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International Journal of Project Management 27 (2009) 787–794 www.elsevier.com/locate/ijproman

Project conceptualization using pragmatic methods Carmen Joham *, Mike Metcalfe, Saras Sastrowardoyo School of Management, Division of Business, University of South Australia, City West Campus, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia Received 21 May 2008; received in revised form 3 March 2009; accepted 10 March 2009

Abstract An important and difficult part of project management is the conceptualization stage – particularly when dealing with multiple powerful stakeholders and ‘messy’ situations. Pragmatism provides a way forward that makes central the ‘concepts’ being used to conceptualize the project (e.g. ‘timeliness’ or ‘sustainability’). This paper argues for a sequence of two approaches suggested in the literature that combine this pragmatism and soft systems thinking to conceptualize projects. These are Alexander’s ‘Synthesis’ [1] and Checkland’s ‘CATWOE’ [2]. The first identifies concepts or worldviews, the second uses these to draft a series of ‘what needs to be done’ statements. In the way of Pragmatic Systems Inquiry, these approaches suggested from the literature are then compared to a real case study: the LC-25 project. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved. Keywords: Conceptualization; Connections; Ideas; Interrogatives; Project management; Pragmatism

An important and difficult part of project management is the conceptualization stage. How well a project is conceptualized affects how well the project is defined and appropriately scoped. As the project scope is acknowledged as the basis upon which subsequent project management processes and activities are planned and delivered, the conceptualization stage can be seen as central to project management processes. Thus, having a framework on how project managers might approach the project conceptualization process is useful – particularly when dealing with multiple powerful stakeholders and ‘messy’ situations. Project management is about resolving a problem need. Dewey [3] argues that problems start with someone having a feeling of unease, or being concerned. It is a long way from articulating this unease to constructing a provisional document to be used by a project manager. Conceptualizing these concerns into provisional instructions, especially for modern complex projects, requires some means of emerging ideas in an environment that can accommodate *

Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 8 8302 0269; fax: +61 8 8302 0512. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (C. Joham), mike. [email protected] (M. Metcalfe), [email protected] (S. Sastrowardoyo). 0263-7863/$36.00 Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijproman.2009.03.002

the almost inevitable conflict between multiple powerful stakeholders. These stakeholders may include the general public, sponsors, buyers, investors, end users, or the project team. Their concerns need to be appreciated and sensemade as part of the idea creation process. Moreover, it would seem to be an advantage if the inevitable conflict involved in doing this could be turned into a creative process. Pragmatism [4] suggests that conceptualizing some event (activity) involves being clear about what ‘concept’ is being used to think about that event. For example, project managers might use the concept of ‘time’ to conceptualize the project. This would encourage the manager to think about deadlines, start time, finish times and task sequences. Using the concept of ‘effectiveness’ might encourage them to think about outcomes and flexibility. The task of conceptualizing projects therefore comes down to deciding what concepts to use. Fortunately, Miller’s magic seven plus or minus two [5] suggests not using too many. Systems thinking suggests that there is one concept that managers might use to conceptualize projects which offers the advantage of creativity. It is that of ‘inter-connections’ between ideas thought relevant to the project rather than considering these issues in isolation. For example, thinking

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about a road project in a developing country in terms of its connectivity (relationship) to other projects may result in joint infrastructure between the road and water or solarenergy catchments. Building a new road will help get the crops to market. The water catchments project might be to grow crops and the solar energy might be needed to process the crop somehow. These ideas can be connected. This paper will argue that pragmatism and systems thinking can be combined to provide a useful approach to conceptualizing projects. It will do this by providing two initially different approaches to connecting ideas from the literature – those of Alexander’s Synthesis [1] and Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology [2]. These are then connected to provide a comprehensive approach to conceptualizing projects. Last, a case study of an organization going through the project conceptualization process will be critiqued using the combined approach. First, however, it is thought necessary to briefly provide some background to pragmatic theory of knowledge which suggests identifying which concepts are used to conceptualize activities like the management of projects. It also seems appropriate to provide some background to the ‘inter-connectivity of ideas’ concept. 1. A project’s conceptual frame(s): Pragmatism The theory of knowledge that centers on conceptualization while seeking useful outcomes is that of pragmatism. Peirce [4] is usually credited with being the first pragmatist. He argued that logical statements are dependent on the concept(ual frame) being used by the writer. They can never be free of any prior conception. Kant and Nietzsche had also argued this. The writer’s conceptual frame (perspective, worldview, paradigm) determined what seemed logical. However, it was William James in Pragmatism [6], who argued that there is no single correct conceptual frame we should aspire to but many. Understanding within a community depended on accommodating these alternatives. Project conceptualization, particularly in ‘front end situation’ needs to capture convincing clear objectives. This opens the way to appreciating how to think about the inevitable conflicts of stakeholders that goes beyond the idea that one is right and another wrong. John Dewey in How We Think [3], and others as explained in The Metaphysical Club [7], elaborated on this conceptual pluralism. The next generation of pragmatists included Charles West Churchman, with The Design of Inquiry Systems [8] and The Systems Approach [9]. Churchman’s work might be interpreted as starting the process of applying pragmatism (although he did not call it pragmatism) to managerial and architectural project management. His work was further developed by his students [10–14]. As Hookins [15] explains, their approach has been informed by the work of Kant, Hegel, Faucault and Habermas [16], and Rorty [17]. The approach is pluralistic, communal, critical and reasoned, requiring public argument by a community of motivated doubters to justify the usefulness

of knowledge claims. It is critical in the sense of wanting inquiry to result in our having new and useful ways to act in the world and define successful projects. 2. Ideas inter-connectivity The concept of connectivity between two ideas can be seen as similar to the concepts of metaphor, analogy or synthesis; the relationship between two ideas. X is like Y. Dewey [3] makes some effort to distinguish analytical thinking (picking apart) from synthetical thinking (using analogy), calling for both to be used in reflection. He uses the example of considering ‘analysis’ as reductionism (zoom in); looking inwardly at the problem not outwardly, and dividing the problem into elements (variables) and studying these separately. He uses the term ‘picking apart’.’ This is the advocated approach of scientific thinking. By ‘synthesis’, he appears to mean stand outside the phenomenon, see it as an example or subset of some other wider phenomenon (zoom out). Think of analogies to the phenomenon. He uses the example of the historical physics mystery of why suction water-pumps can only suck up to a particular height. Analysis means looking at the water, pump and vacuum, and perhaps at a chemical level. Synthesis means asking what a tube full of unsupported water is analogous to. Dewey [3] argues that synthesis led to understanding there must be some force pushing down on the water to force it up so high thus an appreciation of atmospheric pressure. This synthesis approach therefore suggests that different perspectives on a problem, and consequently a different set of questions about the problem, can be generated by encouraging the problem solver to flip from ‘zooming in’ to ‘zooming out’ on the problem domain. This synthesis approach is therefore fundamental to the role of project management in problem structuring, where objectives are often unclear and where different stakeholders have conflicting aims. Connectivity, ‘between-ness’ or relationship has long been a perspective recognized for reflecting on social groups and actions [8]. Sociometric networks analysis does this more formally [19]. All of which suggests that we often make use of this particular view of the world. Looking at the relationship between two events, activities or phenomenon in a system would seem to suggest difference as well as similarity, as was recognized in the backlash to the interest in metaphors [20] to see connections between ideas. Contradictions, irony and paradox provide an alternative to the similarities encouraged by metaphors; one that focuses on differences. Reflecting on social phenomena by thinking about the tensions between elements goes back to Marx [21] and has been a recurrent theme of the pragmatic systems thinkers [12]. Contradiction in terms of dialectic argument sweeps in Habermas [16], Rorty [17] and argumentation theory [22]. One context within which some pragmatists, Churchman [9] and Ackoff [10], thought about connectivity was that of ‘systems’. A system is a series of connected ele-

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ments, where those connections are determined by a sense of some purposeful activity. So, if the roadway mentioned above is conceptualized as being one element in a system designed around the purposeful activity of getting crops to market, then this suggests particular connections, for example the truck loading points. However, deciding what the system is, so as to define those connections, becomes the problem. This paper will start with conceptualizing the connections in a way that suggests a system, before defining the system itself. 3. Problem structuring: Alexander’s synthesis Alexander [1] in the context of being interested in designing a new village for people being relocated in a developing nation, suggests how to go about connecting ideas into a network. He does it in a way that uses both analysis and synthesis from making use of what has been learnt in network graphing theory. So he suggests collecting ideas about the village such as, ‘we need our livestock to be well protected’. This might be labeled as the ‘livestock idea’ which will end up as the livestock node on his network graph. This might be deemed connected (a line in the network graph) to other stakeholders’ ideas such as, ‘we need good quality communal spaces’ (communal node); ‘the cows must be fenced from the bulls’ (fence node); ‘our health and the health of our livestock are woven together’ (health node); and so on. Having determined the connection between the idea nodes, a network might be drafted as in Fig. 1. The livestock idea may have been deemed to be connected to the health, water and fences ideas. Seeing alternative stakeholders’ ideas connected in this manner, akin to a social network, enables planners to see numerous separate ideas as connected together and then to undertake a ‘meta’ analysis by looking at the pattern that emerges from the overall network. This might include identifying key nodes and sub-clusters. Stakeholders’ ideas, expressed as conditional statements, might be sourced from interviews, documents, speeches, or a community meeting. The idea statements are anything considered to be important or interesting. They may be factual points, knowledge claims, recommen-

Fences Health

Livestock

Communal Property Fig. 1. Ideas network.

Water

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dations, summations or research findings. Hookins [15] argues that for methodical questioning we need to generate a complete range of statements. He reviews the use of our interrogative pronouns and adverbs as one approach. Ulrich [14] provides another. The collection of these statements is expected to gain something from use of the creative processes of group argumentation [23]. List [24] has developed a group argument process which takes advantage of the competitive element of argumentation to develop the statements, but one that minimizes the risk of quarrelling. The process involves first giving each stakeholder an opportunity to describe what they understand is the purpose of the project, and then to state their concerns. This often subdivides the stakeholders into contrasting groups. Their differences can be used to improve the reasoning of the other. Next, each stakeholder is encouraged to make conditional statements about what the project is. These are recorded and in the third stage presented sequentially for all those present to debate. The debate is intended to edit the wording of the statements until there is a clear majority agreement on the statement. However it is done, numerous statements need to be collected and connected (synthesized). This involves deciding which statements are strongly related (linked or connected). Once this is done (and moving back to analysis) statement numbers and the connections between the numbered statements can be recorded in an Interaction Matrix. This is then ready to be input into Network Analysis software, which in turn will produce a network graph with the statement numbers as nodes. This network diagram can be calculated using one of a number of computer algorithms [25]. Simply put, these programs draft this network graph diagram by first calculating for all the connections together and then locating the nodes in the graph as if the line connections were ‘elastic’. Clearly this would be rather hard to do by hand. The authors experience is that for this exercise there only needs to be about 10–15% of connections compared to nodes, else the network gets too cluttered. The Small Worlds phenomenon [26–28] predicts that this network diagram will display unexpected clusters of statements. In the network graph below, the software calculations appear to have emerged three clusters, one at the top, middle and bottom. This sort of analysis provides a meta-level analysis of the network of the statement as a whole. The large list of statements can therefore be collated into these four clusters. The next step of naming these clusters of statements is important and a creative exercise of synthesis. The collections of statements might (at least for this paper because of what is to follow) be called worldviews (viewpoints, issues). For the village project, the emergent clusters revealed appearance, economic, security, and knowledge sharing worldviews. These views or worldviews have been obtained by engaging with the stakeholders. Put the other way, when asked what is meant by the worldview called ‘economic’ and so on, it is possible to refer back to the statements that made up that cluster.

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4. Historical development Moving on to some examples of the synthesis suggested by Alexander [1], three in particular stand out as interesting in providing some generic worldviews. The three examples briefly summarized below synthesize the management literature. This means the resulting worldviews might be useful for a range of project management problems. They do not explicitly use Alexander’s Synthesis but seem to have done something intuitively very analogous. Allison [29] synthesized the Cuban Bay of Pigs disaster inquiries, Morgan [30] synthesized the organizational theory literature and Van de Ven and Poole [31] synthesized the organization change literature. Each identified three, eight and four worldviews, respectively, which might be used to conceptualize projects. Allison’s [29] connections synthesis of the Bay of Pigs disaster inquiries emerged three worldviews that determined the ‘how and what’ of those inquires; how the inquiry was undertaken and what was inquired about. These were connected. One of these worldviews was called ‘technical’. Typically, the ‘how’ was using mathematical methods (e.g. operational research, etc.) which meant what was inquired into was quantifiable, such as logistics. The second worldview was called ‘organizational’. This used inquiry methods like interviews and document analysis to look at whole-of-group issues such as strategy, culture, power struggles and group dynamics. The third worldview was called ‘psychological’. This used experimental testing to study individual human behavior including motivation, cognitive styles, human information processing and innovation. Each failed to address some of the issues identified by one of the other worldviews, although overlaps existed. Linstone [13], sometimes with Mitroff, then used these three worldviews of Alison to conceptualize (sense-make) large projects such as the Challenger Disaster review, the Bhopal Company chemical spill in India, and the war on terrorism. These worldviews then may be of use for any inquiry thread of a project; how knowledge is to be collected. Morgan’s [30] synthesis of the connections in the organizational theory literature emerged eight root metaphors or worldviews of how organizations of people are conceptualized. These he labeled as like: a machine, an adaptive organism, a learning system, a national culture, a political system, a mental hospital prison, flux and domination. These he suggests are the implicit mental images used by writers commenting on organizations. Given that project management includes designing some sort of organizational structure, this suggests his worldviews are likely to be useful for any management structure and processes thread of a project. Van de Ven and Poole’s [31] synthesis of the connections between the organizational change literature emerged four worldviews of the drivers of organizational change. These are teleological, dialectic, life cycle, and evolution. For example, the life cycle worldview of organization change-

drivers sees change in terms of sequences of stages projects need to go through to completion. The dialectic worldview sees change in term of competition, even if only verbally, between competing parties as the driver. Conceptualizing projects using these worldviews, as an inter-connected set, would suggest thinking about projects in terms of things like: within group motivations, competitive forces, sequential stages over time and adaptation to a changing environment, respectively. Their four worldviews are likely to be useful for any people management project thread. 5. Soft systems: CATWOE A rather different consideration of the connection between ideas can be seen in the work of Checkland [2,32]. His Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) concepts for thinking about project conceptualization have emerged over 30 years of application. SSM builds on the interpretative paradigm and is a methodology which focuses on the various perspectives through which a project is to be carried out. Generically the concepts Checkland uses are the interrogatives ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘why’. The remaining ‘how’ and ‘when’ are used when the project has been conceptualized into tasks. The fact that his method is still being applied, interpreted and written about after 30 years [33] while most management fads have come and gone, suggests that it has been useful. Checkland’s SSM is designed to cope with ‘messy’ situations, projects with undefined objectives and particularly complex relationships. Over the last few years, a variation of SSM has been developed and ‘systems-failures’ and ‘rich pictures’ approaches are now related to SSM. In project management SSM has been applied for a variety of purposes, for example training [34]; project management definition [35]; project hard and soft analysis [36]; and project modeling [37]. Our interest exists in the roots of SSM: CATWOE. CATWOE is a mnemonic word that represents the following terms: Customer, Actor, Transformation, Weltanschauung, Owner and Environmental constrains. As a modeling technique, CATWOE’s strength is in bringing forth various perspectives on a problem situation, that well can be transferred to the scope of the project, as well as supporting various forms of questions and assumptions in the conceptualization stage of the project. Taking Checkland’s ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘why’: ‘Who’ comes in the form of identifying the project Customers (affectees), the Actors (doers) and the Owners (decision-makers). ‘What’ comes in two forms, the first being, what is to be Transformed (process). For the purpose of this research, the ‘why’ is called the Environment. The mnemonic of CATWOE is used to summarize these elements. The W (worldview) as discussed in the section above comes from the stakeholders. The CATWOE concepts are connected together using the second ‘what’. This takes the form of a statement Checkland [32] calls the root definition. It is a statement of ‘what needs to be done’; the project. Therefore the root definition statement contains the CATWOE concepts. In

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SSM it is critical to clearly define a ‘mission statement’, that is to say, a conceptual model addressing what the project is about. In addition, another value of CATWOE of particular interest for project managers is that it also ensures that we have sufficient information to establish a well description of the purpose and objective(s) of the project (i.e. a clear purposeful activity). An illustration of CATWOE is provided below. This paper is arguing that the concept of ‘ideas interconnections’ is useful for project conceptualization; looking at the project (i.e. problem situation) from another viewpoint, one that can provide various perspectives and moves the project manager outside living his/her own particular scenario. In this light, the first part of Checkland’s method can be seen as providing the ideas. The connections between them is provided by his next suggestion to use the tension between stakeholders with alternative worldviews to debate the wording of the root definition statement of what needs to be done. Modern project management is a diplomatic mission to appease the multiple powerful stakeholders, be they co-investors, users, regulators or the general public. So the creative use of this tension into the practical task of connecting the ideas seems very appealing. 6. An illustration Assume a project starts from concerns over needing to move a tribal village due to the development of a hydroelectric dam. Table 1 illustrates an adaptation of CATWOE to this tribal village project. Connecting CATWOE in a root definition (what needs to be done) might result in a statement something like: The intellectual property of how to design and maintain a culturally appropriate, more natural village environment on a new site needs to be collaboratively developed with the ‘friends of the village’ group over the next five years. This statement starts to be the conceptualization of the project. Returning to Table 1 above, the worldview provided was ‘appearance’. This was one worldview extracted from an Alexander Synthesis [1]. The worldview determines how the transformation (what is to be done) occurs. The illustration showed a worldview of:

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‘appearance’ which assume included statements about making the new village pleasing to the villagers eye, investors, to be culturally appropriate and blending in with the environment. This caused a transformation statement of: From old village below the new waterline to an environmentally pleasing, safe, conducive, modernized, productive, village above the waterline within five years. Having used the ‘appearance’ worldview, the others now need to be considered. They were economics, security and knowledge sharing. If the worldview was changed to the economic one then this might emerge a transformation statement of: From a village which has a low GNP to one with the appearance of a higher GNP within five years. In turn this would generate a second root definition (what needs to be done). Both these root definitions, and any others, need to be addressed at the same time, like a juggler with many balls in the air. The worldviews identified from the Alexander Synthesis [1] can be used to identify an inter-connected set of transformations and root definitions. Should the project be seen to have a significant inquiry thread like the identification of agricultural opportunities then the Alison/Linstone worldviews may be useful for determining a root definition. Should the village project be seen to have a significant governance structure design thread then Morgan’s metaphors may be useful as worldviews. The village project might be seen to have a significant people change project thread and therefore it may be helpful to consider using the Van de Ven and Poole worldviews. 7. The case study Having explained the pragmatic approach to project conceptualization using two approaches from the literature, the case of a large organization going through the project conceptualization process is outlined. As Checkland [32] points out in his LUMAS model, approaches suggested in the literature need to be operationalized into a form that is appropriate for the user. It should not be expected that organizations operating in a wide range of

Table 1 CATWOE adaptation for the tribal village project. C: The customers, affectees A: The actors, doers T: The transformation process; to do what? W: Worldview, perspective O: The owners, decision-makers E: The environment, why doing the project

Villagers, travelers, existing and new businesses, property investors, surrounding villages Project managers, property owners, managers, social workers, business owners, contractors From old village below the new waterline to an environmentally pleasing, safe, conducive, modernized, productive, village above the waterline within five years Appearance management (perhaps derived from an Alexander synthesis [1]) Government, business owners The village will go underwater, but this may provide the opportunity to design a pleasant environment in a new village that will encourage new investment, encourage tenants to stay, and improve the working experience. The knowledge of how to undertake this sort of change may generate community property management intellectual property

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contexts follow any approach rigorously. Rather they might use it to critique what they are actually thinking of doing, to see if they are losing some advantage. This will help approaches evolve, and ensure the organization remains responsible for how it conceptualizes its own projects. This sentiment is expressed in the distinction between generalizing where an approach is valid, compared to inquiring which organizations find the approach transferable into their specific situation. The organization in this case is OZ-Deploy, an Australian public sector organization which regularly manages multiple complex projects. The organization deploys large-scale emergency services to disaster trapped areas and is capable of targeting areas all over the world. It aims to take with it, and sustain, much of the first world infrastructure required to support a community in any weather conditions. This infrastructure includes engineers, water, electricity communications, food, construction machinery and security, focusing on reconciling the needs of multiple stakeholders. It therefore has a massive and ongoing logistics requirement during periods of a deployment, and there may be multiple deployments at any one time, making the nature of their business a very complex one. The scope of this project is underlined by OZ-Deploy’s goal to significantly improve its logistics capability through to 2025. This has been formally defined as the organization’s LC-25 project and key objective. The project has some budget constraints, but the organization is large and hierarchical enough to influence changes in future transport and storage technology in its base country. OzDeploy have been looking for an approach to assist with conceptualizing this challenging project. The organization urgently needed to clearly define what needed to be done and how. There were pressures from the local Government and other key stakeholders. Moreover, the conceptualization had to be justifiable to senior management. During this process, the academic authors were approached to assist with selecting appropriate approaches given their predisposition to soft operational research. A total of ten workshops were conducted by the academic authors. After receiving some background briefing, the academic authors suggested the application of the Alexander’s Synthesis [1] and Checkland’s CATWOE [2]. Both concepts have been applied by the academic authors elsewhere with some success and therefore were seen as suitable approaches to potentially provide some guidelines for the conceptualization of the OZ-Deploy LC-25 project. Prior the involvement of the academic authors into the LC-25 project, Oz-Deploy had already undertaken a series of workshops and meetings for approximately two years. These included an ‘as is’ study of its logistics and the identification of six ‘characteristics’ – as an appropriate manageable size of characteristics – which OZ-Deploy wanted improved in its future logistics capability. The following six characteristics had been signed off by the senior management as OZ-Deploy’s crucial focus for LC-25. These are:

(1) Flexibility, the ability to transition between tasks easily. (2) Security, the ability to withstand accidents and thefts. (3) Networked, the ability to share information so as to develop a shared understanding of the situation. (4) Interchange, the ability to provide services to and accept service from other organizations and nations. (5) Accuracy, the ability to get the right amount, to the right place at the right time. (6) Multitask, the ability to send several missions overseas at the same time. Whilst an Alexander’s Synthesis had not been formally undertaken at the starting point of the project, the end result was fairly similar, the six characteristics clearly represented the scope of LC-25 project and set its boundaries. The characteristics were useful as the emergent worldviews (perspectives, concepts) that were then used as input into CATWOE; with these in hand the academic authors started the process of conceptualizing the project using six identifiable concepts. They informally mapped these characteristics with the organization’s concerns and needs gained from OZ-Deploy’s various stakeholders. However, not using Alexander’s Synthesis formally means that they did not have the list of significant statements. Therefore, if later someone asked what comprises a characteristic, or what discussions determined a characteristic, it is not possible to provide the relevant cluster of statements. Also, one of the intentions of Alexander’s Synthesis is to generate unexpected ‘characteristics’. The emergent of some of these characteristics may have been a combination of two or more characteristics. It may have also provided a new characteristic. But this opportunity has been missed. The tensions caused by not including all statements into the Alexander Synthesis [1] network were revealed by those at Oz-Deploy. Oz-Deploy stakeholders occasionally mentioned other concepts like ‘preparedness’, ‘capability’ and ‘sustainability’. At this point, it was not clear if these concepts were covered by the LC-25 six characteristics. However, the project moved to the planning stage under general management approval. In the attempt to conceptualize the logistics project at Oz-Deploy, the academic authors could also be said to have informally used CATWOE. They set up a series of four day-long workshops, attended by a fairly diverse group of experienced logistics managers of some seniority and who represented key project stakeholders. Differing small groups were asked, in a series of one hour sessions, to identify and justify (E) to the others present, a set of statements of what they thought needed to be transformed (T) for their particular characteristic (W). Informally, these groups self-organized themselves under the LC-25 six characteristics. So for example, the ‘flexibility’ characteristic group was asked to say what they thought needed to be transformed to make the logistics operations more flexible. Suggestions arising included provision of alternative transport, management structures and IT soft-

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ware. This was proven to be a successful and valuable exercise. The remaining parts of CATWOE, namely identifying the customer (affectees), Actors (doers) and Owners (decision-makers), was covered in a two days post workshop analysis. This identified who, exactly, are involved in each of the suggested transformations. The senior managers of Oz-Deploy delegated this ownership responsibility to relevant line managers. Independent to their work position and who they were, the owners decided whether they were happy with the when, where and how, and decided if the projects have been satisfactorily conceptualized. The general consensus was that a successful conceptualization was achieved. At the end of this conceptualization stage the academic authors advised that owners would need to apply further decision-making processes to decide which subproject to pursue or prioritize. Note that the affectees were seen to be the design engineers who will draft the plan and contract with project managers from the root definition. The academic authors are currently facilitating this stage of the LC-25 project. 8. Conclusion This paper has argued that the conceptualization of projects requires consideration of which concepts are to be used to undertake an effective conceptualization process. To demonstrate how to identify useful concepts or worldviews from stakeholders’ comments, an approach called ‘Alexander’s Synthesis’ was outlined. This method approach is that ideas are networked. At this point, the author’s view of Checkland’s CATWOE was introduced. It was then suggested that the worldviews that had emerged, from the Alexander’s Synthesis, were used as the ‘W’ in Checkland’s CATWOE. By then considering the what, why, and who, a root definition of what needed to be done could be conceptualized. These two approaches are considered to be pragmatic because they suggest sense-making by seeing the physical world through a variety of concepts and their end point is an action. They are also considered systemic because they are approaches that reflect the connections between things, the statements, each other’s ideas networked and the interrogatives (what, why, who). The authors are not suggesting that the two pragmatic approaches need to be considered as procedures to be followed rigorously in project definition. Rather, they are seen as ways of critiquing what is actually done to conceptualize projects by organizations. To demonstrate this, an attempt by an organization called Oz-Deploy to conceptualize a series of projects to improve their logistics functions was described. In particular, the authors described the actions occurring during the definition of LC-25 project at Oz-Deploy. Its actions were compared to Alexander’s Synthesis and Checkland’s CATWOE. Whilst these methods did not present project owners with the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ project to undertake, it has been nonetheless a valuable precursor to that final decision-

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making, in that they have helped reveal underlying assumptions prior to making expensive project investment decisions and provided a satisfactory project conceptualization to all key stakeholders. We believe that both pragmatic approaches, Alexander’s Synthesis and Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology are of great value for the reasoned conceptualization of a project. However, potential users will need to modify them to critique their own particular situation. We accept that at present formal project management methods rarely use this pragmatic project management approach. But we also believe that many managers are unhappy with the project conceptualization processes. We believe the pragmatic approaches to be feasible, democratic, creative as well as useful, once the need for a multi-perspective and inter-connected view of project conceptualization has been accepted as inevitable for dealing with multiple, powerful stakeholders and across multiple projects. It can be seen that – informally – this culture did exist in Oz-Deploy. Hence, in subsequent projects the approach has been agreed to be tightened to provide a more rigorous, justifiable project conceptualization (e.g. involving prescriptive workshops using soft systems tools: Alexander and CATWOE). There will be, of course, far-ranging implications for organizations seeking to adopt this more pragmatic approach in terms of internal project management structures, formal training, information systems and participants motivation. References [1] Alexander C. Notes on the synthesis of form. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; 1964. [2] Checkland P. Systems thinking, systems practice. New York: John Wiley; 1981. [3] Dewey J. How we think. NY: Dover; 1910. [4] Pierce CS. How to make our ideas clear. Popular Sci Month 1878;12:286–302. [5] Miller GA. The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychol Rev 1956;63:81–97. [6] James W. Pragmatism. Cleveland: World Publishing (Meridian); 1907/1910. [7] Menand L. The metaphysical club. London: Flamingo; 2001. [8] Churchman CW. The design of inquiring systems. New York: John Wiley; 1971. [9] Churchman CW. The systems approach and its enemies. New York: Basic Books; 1979. [10] Ackoff RL. On passing through 80. In: Liberatore M, editor. Russell L. Ackoff conference, Villanova University; 1999. . [11] Ackoff R. Making a difference, systems thinking/systems change. [12] Mason RO, Mitroff II. Challenging strategic planning assumption. New York: John Wiley and Sons; 1981. [13] Linstone HA. Decision making for technology executives: using multiple perspectives. Boston: Artech House; 1999. [14] Ulrich W. Boundary critique. In: Daellenbach HG, Flood RL, editors. Informed student guide in the management sciences. London: Thomson Learning; 2002. [15] Hookins T. Rethinking systems thinking, PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, South Australia; 2005. [16] Habermas J. Discourse ethics in moral consciousness and communicative action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 1990.

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