Progressing and Discipline and Profession of Projects

Abstract

This essay reflects on Peter Morris’s concerns about the the way that project management has been articulated through the advocacy of those institutions and associations that were formed to recognise project management as a distinct area of activity. The essay considers how project management has wrestled with the challenge of being recoginised as both a discipline and a profession and how there has been both progress and concern at how our understanding and practice of project management has evolved. The essay concludes with a recognition that the developments in both the understanding of the discipline of project management and the profession of project management have been in directions that Peter Morris was recommending for many years but, as he also made clear, we cannot rest on our laurels as there is still more to be done.