PGCS - Project and Program Management Symposium
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PGCS - Project and Program Management Symposium
PGCS Symposium 2024/25

Walt Lipke Award Winners

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2019 Winner

Professor Shankar Sankaran

The Walt Lipke Project Governance and Control Excellence Award, plus $1000 prize

A Model for Organizational Project Management and its Validation

It is important that an organization selects the right projects and carefully manages and governs them to deliver their intended benefits. This paper will describe a model for Organizational Project Management (OPM) to help organizations to do that. OPM is the integration of all project management-related activities of an organization linking strategic decisions (where the project management-related activities are to be carried out) with business decisions (portfolio management and benefits realization) with their management (program and project management) and their governance at both the strategic and project levels. 

Professor Shankar Sankaran
Professor Shankar Sankaran receiving his award.

It is important that an organization selects the right projects and carefully manages and governs them to deliver their intended benefits. This paper will describe a model for Organizational Project Management (OPM) to help organizations to do that. OPM is the integration of all project management-related activities of an organization linking strategic decisions (where the project management-related activities are to be carried out) with business decisions (portfolio management and benefits realization) with their management (program and project management) and their governance at both the strategic and project levels. 

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Biography

Professor Shankar Sankaran

Shankar Sankaran PhD, MEng is a Professor of Organisational Project Management (OPM)) at the School of the Built Environment at the University of Technology Sydney(UTS). His current research interest is in Organisational Project Management. He has developed and teaching a subject titled Governance, Portfolio and Program Management in a Master of Project Management Course at UTS. He has authored two books on OPM, an edited Cambridge University Press Handbook in 2017 and a new book on OPM being published by Edward Elgar in 2019 Professor Ralf Muller and Professor Nathalie Drouin are also authors of these two books. The three of them were awarded the IPMA Prize for Research in 2019 for their work on Balanced Leadership in Projects about which they completed a PMI Sponsored Research Grant in 2018. Shankar is the Current President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences and Deputy Chair of the Global Accreditation Centre of the Project Management Institute. Shankar has worked as a major project manager and project director in industry before joining academia.