Projects Management for Innovation. An Italian case study

Dealing with an increasingly volatile organizational environment is a serious challenge for any project manager. Project management is a framework which applies knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to plan, coordinate and control a project and its activities. Traditional project management can be characterized as reflecting linear and sequential processes, with stable, known and consistent requirements. Yet most real-world development efforts are much more likely to be conducted in volatile environments. Even seemingly minor changes can produce unanticipated effects, as systems become more complex and their components more interdependent (Sanjivet al., 2005). Projects may have a relatively clear mission, but the specific requirements can be volatile and evolving as customers and development teams alike explore the unknown (Highsmith, 2002). The aim of this paper is to analyse how the unexpected events are dealt during the project implementation and the effectiveness of the approach of Agile project management to changing circumstances or to react to surprises.