Relevance of project management standards and their main characteristics. Comparison among four project management standards and development of a method that combines the most useful features

This thesis aims to analyse some of the standards of Project Management, to identify their strong points and their limits and to propose a method that reworks the obtained results and makes them specific for the Italian construction industry. Once compared four standards (PMBOK, ISO 21500, ICB, PRINCE2), all Anglo-Saxon and not intended for a specific type of project, I have reworked and enhanced some of the positive aspects of each one to develop a method that could be suitable for the Italian construction industry and at the same time complete, but not so specific to prevent from being reproducible, fundamental characteristic of every method. As Project Management aims to coordinate the figures interacting in a project and expects the PM to relate with the surrounding environment and with several interlocutors, interpersonal relationship skills and the knowledge of the relevant environment are as important as technical competences. For this reason, the proposed method first splits the Project Management in a technical, a behavioural and a contextual range, recalling ICB structure; every range has been then developed as follows:  the technical range follows PMBOK, but with the addition of two elements: ▫ a corresponding item in the Italian construction industry has been identified for every input, tool & technique and output, where possible; ▫ a responsibilities matrix, whose form arises from PRINCE2, has been developed for every process;  the behavioural range follows the ICB structure and reworks ICB and PMBOK contents, with the addition of detailed recommendations as regards the most problematic behaviours;  the contextual range collects aspects of ICB and PMBOK, developed and/or deepened referring to the Italian environment. The thesis ends with the implementation of the proposed method on a real project, developing and analysing some outputs that could provide an idea of the project life cycle. To validate the result, an assessment questionnaire has been prepared and submitted to a selection of experienced PM: the positive reply confirmed the need for a method to carry out this job and the effectiveness of the tools and procedures included in the proposed one.