManagementForums followed, the first being held inassociation with the PMI Seminars &Symposium in New Orleans in 1995.

At the first Global Project Manage-ment Forum, there were nearly 200attendees representing over 30 coun-tries. There were high hopes that theenergy and enthusiasm evidenced atthis meeting would be an opportunityfor the various project managementassociations to take a step towardsachieving “. . . agreements on interna-tional standards, recognition of pro-ject management certifications, anddevelopment of a global core Project

Management Body of Knowledge”(Pells, 1996, p. x).

Global Project ManagementForums were held in association withannual and bi-annual conferences butby the time the 13th Global ProjectManagement Forum was held inMoscow in June 2003, little real progresstowards agreed international standardsfor project management had beenachieved. The initial ideal that the ini-tiative would bring together peoplefrom all over the world in an openforum to keep touch with develop-ments in the field of project manage-ment had been fulfilled. It had becomeclear, however, that meaningful coop-eration in standards development wasfar from being realized. It is generallyrecognized that . . . standard setting is aconflicted, political process” (vanWegberg, 2004, p. 21) and that it is necessary for standards-setting organi-zations to consistently work towardensuring participants work in a collab-orative way (JEDEC, 2004, p. 11). Realprogress toward the interests of a uni-fied project management professionwere hampered in this way by politicalissues and vested proprietorial inter-ests (Crawford, 2004c, p. 1398).

Global Working GroupsIn an attempt to maintain the momen-tum begun by the Global ProjectManagement Forums, the IPMA estab-lished and convened a series of GlobalWorking Groups that first met in EastHorsley, U.K., in February 1999 (IPMA,1999). The Working Groups were estab-lished in six areas: standards, educa-tion, certification, accreditation/credentialing, research, and the globalforum. Arguably, the most active andpromising of the initiatives generatedby the Global Working Groups was aproposal for development of perform-ance-based standards intended as abasis for mutual recognition and trans-ferability of qualifications based onexisting standards available interna-tionally. Performance based standardsform part of government endorsed

national qualifications frameworks in a number of countries includingAustralia, Mexico, New Zealand, SouthAfrica, and the United Kingdom. Thisinitiative resulted in the formation ofthe Global Alliance for ProjectPerformance Standards (GAPPS).

GAPPSFollowing a series of globally repre-sentative meetings held generally inassociation with project managementconferences, what was to later becomethe GAPPS Working Group met for thefirst time in London in August 2002,sponsored by the Sector Education andTraining Authority of South Africa(Services SETA). This is the organiza-tion responsible for performance-based standards on behalf of the SouthAfrican government.

A series of working sessions was initiated. All labor on the projectwas voluntary, excluding secretarialsupport. Participants included repre-sentatives from industry, professionalassociations, academic/training insti-tutions, and standards and qualifica-tions organizations. The process usedby GAPPS was as close as possible toAmerican National Standards Institute(ANSI) processes and those of the var-ious participating qualifications bod-ies, in order to facilitate acceptance ofany standards developed by the group.Two years, and six working sessionsafter the work by GAPPS was started, adraft standard was released for publicreview.

After three years and eight workingsessions, the GAPPS Global ProjectManagement Framework was released,and piloted by a major global corpora-tion. Standards and qualifications bodies involved are addressing theirrespective local approval processeswith a view toward general adoption asa basis for reciprocity. Similarly, nation-al or other professional associationsthat do not have their own standardsproducts are currently in the process ofexamining its suitability with a view toadopting it.


How Standard Are StandardsP

AP

ER

S

OLCIWork by the OLCI began in 1998. Theinitiative progressed through a series ofannual workshops hosted by organiza-tions, including NASA, Telenor, ESCLille and the Project ManagementProfessionals Certification Center, andthe Japan Project Management Forum(Crawford & Pannenbacker, 1999). TheOLCI has no formal status and has noaffiliation with any project manage-ment association or other organization.All material produced by the group is inthe public domain. The initial purposeof the OLCI, to work toward a globalbody of project management knowl-edge, has largely been achievedthrough shared recognition that thebody of project management knowl-edge exists independently of the vari-ous guides representing views of partsof its content.

Both Bredillet (2003, pp. 465–469)and Krechmer (2004, p. 50) have identi-fied that standards are developed insignificantly different ways in Europeand North America because of the dif-ferent cultures in these environments.Differing influences in the develop-ment of standards can lead to differentemphases in the standards that are pro-duced. One important role of the workof the OLCI has been to place each ofthe existing project managementguides or standards in context, not ascompeting representations of the bodyof project management knowledge butas legitimately different and enrichinginterpretations of selected aspects ofthe same body of knowledge. However,this leads to the question of how trans-ferable different standards actually areamong cultures, and what influence theculture of a country has on the kinds ofstandards that are developed.

Categorization and CultureThere has been considerable progressin the development of various catego-rization systems for project manage-ment (e.g., Crawford, Hobbs, & Turner,2002). For instance, frameworks havebeen designed to classify projects

according to the definition of theirgoals and methods (Turner &Cochrane, 1993); industry sector andapplication area (Bubshait & Selen,1992); project product or deliverable(Youker, 1999); strategic systems forcoping with risk (Floricel & Miller,2001); and uncertainty, complexity, andpace (Shenhar, 1996).

Literature on categorization withinthe field of project management has,for the most part, focused on under-standing management style in relationto project type (e.g., Dvir, Lipovetsky,Shenhar, & Tishler, 1998; Payne &Turner, 1999; Shenhar, 1998; Shenhar &Wideman, 1996) and on identificationof purposes and of attributes used forcategorization (Crawford, Hobbs, &Turner, 2005). To date, little researchhas addressed the categorization ofprojects by country or culture, and yetevidence suggests that cultural differ-ences exist between project manage-ment knowledge and practice in various countries.

For instance, Crawford (2001) foundsignificant variation in project manage-ment knowledge and use of practicesbetween Australia, the U.K. and theU.S.—three culturally quite similarcountries. Culture influences practi-tioners’ assumptions about the world,their heuristics, values, and beliefs,often in implicit ways. At a generallevel, culture has been identified as asignificant force in shaping projectmanagement practices (Hartman,Ashrafi, & Jergeas, 1998, p. 269), withmany developmental problems beinggrounded at the cultural level(Butterfield & Pendegraft, 1996, p. 14).

Project Management CultureHoole and du Plessis (2002) notedthat, in relation to project manage-ment, the term culture is not beenclearly defined (p. 255). The term cul-ture is ambiguous and can be used todescribe the culture of a nation, theculture of an organization, or the cul-ture of project management in general.However, Wang (2001, p. 12) noted that

the literature predominantly “. . . treats[project management] culture mainlyas a culture within an organizationrather than as a professional culture ata professionwide level . . .” Discussionis usually centered on alignmentbetween a project and the organiza-tion, or the degree to which the orga-nizational culture supports projectmanagement (e.g., Butterfield &Pendegraft, 1996; Gray, 2001; Hastings,1995; Hoole & du Plessis, 2002; Kendra& Taplin, 2004).

Wang (2001, p. 5) also examinedculture in project management byinquiring into the culture of projectmanagement as a whole through a survey that was distributed to nearly800 Australian-based project managers.Wang found enough consistency ofresponse in the sample to justify state-ments regarding common approachesto, and the culture within, project man-agement. However, Wang does notexamine the influence of the purelyAustralian sample group, and the influ-ence of an Australian culture on find-ings is unclear.

In some previous research, culturehas been used to refer to a particularset of beliefs and values associatedwith project management, which hasthen been contrasted with differentcultures, either in different parts of anorganization, or in different profes-sions. In this research, culture is usedto refer to an often implicit set ofbeliefs and values that are independ-ent of the profession of project man-agement, but through which projectmanagement is interpreted and under-stood. Such a culture can come at anindustry or a national level. This paperfocuses on the latter.

Culture and the Interpretation ofProject ManagementSome studies do acknowledge the influ-ence that the cultural context plays inhow project management practice isrealized and understood. For instance,in the context of industry sectors, Sauer,Liu, and Johnston (2001) identified dif-ferences between project management

in the IT and construction industries,while Hartman et al. (1998) identifiedcultural differences between live enter-tainment projects and traditional proj-ect management practice.

A significant number of other studies examine the influence that acountry’s culture has on project man-agement practice. However, this is usually researched in terms of compar-ison of the practice of one country with“common” or “traditional” projectmanagement practice. For instance, Al-Arjani (1995) examined the way inwhich cultural issues in Saudi Arabiainfluence time management, whileMunns, Aloquili, and Ramsay (2000)examined joint venture practice in thenew countries of the former SovietUnion.

A significant body of work examinescultural influences in Chinese projectmanagement (e.g., Chan, Wong, &Scott, 1999). Cheung and Chuah (1999)examined the extent of the influence oftraditional Chinese values on projectmanagement in Hong Kong. Otherstudies have focused on the differencesbetween Chinese project managementpractice and that of other countries. Forinstance, Yang, Chuah, Tummala, andChen (1997, p. 316) found differences inthe relative use of different organiza-tional structures between Chineseorganizations and the results of previ-ous studies focusing on western organ-izations. Andersen, Dyrhaug, andJessen (2002) also identified differencesin how the concepts of critical successfactors and success criteria are under-stood and applied in Chinese andNorwegian projects.

Differences have been identifiedbetween East African project manage-ment practice and practice in the West,as codified by associations such as PMIand APM (Muriithi & Crawford, 2003).Project management is a field thatencourages a normative approach,through the codification of standards,tools, and techniques, which are pre-dominantly based on the assumptionof economic rationality and experience

in Western countries (p. 309). In Africancountries, an emphasis on Confucianvalues, familism, and institutionalstructures that are not European orAmerican is identified. In cultures notbased on economic rationality, theassumptions on which traditional proj-ect management techniques are basedmay not correspond to what motivateslocal people, what they value, or howthey relate to authority (p. 311).

Culture has also been identified asinfluencing the negotiation process,through differences in the underlyingassumptions upon which participantsbase decisions (Munns et al., 2000, p. 409), impacting on perceptions oftechnology, tolerance of uncertainty,approaches to time management(Loosemore & Al Muslmani, 1999, p. 97), generally influencing behavior(Al-Arjani, 1995, p. 373), and influenc-ing the ways in which projects shouldbe managed (Andersen et al., 2002, p. 602).

In some cases, direct comparisonbetween projects managed in differentcultures becomes problematic. Forinstance, a study of cultural differencebetween Norwegian and Chinese projectmanagement found that respondentsfrom the two countries interpreted theresearch instruments differently, mak-ing direct comparison of results impos-sible (Andersen et al., 2002, p. 607).Similarly, Yang et al. (1997, p. 313) iden-tified that concepts as fundamentalto project management as the cost-time-quality triangle are interpretedwith varying emphases in different cul-tures. These results have consequencesfor attempts to directly compare differ-ent countries’ projects.

The studies identified representonly a small proportion of the litera-ture on project management, themajority of which assumes cultural uni-formity, and do not discuss “. . . how thefundamental cultural and economic fac-tors influence the choice of methods,tools and techniques, or the larger ques-tion of the validity of the entire ortho-doxy” (Muriithi & Crawford, 2003, p. 314).

For instance, no systemic model forcategorization of the differences inproject management practice based onculture could be found in the literature.

Culture and CommunicationCommunication is consistently identi-fied as one of the aspects of projectmanagement most strongly influencedby culture. Costly reworking can be . . .caused by the difficulties of under-standing arising between different . . .” (Hastings, 1995, p. 260). Cultureand communication are “. . . inex-tricably intertwined . . .” (Munns et al.,2000, p. 409), and issues of interculturalcommunication have been ranked asthe greatest problem facing interna-tional managers (Loosemore & AlMuslmani, 1999, p. 95).

Cultural communication issueshave been identified as problematic inareas of application that are oftenviewed as transparent, such as technol-ogy transfer projects (Lin & Berg, 2001)and construction projects (Loosemore& Al Muslmani, 1999). “While cultureinfluences the communication processby determining peoples’ mind-sets,its most obvious and tangible influenceis in the form of language” (p. 96). Thisstudy uses representative samples ofdifferent countries’ use of project man-agement language to elicit differentemphases that cultures place on thepractice of project management.

Research MethodologyPrevious studies of trends in the projectmanagement literature have used avariety of approaches, such as: a systemof weighted classification (Betts &Lansley, 1995); analysis by categoriza-tion through predefined project man-agement topics (Morris, Patel, &Wearne, 2000; Themistocleous & Wearne,2000; Zobel & Wearne, 2000); a sciento-metric method, which allows keywordsto emerge from the text (Urli & Urli,2000); and workshops (Kloppenborg &Opfer, 2000).

This paper examines variation incultural emphasis evident in projectmanagement standards of different




AP

ER

S

countries, using techniques developedin the field of corpus linguistics, abranch of linguistics focusing on thecomputational analysis of corpora.Rayson and Garside (2000, p. 1) identi-fied two main types of corpus compari-son: comparison of equal-sized texts;and comparison of a smaller text to alarger one. They also identify the needsto consider corpus representativeness,homogeneity within corpora, compara-bility between corpora and the reliabil-ity of particular statistical tests.

The original intention of this studywas to compare the various countries’project management standards direct-ly. However, Kilgarriff (2001) identifiedthat when comparing a corpus to othercorpora, “. . . there are no establishedmeasures for homogeneity” (p. 99), andthat measuring the similarity of corpora “. . . is complex, and there is noabsolute answer to ‘is Corpus 1 morelike Corpus 2 than Corpus 3?’” (p. 120).As such, this approach was not used.

Keyword AnalysisKeyword analysis was instead chosen asa method of indirect comparison.Keyword analysis identifies keywords intexts by comparing a subject corpus to alarger normative corpus, which is assumed to be representative of thelanguage as a whole. The normativecorpus acts as a baseline for the study.Multiple separate corpora can be compared to a single normative corpus(Rayson & Garside, 2000, p. 1). This thenresults in a list of keywords, assumed tobe representative of a particular subjectcorpus. The different keyword lists cre-ated can then act as the basis for com-parison of the subject corpora.

A variety of keyword analysis tech-niques can be identified in the litera-ture: chi-square; log-likelihood; t-test;the Mutual Information (MI) statistic;and the Mann-Whitney test. The t-testwas discounted, as it requires samplesof the same size, while some countries’standards are longer than those ofother countries. The t-test also requiresnormal distribution of words, “. . . which

is not in general the case for wordcounts” (Kilgarriff, 2001, p. 104). MI wasdiscounted as it overemphasizes rareterms (p. 105), which would be com-mon in an industry such as projectmanagement that has developed a spe-cialized vocabulary. The Mann-Whitney test was not used as it ignoresword frequencies (Rayson & Garside,2000, p. 2), which are useful in under-standing the role that words play in atext.

The log-likelihood and chi-squaretests were both identified as appropri-ate tests for determining lists of key-words for the subject corpora in thisstudy. In both these tests, the frequencyof individual words in a subject corpusis tested for significance when com-pared to the frequency of the sameword in the normative corpus. A previ-ous study has demonstrated that boththe chi-square and log-likelihood testsare two statistics on the same . . . con-tinuum defined by the power-diver-gence family of statistics” (Rayson &Garside, 2000, p. 2). Both of these testsproduce ranked values of the “keyness”of words, a statistical measure of theword’s significance. Results were gener-ated using both methods. The chi-square test was finally chosen due togreater correspondence of results gen-erated using this method with theresearchers’ understanding of likelykeywords, given the texts involved.

Ideally, a corpus that represented asample of international English wouldhave been used as the normative corpus for this study. However, theInternational Corpus of English, acooperative project between a varietyof international universities, was notyet completed at the time of writing.The normative corpus chosen was theBritish National Corpus (BNC), a 100-million-word collection of samples ofwritten and spoken English, from awide variety of sources, designed to berepresentative of current BritishEnglish (Oxford University ComputingServices, 2002). As the normative corpus is in English, this study is limit-

ed to analyzing project managementstandards written in English.

WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1997,2004), an integrated suite of programsfor analyzing how words behave intexts, available from the OxfordUniversity website (www.ox.ac.uk), waschosen as the text analysis software forthis study. In order to align with previ-ous work completed on the develop-ment of international standards forproject management, a similar selec-tion of standards were used in thisstudy as were used in preparation forthe February 2003 GAPPS meeting atESC Lille (Crawford, 2004a).

Organizing the DataStandards were grouped by country,forming five separate corpora repre-sentative of the use of English in projectmanagement standards or guides inthese countries (see Table 1). Keywordlists were then created for each of thecountries’ standards, using the BNC asnormative corpus. It is recognized thatusing a British corpus might have intro-duced some bias into the analysis of thetexts, having greatest influence onthe U.K.-based standards. However, asno truly international corpus of writtenEnglish existed at the time of writing,this bias was unavoidable.

The top 150 keywords were takenfrom each keyword list (see theAppendix). Before analysis began, key-words that were identified as structuralelements in the various standards wereremoved from the keyword lists.Furthermore, due to the limitations ofthe chi-square algorithm and its ten-dency to overestimate the significanceof terms that have a frequency of five orless (Ashen, 1978, p. 25; Rayson &Garside, 2000, p. 2), some low-frequen-cy terms were removed from the lists. Itshould also be noted that this analysismethod will emphasize words that arenot common in general English, suchas words that could be considered to beproject management jargon.

Paying close attention to the way inwhich keywords were used in the texts,

identified keywords were analyzed forcorrespondence with, or indication ofattention paid within a corpus to, oneof the 48 project management topics(see Table 2) identified by the GAPPSWorking Group (Crawford, 2004a, pp. 6–7) as being covered by projectmanagement literature, guides, andstandards. In some cases, based on theway in which a keyword was used in thestandards, it was considered to signify afocus on more than one of the 48 top-ics. Keywords were also analyzed forany tendencies of focus not addressedby the 48 project management topics.

In order to reduce the possibility ofsubjective bias in the interpretation ofdata, the researchers worked separatelyin classifying keywords according tothe 48 project management topics.Results generated by the researcherswere then compared. It was found thatvery little reconciliation was neededbetween the independently generatedresults, with most keywords uncon-tentiously aligning with the 48 topics.

ResultsThe GAPPS Working Group grouped the48 topics into 18 categories. Results arepresented at the level of these 18 cate-gories of project management topics. Atthis level, several broad tendencies arerevealed. Figure 1 shows results for eachof the five countries analyzed in this

study in terms of relative emphasis ondifferent categories of topic. The heightof the bars indicates the ranking of par-ticular keywords identified, while thenumber of bars within a category corre-sponds to the number of keywordsfound to be indicative of a particularcategory of project management topic,taken from within the list of the top 150keywords for a country’s corpus.

For instance, after looking at thecontext in which keywords were used inthe U.S. corpus, five keywords wereidentified as pertaining to the categoryof Risk Management. These were “risk”(ranked 18th), “risks” (ranked 32nd),“contingency” (ranked 98th), “analysis”(ranked 100th) and “qualitative” (ranked124th). These five keywords correspondwith the five bars in for U.S. RiskManagement in Figure 1.

As part of the process of definingthese 18 categories and 48 topics, theGAPPS Working Group identified fourcategories as only applicable to someproject managers in some circumstan-ces: Program Management; Marketing;Product Functionality; and StrategicAlignment. Results in this study identi-fied no keywords within the list of thetop 150 keywords to indicate attentionto Marketing in any corpus. Significantattention to Strategic Alignment is onlyindicated within the U.K. corpus, aswith Program Management in the

Australian and Japanese corpora, andProduct Functionality in the Japanese,Australian and U.K. corpora. Generally,this would seem to indicate correspon-dence between the existing countries’standards and development by theGAPPS Working Group with regard tothose topics identified as only applica-ble to some projects.

The Australian Institute of ProjectManagement, in developing perform-ance-based competency standards, followed the structure of the ProjectManagement Institute’s PMBOK ®

Guide (Morris et al., 2000, p. 156), whichexplains similarities between theresults for the Australian and U.S. cor-pora, which become apparent whenresults were compared in terms of indi-vidual keywords. The Australian corpusof standards exhibits the strongestinterest in Relationship Management, atopic which is well represented in allcorpora. Comparatively high interest isalso apparent in Legal Issues andFinalization, topics that have low repre-sentation in the majority of other corpora.

Keywords produced from theJapanese standards show the stronginterest in Cost Management, ProjectEvaluation and Improvement, ResourceManagement, and Cross Unit Outcomes,which includes Integration, ProjectContext, Estimating, and the Project Life

Australian corpus National Competency Standards for Project Management (Business Services Training Australia, 2004)Project Management Competency Standards (PSETA, 2000).

South African corpus South African Qualifications Authority Project Management Competency Standards: Levels 3 and 4 (PMSGB, 2002)

Japanese corpus P2M: A Guidebook of Project & Program Management for Enterprise Innovation: Summary Translation.Revision 1 (ENAA, 2002)

U.K. corpus National Occupational Standards for Project Management: Pre-launch Version (ECITB, 2002)Successful Delivery Skills Programme: Skills Framework (OGC, 2002)OSCEng Level 4 NVQ/SVQ in Project Controls (OSCEng, 1996)OSCEng Level 4 and 5 NVQ/SVQ in (Generic) Project Management (OSCEng, 1997)

North American A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMI, 2000)Project Manager Competency Development Framework (PMI, 2002)

Table 1: Corpora by country and standards.

Corpus Standards




AP

ER

S

Cycle. However, the Japanese keywordsdemonstrate a comparatively low focuson Project Planning and Control, andno keywords within the top 150 identi-fied interest in Finalization or LegalIssues. The particularly strong emphasison Cross Unit Outcomes and ProgramManagement in the Japanese corpuscan be explained through reference tothe scope of the P2M (EngineeringAdvancement Association of Japan[ENAA], 2002). The P2M has applicationto projects, programs, and the widerorganizational context, is more exten-sive than the majority of project man-agement competency standards, anddoes not attempt to address every detailof every topic (Crawford, 2004b, p. 1161).

The South African standards usedin this study were developed using aprocess similar to that used in bothAustralia and the United Kingdom,resulting in standards which mainlyfocus on skills as a project team mem-ber, but do also include some infor-mation on leading small projects(Crawford, 2004b, p. 1167). The SouthAfrican keywords identified a focus onResource Management and Relation-ship Management, but do not high-light Cost Management, Finalization,Legal issues, Planning and Control, orRisk Management.

The U.K. corpus shows the greatestalignment of focus with the 18 cate-gories of project management topics,showing consistent interest in mostcategories. These results would havebeen partially influenced by the list oftopics used in this research being basedon a list of topics used byother researchers (Themistocleous &Wearne, 2000; Zobel & Wearne, 2000),which was, in turn, based on categoriesdrawn from the third edition of theAPM Body of Knowledge (APM, 1996).Strong emphasis on Interpersonal,Legal Issues, Project Evaluation andImprovement, Planning and Control,Project Start-up, Relationship Mana-gement, Resource Management, Risk,and Time Management is indicated by

Cross Unit Outcomes EstimatingIntegration ManagementProject Context/EnvironmentProject Life Cycle/Phasing

Finalization Project Closeout/FinalizationTesting, Commission, Handover & Acceptance

Interpersonal Conflict ManagementLeadershipNegotiationProblem SolvingTeamwork

Legal Issues Legal IssuesSafety, Health & Environment

Marketing Marketing

Product Functionality Configuration ManagementDesign ManagementRequirements ManagementTechnology ManagementValue Management

Program Management Program Management

Project Evaluation Organizational Learning& Improvement Performance Management

Project Evaluation & Review

Project Planning & Control Change ControlProject Monitoring & ControlProject Planning

Project Start-up Goals, Objectives & StrategiesProject Initiation/Start-upSuccess (Criteria & Factors)

Quality Management Quality ManagementRelationship Management Benefits Management

DocumentationInformation & Communication ManagementReportingStakeholder ManagementTeam Building/Development

Resource Management Personnel/Human Resource ManagementProcurementProject OrganizationResource Management

Risk Management Risk Management

Scope Management Scope Management

Strategic Alignment Business CaseFinancial ManagementProject AppraisalStrategic Alignment

Time Management Time Management

Table 2: Categories and topics of project management.

Categories TopicsCost Management Cost Management

Cos

t M

anag

emen

t

Cro

ss U

nit

Out

com

es

Fina

lisat

ion

Inte

rper

sona

l

Leg

al Is

sues

Mar

ketin

g

Prod

uct

Func

tiona

lity

Prog

ram

Man

agem

ent

Proj

ect

Eval

uatio

nan

d Im

pro

vem

ent

Proj

ect

Plan

ning

and

Con

trol

Proj

ect

Star

t-up

Qua

lity

Man

agem

ent

Rela

tions

hip

Man

agem

ent

Reso

urce

Man

agem

ent

Risk

Man

agem

ent

Scop

e M

anag

emen

t

Stra

teg

ic A

lignm

ent

Tim

e M

anag

emen

t

Key

wor

d r

ank

1st

150th

Key

wor

d r

ank

1st

150th

Key

wor

d r

ank

1st

150th

Key

wor

d r

ank

1st

150th

Key

wor

d r

ank

1st

150th

USA

United Kingdom

South Africa

Japan

Australia

Figure 1: Different countries’ emphases in performance-based standards.




AP

ER

S

keywords. No interest was indicated inCost or Quality Management.

Strong correspondence was alsoapparent between the 48 topics and theU.S. corpus. This is not surprising, giventhe influence of the Project ManagementInstitute on global project managementthought. Keywords in the U.S. corpus didnot show an interest in Legal Issues, butdid show strong emphasis on ProjectEvaluation and Improvement, RiskManagement, and Time Management,and the strongest interest of any coun-tries’ corpora on Cost Management,Cross Unit Outcomes, Finalization, andScope Management.

Analysis at the level of the 48 topicsthat make up the 18 categories revealsmuch greater variation between coun-tries’ corpora than is initially apparentat a higher level of abstraction. Forinstance, although most countries’standards had keywords that demon-strate interest in the Interpersonal cate-gory of topics, the Japanese corpus isthe only one that addresses ConflictManagement, the majority of othersdemonstrating interest in theInterpersonal category through focuson the Problem Solving and Teamworktopics. The Japanese corpus is also theonly one demonstrating keywordsaddressing Organizational Learning.

Within the category of ProjectPlanning and Control, the U.S. corpusis the only one for which keywordscould be identified as addressingChange Control, the other corporaaddressing this category through thetopics Project Monitoring and Controland Project Planning. Similarly, withinthe category of Project Start-up, theU.S. corpus is the only corpus forwhich keywords could be identifiedthat directly addressed the topic ofProject Start-up. All of the other corpo-ra focus on Goals, Objectives andStrategies instead, with the Japanesecorpus paying particular attention tothis topic. The Japanese corpus is alsothe only one that is identified asaddressing Value Management, a topicwithin the Product Functionality cate-

gory. The other corpora that addressProduct Functionality instead displaykeywords that indicate attention toRequirements Management.

Of the corpora that were seen toaddress Finalization, the U.S. andAustralian corpora included keywordsthat identified coverage of the ProjectCloseout/Finalization topic, while theU.K. corpus addressed Finalization interms of the Testing, Commissioningand Handover topic. The U.K. corpuswas the sole corpus to demonstrateattention to Regulations, while thesame could be said for the Australiancorpus and the topic of Safety, Health,and Environment.

It is interesting to note the domi-nance of Relationship Management asan area of interest within the variouscorpora. There is a broad coverage ofthe majority of the topics that consti-tute this category in all corpora. Withinthis category, Stakeholder Managementstands out as an area of focus. In all cor-pora, “Stakeholders” was identified asone of the top five keywords, indicatinga consistent and strong focus on thisaspect of project management.

By contrast, consistently littleemphasis was identified as relating toCost Management or Quality Manage-ment, which is unusual given theattention that these topics are given inthe project management literature.However, this result could be relatedto the way in which the chi-squarealgorithm identifies keywords and thecomparatively frequent appearance ofwords that would have indicatedinterest in these topics in commonEnglish usage, and so may not beindicative of a lack of emphasis withinthe standards.

Resource Management also standsout as the only other category for whichhighly key keywords were identified inall countries’ corpora. At the topic level,however, the consistency is less clear,with varying emphasis on Personnel/HR Management, Procurement, ProjectOrganization, and Resource Manage-ment. All corpora place emphasis on

Procurement. However, of the four top-ics that make up the Resource manage-ment category, the Australian corpus isthe only one to place emphasis onPersonnel/HR Management.

Differences in the way thatPerformance Measurement is discussedwere also identified. Three keywordswere identified from U.S. corpus asrelating to Performance Measurement:“CPI” (Cost Performance Index); “EVM”(Earned Value Management); and “cri-teria,” while the Japanese keywordsincluded “SPI” (Schedule PerformanceIndex). In the other corpora, interest inPerformance Measurement was indi-cated by the keyword “performance,”indicating that while in the U.S. andJapanese corpora techniques for per-formance measurement are discussed,in the other corpora, performance isdiscussed at a more general level.

The category of Cross Unit Out-comes also warrants discussion due tothe variety of topics it encompasses,including: Integration Management;Project Context/Environment; Esti-mating; and Project Life Cycle/Phasing.Keywords indicating interest in CrossUnit Outcomes were identified in thecorpora of all countries, but this mightbe mistaken to imply homogeneity that does not exist. For instance, CrossUnit Outcomes keywords in the U.K.corpus indicate an exclusive focus onEstimating, while in the South African corpus keywords indicate an exclusivefocus on Project Life Cycle/Phasing.The Japanese corpus is the only one todemonstrate significant focus onIntegration.

Some keywords identified withinthe different countries’ corpora indicat-ed focus on an area outside the 48 top-ics outlined by the GAPPS WorkingGroup. All countries’ corpora includeda focus on the end products of a proj-ect, often in ways that could be distin-guished from the concept of the goalsof a project. For instance, all corporainclude “deliverable” or “deliverables”as a top 150 keyword. The Australiankeywords also include the “outcomes”

and “milestones” of a project, the U.K.keywords include “outcomes,” theSouth African corpus includes the key-words “outcomes” and “outcome,” bothof which are ranked as highly key, whilethe U.S. keywords include “milestones”and “outputs.”

The U.K., U.S., Japanese, andAustralian corpora all feature variationson “contract” or “contracts” within thetop 150 keywords. The focus on con-tracts is most pronounced in the U.K.corpus, which also includes manyother keywords indicating an interestin contracts outside the top 150. Thisemphasis within the U.K. corpus isstrengthened by the observation thatthe U.K. corpus also has three variantson “tender” within the top 150 keywords.

It has been noted that project man-agement, being at the confluence of avariety of disciplines, is somewhat like“ . . . a heterogeneous toolbox . . .” (Urli &Urli, 2000, p. 33). This is supported byall corpora including emphasis ontools, techniques, processes, methodsand methodologies. The Australian cor-pus places the strongest emphasis on“tools”; the South African, “tech-niques.” The Australian, Japanese, andU.S. corpora have a high level of focuson “method” or “methods,” and someemphasis on “methodologies.”

Perhaps the strongest variation inthe way that project management isdiscussed can be seen in the Japanesecorpus, which makes reference to cul-turally specific approaches, such asKaizen, a business philosophy of continuous improvement. Variants on “mission,” “mission achievement,”and “mission achievement profes-sional” are also used to express differ-ent emphases on project and programmanagement.

The influence of systems thinkingon the Japanese corpus is also appar-ent, with three variants on “system” and“holistic” occurring within the top 150keywords. Although systems analysisand systems engineering strongly influ-enced the development of early projectmanagement (Cleland & King, 1968;

Yeo, 1993), the influence of systemsthinking on project management hasbeen found to be declining (Crawford &England, 2004). In some cases, refer-ence to systems concepts have beenremoved from project managementtexts due to lack of understanding(Morris et al., 2000, p. 162). Keywordsindicating a systems emphasis were notfound within the top 300 keywordswithin the other four corpora.

ConclusionsThe highest level of correspondencebetween the 48 topics identified by theGAPPS Working Group and the keywordsidentified in the various countries’ cor-pora was found in the U.K. corpus. Ahigh level of alignment was found withthe 48 categories and the other corpora,although this was of varying consistency.This level of alignment suggests a broadsimilarity of emphasis between the exist-ing standards in these countries andgeneral trends in the development ofinternational standards for project man-agement.

Relationship Management consis-tently received the highest level ofemphasis in the different countries’standards. Resource and Scope Man-agement also received strong emphasisin all corpora.

The GAPPS Working Group identi-fied 18 categories of topics, four ofwhich were identified as only applica-ble to some projects at some times.Generally, a low level of keywords werefound to indicate interest in these fourtopics, a result that both supports theWorking Group’s categorization ofthese topics and indicates correspon-dence between this categorization oftopics and the content of existing stan-dards.

When we look closely, consider-able variation between the differentcountries’ standards can be seen whenanalyzed using the chi-square algorithm.There are many instances where akeyword indicating interest in one ofthe 48 topics can be found within thecorpora of one or two countries and not

in any others. This suggests that con-siderable variation exists between thestandards of different countries.

Although different culturalemphases cannot be proven, they can beimplied by differences in the way thatstandards for project management areexpressed. Based on the way that lan-guage is used in the different projectmanagement standards and guidesincluded in this study, it is clear thatdifferent content is being discussed indifferent ways. This suggests a differencein the emphasis that is placed on differ-ent aspects of project management indifferent countries, which can in turnimply a difference in which aspects ofproject management are considereduseful, effective, or appropriate in differ-ent countries. Future developmentstoward internationally applicable projectmanagement standards need to takethese cultural differences into account. �

ReferencesAl-Arjani, A. H. (1995). Impact of cul-tural issues on the scheduling of hous-ing maintenance in a Saudi Arabianurban project. International Journal ofProject Management, 13(6), 373–382.

Andersen, E. S., Dyrhaug, Q. X., &Jessen, S. A. (2002). Evaluation ofChinese projects and comparison withNorwegian projects. InternationalJournal of Project Management, 20(8),601–609.

Ashen, F. (1978). Statistics for linguis-tics. Reading, MA: Newbury House.

Association of Project Managers(APM). (1996). Body of knowledge:Version 3. High Wycombe, UK: Author.

Betts, M., & Lansley, P. (1995).International Journal of ProjectManagement: A review of the first tenyears. International Journal of ProjectManagement, 13(4), 207–217.

Bredillet, C. (2003). Genesis and role of standards: theoretical foundationsand socio-economical model for theconstruction and use of standards.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 21(6), 463–470.




AP

ER

S

Bubshait, A., & Selen, W. (1992).Project characteristics that influencethe implementation of project man-agement techniques: A survey. ProjectManagement Journal, 23(2), 43–47.

Business Services Training Australia.(2004). National competency standardsfor project management. Brisbane,Australia: Australian National TrainingAuthority.

Butterfield, J., & Pendegraft, N.(1996). Cultural analysis in IS planning& management. Journal of SystemsManagement, 47(2), 14–17.

Chan, W. K. L., Wong, F. K. W., & Scott,D. (1999). Managing constructionprojects in China—The transitionalperiod in the millennium.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 17(4), 257–263.

Cheung, C. C., & Chuah, K. B. (1999).Conflict management styles in HongKong industries. International Journalof Project Management, 17(6), 393–399.

Cleland, D. I., & King, W. R. (1968).Systems analysis and project manage-ment. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Crawford, L. (2001). Project manage-ment competence: The value of stan-dards. Unpublished DBA thesis,Henley Management College, BrunelUniversity.

Crawford, L. (2004a, May). Towards aglobal framework for project manage-ment standards. In Proceedings ofPMSA Conference (pp. 1–14).Johannesburg: PMSA.

Crawford, L. (2004b). Global body ofproject management knowledge andstandards. In J. Pinto & G. Morris(Eds.), The Wiley guide to managingprojects (pp. 1150–1196). Hoboken, NJ:Wiley.

Crawford, L. (2004c). Professionalassociations and global initiatives. In J.Pinto & G. Morris (Eds.), The Wileyguide to managing projects (pp.1389–1402). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Crawford, L., & England, D. (2004).Mapping the links between projectmanagement and systems. Paper

presented at the InternationalResearch Network on Organizing byProjects (IRNOP VI), Turku, Finland.

Crawford, L., Hobbs, B., & Turner, R.(2002, July). Investigation of potentialclassification systems for projects. InD. P. Slevin, D. I. Cleland, & J. K. Pinto(Eds.), Project management research atthe turn of the millennium:Proceedings of PMI ResearchConference. Seattle, WA: PMI.

Crawford, L., Hobbs, B., & Turner, R.(2005). Project categorization systems:Aligning capability with strategy forbetter results. Newtown Square, PA:Project Management Institute.

Crawford, L., & Pannenbacker, O.(Eds.). (1999). Towards a global bodyof project management knowledge.Retrieved March 28, 2000, fromhttp://www.aipm.com/OLC/

Dvir, D., Lipovetsky, S., Shenhar, A., &Tishler, A. (1998). In search of projectclassification: A non-universalapproach to project success factors.Research Policy, 27(9), 915–935.

Engineering AdvancementAssociation of Japan (ENAA). (2002).P2M: A guidebook of project & pro-gram management for enterpriseinnovation: Summary translation.Revision 1. Tokyo, Japan: ProjectManagement ProfessionalsCertification Centre.

Engineering Construction IndustryTraining Board (ECITB). (2002).National occupational standards forproject management: Pre-launch version. Kings Langley, UK: Author.

Floricel, S., & Miller, R. (2001).Strategizing for anticipated risks and turbulence in large-scale engi-neering projects. International Journal of Project Management, 19(8), 445–455.

Gray, R. J. (2001). Organizational cli-mate and project success.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 19(2), 103–109.

Hartman, F., Ashrafi, R., & Jergeas, G.(1998). Project management in the live

entertainment industry: What is differ-ent? International Journal of ProjectManagement, 16(5), 269–281.

Hastings, C. (1995). Building the cul-ture of organizational networking.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 13(4), 259–263.

Hoole, C., & du Plessis, Y. (2002). Thedevelopment of a project managementculture assessment framework.Proceedings of the PMI ResearchConference (pp. 255–265).

International Project ManagementAssociation (IPMA). (1999). ICB: IPMAcompetence baseline, Version 2. (G.Caupin, H. Knopfel, P. Morris, E.Motzel, & O. Pannenbacker, Eds.).Frankfurt, Germany: Author.

JEDEC. (2004). White paper: The vitalrole of standard-setting organizationsand the necessity of good faith and fairplay among participants. JEDEC 2004Symposium: The future of standardssetting, legal, marketplace and con-sumer implications. RetrievedNovember 1, 2004, from http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:9tJZftZJxO8J:standardsconference.org

Kendra, K., & Taplin, L. (2004). Projectsuccess: A cultural framework. ProjectManagement Journal, 35(1), 30–45.

Kilgarriff, A. (2001). Comparing cor-pora. International Journal of CorpusLinguistics, 6(1), 97–133.

Kloppenborg, T. J., & Opfer, W. A.(2000). Forty years of project manage-ment research: Trends, interpretations,and predictions. Proceedings of thePMI Research Conference (pp. 41–59).

Krechmer, K. (2004). Standardizationand innovation policies in the infor-mation age. International Journal of ITStandards & Standardization Research,2(2), 49–60.

Lenn, M. (1997). Introduction. In M.Lenn & L. Campos (Eds.),Globalization of the professions andthe quality imperative: Professionalaccreditation, certification and licensure. Madison, WI: MagnaPublications, Inc.

Lin, B.-W., & Berg, D. (2001). Effects ofcultural difference on technologytransfer projects: An empirical study ofTaiwanese manufacturing companies.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 19(5), 287–293.

Loosemore, M., & Al Muslmani, H. S.(1999). Construction project manage-ment in the Persian Gulf: Inter-culturalcommunication. International Journalof Project Management, 17(2), 95–100.

Morris, P. W. G., Patel, M. B., & Wearne,S. H. (2000). Research into revising theAPM project management body ofknowledge. International Journal ofProject Management, 18(3), 155–164.

Munns, A. K., Aloquili, O., & Ramsay,B. (2000). Joint venture negotiationand managerial practices in the newcountries of the former Soviet Union.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 18(6), 403–413.

Muriithi, N., & Crawford, L. (2003).Approaches to project management inAfrica: Implications for internationaldevelopment projects. InternationalJournal of Project Management, 21(5),309–319.

Occupational Standards Council forEngineering (OSCEng). (1996).OSCEng Level 4. NVQ/SVQ in projectcontrols. Farnborough, Hampshire,England: Author.

Occupational Standards Council forEngineering (OSCEng). (1997).OSCEng Level 4 and 5. NVQ/SVQ in(generic) project management.Farnborough, Hampshire, England:Author.

Office of Government Commerce(OGC). (2002). Successful delivery skillsprogramme: Skills framework.Norwich, Norfolk, UK: The StationaryOffice Books.

Oxford University ComputingServices. (2002). British national cor-pus. Oxford, UK: Oxford UniversityComputing Services.

Payne, J. H., & Turner, J. R. (1999).Company-wide project management:The planning and control of pro-grammes of projects of different type.

International Journal of ProjectManagement, 17(1), 55–59.

Pells, D. L. (1996). Introduction. In J. S.Pennypacker (Ed.), The global status ofthe project management profession (pp.ix–xii). Sylva, NC: PMI Communications.

Project Management Institute (PMI).(2000). A guide to the project manage-ment body of knowledge. NewtownSquare, PA: Author.

Project Management Institute (PMI).(2002). Project manager competencydevelopment framework. NewtownSquare, PA: Author.

Project Management StandardsGenerating Body (PMSGB). (2002).South African qualifications authorityproject management competency stan-dards: Levels 3 and 4. South Africa.

Newtown Square PA: South AfricanQualifications Authority.

Public Service Sector Education andTraining Authority (PSETA). (2000).Project management competency stan-dards. Melbourne, Australia: MercuryPrinteam.

Rayson, P., & Garside, R. (2000).Comparing corpora using frequencyprofiling. In Proceedings of the work-shop on comparing corpora, held inconjunction with the 38th annualmeeting of the Association forComputational Linguistics (pp. 1–6).

Sauer, C., Liu, L., & Johnston, K.(2001). Where project managers arekings. Project Management Journal,32(4), 39–49.

Scott, M. (1997). PC analysis of keywords—and key key words. System,25(2), 233–245.

Scott, M. (2004). WordSmith ToolsVersion 4. Oxford, UK: OxfordUniversity Press.

Shenhar, A. (1996). Project manage-ment theory: The road to better prac-tice. In Proceedings of the ProjectManagement Institute 27th AnnualSeminar/Symposium (pp. 704–709).Newtown Square, PA: PMI.

Shenhar, A. (1998). From theory topractice: Toward a typology of projectmanagement styles. IEEE Transactions

of Engineering Management, 25(1),33–48.

Shenhar, A., & Wideman, R. (1996).Improving PM: Linking success criteriato project type. Southern AlbertaChapter, Project Management Institute,Symposium Creating CanadianAdvantage through ProjectManagement. Newtown Square, PA: PMI.

Themistocleous, G., & Wearne, S. H.(2000). Project management topic cov-erage in journals. International Journalof Project Management, 18(1), 7–11.

Turner, J. R., & Cochrane, R. A. (1993).Goals-and-methods matrix: Copingwith projects with ill defined goalsand/or methods of achieving them.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 11(2), 93–101.

Urli, B., & Urli, D. (2000). Project man-agement in North America, stability ofthe concepts. Project ManagementJournal, 31(3), 33–43.

van Wegberg, M. (2004).Standardization and competing con-sortia: The trade-off between speedand compatibility. InternationalJournal of IT Standards &Standardization Research, 2(2), 18–33.

Wang, X. (2001). Dimensions and cur-rent status of project management cul-ture. Project Management Journal,32(4), 4–17.

Yang, M., Chuah, K., Tummala, V., &Chen, E. (1997). Project managementpractices in Pudong, a new economicdevelopment area of Shanghai, China.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 15(5), 313–319.

Yeo, K. T. (1993). Systems thinking andproject management—Time to reunite.International Journal of ProjectManagement, 11(2), 111–117.

Youker, R. (1999). The differencebetween different types of projects. InProceedings of the 30th Annual ProjectManagement Institute Conference.Newtown Square, PA: PMI.

Zobel, A. M., & Wearne, S. H. (2000).Project management topic coverage inrecent conferences. ProjectManagement Journal, 31(2), 32–37.




AP

ER

S

Lynn Crawford is the director of HumanSystems International Limited, professor ofProject Management, ESC Lille, France, andBond University, Australia. She is involved inproject management practice, education andresearch. Through Human Systems, she workswith leading corporations that are developingorganizational project management compe-tence by sharing and developing knowledgeand best practices as members of a global sys-tem of project management knowledge net-works. She is currently involved in two PMI-funded research projects—Exploring the Role ofthe Executive Sponsor and The Value of ProjectManagement. Results of a completed study

have been published by PMI in a book titledProject Categorization Systems: AligningCapability with Strategy for Better Results.Lynn has been leading the development ofglobal standards for project management since the late 1990s.

Julien Pollack is an honorary associate of theUniversity of Technology, Sydney (UTS). He haswon national and international awards for hisresearch, which focuses on practical ways thatsystems thinking and project management canbe combined. He has worked on projects in avariety of fields, including organizationalchange, strategic planning, IT development andtheatrical projects. He received his PhD at UTS,

with previous degrees in computer science, phi-losophy and theatre. Dr. Pollack is currentlyinvestigating practical ways of applying com-plexity theory to project management, andrecently co-authored a book entitled Tools forComplex Projects.

David England is a researcher in the projectmanagement faculty of the University ofTechnology, Sydney with more than 5 yearsexperience working on a variety of researchprojects. Among these projects has beenresearch on various international standards forproject management as well as work on thedevelopment of global project managementstandards.

Appendix: Keywords Identified Using the Chi-Square AlgorithmAustralia Japan USA UK South Africa

1 competencies project project stakeholders nqf2 competency stakeholders competencies pm project3 project management competency project etqa4 stakeholders projects pmc unit accessing5 procurement wbs stakeholders objectives stakeholders6 projects deliverables WBS underpinning learners7 finalisation program pmbok verify developmental8 hrm procurement deliverables outcomes sub-field9 program kaizen procurement procurement projects

10 management countermeasures pmi mci sub-project11 aqf mission competence techniques deliverables12 bulleted optimization self-assessment organisational sub-processes13 unit cost pmp feedback qualification14 assistive orderer management procedures procurement15 outcomes risk diagramming commentary pmsgb16 deliverables enaa scope hand-over outcome17 competence competency schedule deliverables outcomes18 assessment stakeholder risk schedules pmisa19 examples value closeout competence pmi20 requirements outsourcing solicitation team learner21 key projectized organizational regulatory deviations22 skills method performance requirements management23 generic organization estimating scope specific24 summative pmi outputs schedule criteria25 communicating resources eac evaluate ceasa26 solving tqc stakeholder performance saqa27 stakeholder estimation processes prioritise assessment28 bracketed evaluation subprojects risks sme29 elaborating guaranty utilized resources competence30 milestones l variances required pertaining31 include bcwp leveling identify understanding32 documentation capability risks risk accredited33 overview internet project's multi-project organisational34 sufficiency informatization corrective responsibilities cross-field35 scope jgc durations time-bound all-rounded36 organisational etc framework specifications assurance37 apply enterprises cost-reimbursable monitor ipma38 reshaping corporate projectized evaluation moderation39 candidate's intranet sellerseller projects seta40 refered cycle plan manage corrective41 collation chiba cluster impinging standard42 relevant utilization deliverable ensure accreditation43 performance coordination inputs formats communicated44 evidence schedule projects knowledge kowo45 organising viewpoint planning methods projectised46 multiple acwp dependencies teams rpl47 communicated improvement aipm plans zenta48 ohs crm finish-to-start contractual documentation49 workplace ipma evm relevant technical50 resource reengineering utilize resourcing identified51 processes information cost stakeholder co-operatively52 manage executer organization ento team53 tracking utilized baseline communication parameters




AP

ER

S

Appendix: Keywords Identified Using the Chi-Square Algorithm (continued)Australia Japan USA UK South Africa

54 italics pmis # appropriate quality55 how scope bcws scheduling contribute56 techniques implementation workaround sponsor pmp57 verbally programs resource contingency organise58 criteria system behavior management unit59 risk shigenobu executing key scoping60 tasks favorable updates procuring entrepreneurs61 tools spi behaviors re-prioritise teams62 objectives behaviors tradeoffs frameworks self-employed63 mathematical resource checklists monitoring schedules64 guidelines bcws techniques non-conformance procedures65 numbering engeering performing constraints provider66 communications hypothecation criteria requires aipm67 activities pmbok bcwp activities nlrd68 managing holistic documenting achievable scope69 quality concept quality project's evaluate70 codes fluctuation flowcharting options in-depth71 provided bookmark team specification #72 attributes chiyoda knowledge measurable stakeholder73 team ohara section individuals embedded74 specifies profiling activity understanding standards75 elaboration organizations demonstrate over-expenditure demonstrated76 procedures process baselines under-expenditure relevant77 interdependencies n behavioral hazards moyce78 anti design duration principles assessor79 monitoring elements subproject assessing level80 establishes behavior workarounds timely sub-process81 spreadsheets project's rework contract literacy82 required cbb gonczi interpersonal scoped83 represents icb heneman information self-learning84 documented idef obligates presentation registered85 reviewed ishikura wbss sources contributing86 formative tetsuya adm ecitb frames87 level optimum prioritized allocations objectives88 addressed pmp initiation consequential apm89 within engineering organizations re-allocation assessors90 records centering estimates departures processes91 innovation knowledge scorecard allocate explained92 evaluating objectives cpi and identify93 schedule u risk's timescales generic94 reviewing endeavor start-to-finish variances scheduling95 packages endeavors subnet team's critically96 plans multiple pdm sub-contracts qualifications97 guide takenaka analyzing ict techniques98 applying yoshiaki contingency tenders applicable99 identified specifications activities allocation documented

100 programs tasks analysis work learning101 analysed framework requirements develop naidoo102 managers creation product specific communicate103 aspects essentiality described osceng business104 using midterm probability ptm equivalent105 reporting rfp determine implications tools

Appendix: Keywords Identified Using the Chi-Square Algorithm (continued)Australia Japan USA UK South Africa

106 organisation's contract activity-on-arrow analyse activities107 inform data activity-on-node review qualifying108 ideas concerning acwp resourced structures109 applied situational aoa estimating phases110 authorisation organizational aon assessment related111 indicative dscr boyatzis clarifying deliver112 range pmcc close-out identifying assessing113 arising shibao finish-to-finish feest demonstrate114 planning taketomi ifb tendering accordance115 hrd tametsugu kleinmuntz authorisation comprehensive116 scoping utilizing make-or-buy assertiveness include117 lessons frictions rebaselining external exceptions118 presentations construction rfq assess participate119 information countermeasure sellerseller's allocating requirements120 prioritisation completion start-to-start prioritising effectively121 schedules pfi szumal solving solve122 assisting based communications implement sectors123 assessed activities manager verifiers non-conformances124 conjunction professionals qualitative collate supervise125 specific plan reporting criteria commerce126 implemented masayuki tools manager methods127 reports quality identify prioritisation cycle128 delegated basic control confidentiality nel129 methodologies products metrics contingencies sourcing130 and refers objectives strategic verification131 identification grasping walkthroughs contractors sars132 contexts tqm completion recommend range133 scheduling contractor includes controlling mathematics134 resources systematization subset specify finalisation135 backgrounds business process opportunities supervising136 providers integration contract communicating rectifying137 variances erp sequencing processes framework138 baselines realization area-specific industry-recommended performance139 applicable execution customizing jmwatson providers140 evaluation clarifying directiveness ntos identifying141 authorisations systems self-reviews post-tender variances142 analysing clarified milestones sub-critical field143 collected scenarios unit un-scheduled and144 cycle maintenance authorizes f appropriateness145 descriptor actualization elements organisation analyse146 directed disassembling n awarding summative147 managed pma closure members templates148 endorsed oriented staffing operational certificate149 demonstrates multiphase guidelines minimising requests150 organised toyo development clients monitoring


Documents

How standard are standards: An examination of language emphasis in project management standards