Although it has been years since the Classical Management Approach has been
defined, it stills shows a strong influence on today’s Project Management field. In its
theoretical principles, project management always concerned with the roles and
responsibilities identification, processes, policies, and procedures. In practice, applying
these principles with some modification (Tailoring) is crucial to achieve projects’
success. In addition, managing resources, including human resources, is a very
important part of management in the projects. It includes management of teams,
training individuals, and finding different ways that could motivate each team member.
The term the ‘systemic analysis of work’ defined by Frederick Tylor (1911), is what can
be referred to in the project management by work identification that includes many
steps, starting by defining scope, creating work breakdown structure for the planned
work, and then drilling down to the level of activities that reflects the day to day work by
project team. Not only that, but also putting a frame of the correcting time and method
that should be utilised is part of the planning too. These steps are the building blocks for
each project, as due to the temporary nature of the projects, it cannot leave any part of
work to be subjected to the “rule of thumb”, otherwise, the project is promising to be
failure.
However, the separation of controlling and planning from the work execution is taking
place in project management to some extent. As project managers are responsible of
planning the overall project stages and tasks, the team managers also have some
degree of freedom in planning their part of work the way that could deliver the required
products, and then they should take approval from their managers.
Regarding Bureaucracy in management, it is also reflected but to a very small extent in
the project management, as dehumanize the work may show some forms of rigidity that
will not suite the changing nature of projects. In addition, the strategic drift that could
happen as a result of Bureaucracy, will lead the project work to be considered as failure
if it does not achieve its strategic objective. Moreover, as dealing with the Bureaucratic
nature of some governmental organisation will hinder the project work, it has been
defined in the project management as a Functional Organisation, that should be
identified since the beginning of the project in order to define the ways to obtain the
required authority in each stage or step.
As a conclusion, as I have summarised above, the classical management approach is
still having strong influence and proves its appropriateness to the universal project
management roles that are applicable nowadays,based on the global best practices.
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