Sustainable Project Management for Regional Development

Projects are a proven tool for the management of the development of regions and ecosystems, be it smart cities, smart regions or developing countries. Due to the complexity of such developments and the respective projects, the successful management is considered to be a "wicked problem". Complex and unknown cause-and-effect chains, unclear scoping and ambiguities, diverging goals, a multitude of stakeholders and dependencies, and frequent changes make it difficult to define projects and to apply traditional project management. Scientific literature proves that such developments and projects are difficult to manage, they form indeed "wicked problems" for management science. The desired impact is often not achieved, instead undesired impact harms the development. If results are achieved, they do not last or are not sustainable. Sustainable project management provides tools for the assessment of such scenarios, e.g. for analyzing the cause-and-effect chains of a project and the environment in a holistic way or over the complete life cycle. Results-based management puts the focus on the development and management of complex cause-and-effect chains. This contribution investigates the challenges, deficits, but also the possible solutions provided by better project management processes, methods and tools, with a focus on the case of smart water projects (UN SDG 6,7,11). The presented research follows a mixed method approach combining deductive literature work with inductive perspectives from the Focus Group to bring real world insights from Pakistan, South Africa, Kazakhstan and Germany. The contribution presents the current status of the research, highlighting the findings from literature and Focus Group, describing the cases and their issues, and formulating the research questions and the research strategy.

regional development

result-
based management

sustainability

sustainable project management