One of the most important organizational developments in recent years has been the significant growth in project work across different sectors and industries. Academic research confirms this development and recent industry reports also highlight the growing importance of project, programme and portfolio management practices to organizations. Moreover, whilst different industry surveys continue to highlight the familiar problems of product quality, missed deadlines and budget overruns, the same surveys also highlight the need for a more strategic approach towards the management of projects and a greater focus on the value and benefits that projects and programmes contribute to organizations. Within the project management literature however, the product creation view of projects still prevails and there is now a need to augment this view with other relevant perspectives linked to the developing world of 21st century projects. Against this background, this paper presents a new perspective on projects and programmes as value creation processes, a much broader perspective than the classical view of temporary production. Based on the work of the late Richard Normann, the core ideas are presented in the form of a conceptual framework and these are then illustrated in relation to recent practice within a large integrated food group in the UK. A number of conclusions are then drawn including some practical suggestions on how the framework might be used in practice.

An important development in project management in recent years has been the emergence of a new class of projects, in areas such as organisational change and IT, integrated business solutions, and long-term public service delivery. Often referred to as ‘business projects’, this new class of projects (and programmes) reflects a growing conceptual shift away from the traditional engineering view of projects, towards a more business-oriented view, in which the primary concern is no longer the capital asset, system or facility etc, but increasingly the challenge of implementing business strategy, improving organisational effectiveness, and managing the realisation of stakeholder benefits. Drawing on recent research from the UK Government-funded Rethinking Project Management Network, this paper argues that future research in this area needs to look beyond the mainstream literature on project management, to other relevant disciplines such as strategic management, operations management, and the management of change. Against this background, the authors present four conceptual perspectives from the management literature, which can be usefully applied to business projects. They represent exploratory contributions from four participants in the Network – a special collaboration between researchers – whose ideas and perspectives were either discussed at the Network meetings, or are the subject of research elsewhere. Collectively, the four contributions represent an exploratory discussion of different theoretical perspectives, in order to inform and stimulate other researchers and practitioners working in the field.