Project management by early warnings

The increasing turbulence found in the corporate environments today and concurrent engineering as applied to project-related activities, there is growing demands on the flexibility of project management and the ability to anticipate the future. The conventional methods of project control are not really capable of rising to these challenges. The early warnings observed in project-related activities or the weak signals as described in Igor Ansoff's theory enable project managers to better anticipate and manage otherwise unforeseeable project problems. This article explains the character of the phenomenon and some other related factors. It shows how early warnings relate to project problems and their causes, and develops a preliminary model for the utilisation of early warnings. The article is a continuation of an article published in the Internation Journal of Project Management Vol. 15, No. 6 in 1997. © 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd and IPMA. All rights reserved.