Daniel Adler's research while affiliated with University of Technology Sydney and other places

Purpose The Iron Triangle, also called the Triple Constraint, is a central concept to project management research and practice, representing the relationship between key performance criteria. However, there is disagreement about which criteria should be represented on the vertices of this triangle. The purpose of this paper is to explore which concepts are part of the Iron Triangle, and how these concepts have changed over time. Design/methodology/approach This paper explores 45 years of project management research, drawing on a database of 109,804 records from 1970 to 2015. Three corpora were constructed, representing the project management and Time, Cost, and Quality Management literature. Time and Cost are consistently identified as part of the Iron Triangle. However, the status of quality is contested. Key concepts in the project management literature were explored using scientometric research techniques, to understand the relationship between these concepts. Findings Significant links were found between Time, Cost, and Quality, verifying these concepts as the vertices on the Iron Triangle. These links were significantly stronger than links to alternatives, such as Scope, Performance, or Requirements. Other concepts that are core to the Iron Triangle were also identified, and how these have changed over time. Originality/value This research develops the understanding of a key project management concept by clarifying which concepts are part of the Iron Triangle, based on evidence of how the concept is used in research. This paper also reveals the context in which this concept is used, and how this has changed over the last 45 years.

It is commonly assumed that using project management and IT skills are good for business performance. This research explored this assumption by testing whether the use of project management and IT skills have a positive affect on business' total sales and profitability. The research data was drawn from two longitudinal Government surveys of small to medium enterprises in Australia. Models were created to describe the relationship between project management, IT skills, profitability and total sales using multiple linear regression and binary logistic regression. The results show that when controlling for the influence of other business skills, project management and IT skills have a significant positive influence on sales and profitability.

This research uses quantitative techniques to reveal trends in project management related research published between 1962 and 2012. The data set for this research includes 94,472 unique records sourced from the Scopus and ISI Web of Science databases. The keywords and abstracts that authors have used to describe their work have been analysed in terms of word frequency, rate of change and the co-occurrence of keywords and abstract terms. This data has been used to construct network maps of the field, depicting the relative association between key topics. Comparisons are made between the frequencies of key terms and rapid changes in the ways that terms are used in the literature to identify emergent trends and passing fads. Amongst other findings, this research has revealed evidence to indicate a change in emphasis in project management research from a technical engineering orientation to one which encompasses a broader organisational perspective.

A fundamental assumption of project management practice and research is that using project management to achieve organizational objectives improves organizational performance. However, there is little published research that directly questions this assumption. This paper tests the hypothesis that using project management increases the productivity of small to medium enterprises, using data from two longitudinal surveys of Australian businesses with less than 200 staff members. These data were used to create models of the relationship between productivity and business skills using binary logistic regression. The models demonstrate that project management has a significant impact on small to medium enterprise productivity.

The field of Complexity Theory research has grown considerably over the last two decades, but it is unclear whether the field is, or has ever been, an integrated whole. This paper uses Scientometric research techniques; a computational way to depict changes in Complexity Theory research as a whole. The field is mapped in terms of the geographic distribution of publications, the relationships between individual authors and the research fields to which they contribute, and the network of citations between publications and the sources they reference. This mapping has been used to address the question of whether there is a divide between Complexity Theory as applied to research in Mathematics and Computer Science, and Complexity Theory as used in Management research; an important consideration for those interested in the application of Complexity Theory in Management research past the level of explanatory metaphor.