Process, lifecycles and methods

Articles

Choosing the right route 
The attractive notion of ‘best practice’ within each business sector has created an eager market for models, methods and comparative measures. We all feel safest when following a proven path, so the creation and sponsorship of these ‘maturity models’ by professional bodies seems to give us ‘legitimate’ external standards to judge against. The score, rating or badge becomes all important. However, this only works if an appropriate model has been chosen from the many. 
Paul Boocock, CITI 
2007

Project management methodologies 
During CITI’s research over the last 15 years it has been found that one of the key determinants of success in running projects is the consistent use of a project management methodology. This applies to projects being run in all sectors of business and industry, not just Information Technology where formalised methodologies are most often expected to be found. Indeed the last two decades have seen an ever increasing use of project management methodologies. 
Dr Christopher Worsley, CITI 
2005

White papers 

Software development within projects 
Software development is a component of a highly significant percentage of projects. In many, it is the major component and, historically, software development has often been run as a project in its own right and confusion has been allowed to develop between software development life cycles and project management life cycles. The purpose of this article is to discuss characteristics of both types of life cycle and, in particular review some software development methods, providing a comparison between them.
Dr Thomas Docker, CITI 
2007

Complexity
Complexity theory has been applied on subjects as diverse as pure mathematics to socio-dynamics. Each domain defines complexity but generally follow Warren Weaver’s assertion that the “complexity of a particular system is the degree of difficulty in predicting the properties of the system [as a whole], if the properties of the system's parts are given.” When asked, most project managers claim their project is complex. So it is not surprising that research groups across the world have been applying complexity theory to projects. One of the groups is based in CITI, and the development of a model to determine the level of complexity in a project was seen as a natural follow on from the profiling of project managers and projects that CITI has done for the last 20 years. This paper discusses this research and provides insights into it's findings and the benefits into getting governance right for projects. 
Dr Christopher Worsley, CITI 
2011