Verktækni - 2019, Qupperneq 58

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domain Iceland is atypical among countries often seen as international benchmarks, e.g. Norway, the UK
and Sweden, and that is the fractional public project governance framework, which might also explain
why the Icelandic Project Management Association has not yet fully actualized its full potential as a
professional leader for project management in Iceland.
Keywords: International development, project management, profession, Icelandic development.

Introduction
Project management is sometimes said to have emerged in the 1950s when techniques like PERT and
CPM were developed. This development was driven by the demands of the militaries, and various
industries, where there was a need to reduce development time, increase efficiency in management,
and build up more capability in establishing, planning, executing and controlling increasingly complex
projects. Projects have, of course, been planned and executed throughout history, but in the first half of
the 20th century management science emerged with the time and motion studies—attributed to people
like Fredrick W. Taylor—as a major feature of scientific management. The Gantt chart was an example of
this new way of thinking, and it became well known as a production planning tool in the 1920s, and then
became a popular way of representing project schedules graphically. The period of 1950 to 1979 began
with the emergence of systems project management, with emphasis on holism, hierarchy, boundaries
and interfaces. This was initiated through network planning and the introduction of CPM by DuPont as
an activity-oriented tool for the planning and controlling of construction projects and PERT, an event-
oriented network scheduling system, applying statistical calculations as a part of the Polaris missile
program in the USA (Morris, 2013). There was also an increased concern for people at work, and project
management started to gain recognition as a specific profession. Peter Morris (2013) defined Brigadier
Bernard Schriever as the father of modern project management. Schriever led the Atlas program, during
which the first intercontinental ballistic missile was developed and tested in 1956. Schriever applied
concurrent engineering and defined the role of the project manager as a person with both technical and
budget authority for the project. Gaddis (1959) wrote a paper in the Harvard Business Review entitled,
"The project manager", where he shared his thoughts on this new, important role.

An important milestone on the pathway to becoming a profession was the establishment of the first
professional project management associations. The International Association for Project Management
(IPMA) was founded in 1965 (under the name "Internet"), the Project Management Institute (USA) in
1969, and the Association for Project Management (APM) in 1972. Emphasis on the project manager´s
interpersonal skills became much stronger in the 1980s, including emphasis on the need to define more
accurately the competences of project managers. The knowledge bases of the professional project
management associations emerged in the 1980s with the introduction of PMBoK by PMI in 1980, and
the APM body of knowledge in 1991. The project management associations introduced certification
programs, based on their competence baselines. PMI started with its PMP certification in 1984, APM
introduced its program in 1986, and IPMA started with its certification program in 1998.

Between 1980 and 2000, due to technological advancement worldwide communication became easier
and cheaper, and this influenced the project management discipline. Graduate level educational
programs, specializing in project management, had already been introduced by the 1980s, and in the
mid 1990s, dozens of university degrees in project management were available (Morris, 2013). Their