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Oliver F. Lehmann has studied Linguistics, Literature and History at
the University of Stuttgart and Project Management at the University of Liverpool,
UK, where he holds a Master of Science Degree. He practiced project management
for more than 12 years mostly for the automotive industry and related trades,
when he decided to make the change and become a trainer, speaker and author in
1995. His customers include international companies such as Airbus, DB Schenker
Logistics, Microsoft, Olympus, and Deutsche Telekom. He has also had assignments
as a trainer in Asia, Europe and USA. He may be reached at oliver@oliverlehmann.com.
His web site is oliverlehmann-training.de/startseite.html.
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When we look at project management as it is taught and discussed today, internal
projects are the typical focus, performed mostly by internal teams. In this case,
the concept of a project is that an organization builds a project team, a kind
of task force, to apply certain changes. For example, to promote strategies, implement
tools and infrastructure, possibly disinvest from something, merge or split organizations
and so on. There may be some procurement here and there, when the team needs external
support from a contractor, but this comes as something exceptional, in other words,
as an add-on to "normal" project management.
One can see this understanding of the project management discipline in many
places, such as in literature, standards, training, academic education, project
management software and certification.
No question, this is valid for many projects. Knowing how to get people temporarily
from the performing organization to work for the project and build cross-functional
teams is an important competency for a project manager.
However, many project managers look at their current jobs and realize that
this does not apply to them and their work as a project manager. What these project
managers are doing is better described as:
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