Project Management Categorization; One Size Does Not Fit All

The most forward-thinking organizations are developing project management frameworks that vary based on certain project criteria. A key element of this is the project's classification.

Some thought leaders in this are Lynn Crawford, Brian Hobbs, and J. Robert Turner, whose book, Project Categorizations Systems, comes out this fall from PMI. Also, Russell Archibald's report on the 2003 IPMA Global Survey on Project Categorization (reported in Budapest in 2004) is well worth reading (click on the PDF link for best readibility).

NASA has decided to embrace project categorization, and has recently put together an initiative to develop a scalable project management framework that can adapt to certain project classification criteria (for example the complexity, urgency, and technology aspects as well as certain product types). Below is the full report (again, click on the PDF version for best readibility).

Identifying NASA Specific Project Types