Project management on the CERN ATLAS experiment

Modern life depends on the successful design, construction, assembly, delivery, maintenance, operation and decommissioning of large projects. Examples in the public eye are the Olympics, transport infrastructure, healthcare systems, telecommunications and the financial infrastructure. However, large projects especially those involving IT, are often perceived as being late, over budget and failing to live up to expectations. Recent examples include the Rural Payments Agency, student loans, and the NHS IT project. The reasons for failure have been investigated by the National Audit Office, amongst others, and the reasons seem to be depressingly similar, involving poor definition of goals, poor monitoring of progress etc. This project will take a look at a major project that is perceived as generally successful - CERN's ATLAS project to detect and measure the particles generated by collisions in the Large Hadron Collider. The ATLAS experiment suffers from many complexities that should make it unusually difficult to manage - 37 participant nations, with their own culture, linguistics, accounting and funding arrangements; a machine that consists of over 20 million components; software development that is distributed geographically to many of the over 100 institutions that are participating in this project; a democratic, learning culture, etc.The purpose of this project is to understand the differences and similarities between ATLAS and other large project-based organisations. It may be that the normative approach to project management has in-built flaws that mean that it does not scale up well to large, complex projects (such as ATLAS) and that the success of ATLAS indicates one possibility for managing large projects differently. It may be that the competitive, academic culture of ATLAS is the most significant factor in driving the success and innovation of the project, but even so it has to cope with crises, conflicts, and funding difficulties, as with commercial projects. Even if conventional, commercial projects cannot adopt the methods of the ATLAS project, they may be able to adapt some of the methods to use as interventions, i.e. methods that may help them avoid or escape from a project crisis.The findings from this project will be written up as case studies, that will be used as teaching material for Oxford's MSc in Major Programme Management, and will be available for teaching MBA and Executive Education programmes. An analysis of the similarities and differences between the ATLAS approach to project management will be submitted for publication in learned journals and in trade magazines, such as Project. A presentation will be made to the ATLAS/CERN community on the project findings, with a view to reviewing what lessons may be learned, on both sides. The findings will also be written up as a chapter for a proposed book on modern approaches to systems engineering. Short videos and audio clips will be published on the websites of the BT Centre and the Said Business School. Furthermore, the outcome of this preliminary investigation will form the basis of a larger, extended research project on systems engineering in large commercial organizations. A further multi-university, multi-practitioner project on the Management of Emergent Scope is also under development, and we plan to include ATLAS as one of the key case study organisations in that project.

Major projects and programmes are responsible for a huge amount of public and private expenditure, measured in billions of pounds annually, in defence, transport infrastructure, upgrading the utilities, upgrading the financial infrastructure, climate change mitigation, major ICT projects, healthcare, business mergers and acquisitions etc. Sadly, the outcomes of these projects are often unsatisfactory, with the project costing more than expected, being delivered late, and not achieving the intended business or social benefits. Clearly, anything that could improve our understanding of project failures and contribute to improving the possibility of a favourable outcome would be of great benefit. Although training courses abound on project management, it could be that the methods that are appropriate for smaller, less technically challenging projects just do not scale up well for major, technically challenging, long-term, international programmes. This project will attempt to learn the lessons from just such a project, which has delivered successfully, despite its rejection of standard project management techniques. The routes to impact for this project include: * published case studies in management and engineering journals, * case studies taught in MBA, MSc in Major Programme Management and Executive Education programmes in Oxford. These could reach over 100 students directly each year. The case studies will also be disseminated to other business and engineering courses and universities worldwide, offering huge potential for distribution of the project's benefits. * findings written up for contribution to a planned book of case studies on non-standard methods and case studies in systems engineering. * short courses for practitioners from commercial organisations who would be interested in understanding a non-standard approach to project management that may be of use as a management approach or as an intervention during project crises. These could be drawn from the sectors identified above. * feedback to CERN and ATLAS project participants, with a short course developed if demand exists that could be used for other academics and scientists who are planning major scientific collaborations. * establishment of a research collaboration that will lead to further grant proposals on the management of major projects in Big Science and Big Manufacturing. * articles submitted to project management and management journals, * short articles submitted to specialist publications such as Project . * project reports on the website of the BT Centre for Major Programme Management at the Sad Business School. The impact of this project will be: * improved outcomes for major projects and programmes, leading to more effective utilisation of funds and personnel, both for publicly funded and privately funded projects, and improved economic performance; * improvement of the management of projects in Big Science, due to a better understanding of the scope and possibilities of conventional and more recent project management and systems engineering methods, leading to better value for money and more rapid access to scientific results, further enhancing the UK's effectiveness in developing and maintaining a science-based, knowledge-intensive economy; * novel methods for managing high technology, complex, long time-scale projects from the outset; and for avoiding or recovering from project crises; * greater public and academic awareness of the methods of project management and systems engineering within the CERN ATLAS community, adding to the attractiveness and success of science projects for attracting new generations of young scientists; * innovations for students in university and executive education in pedagogic methods and novel approaches to project management, leading to enhanced community awareness, discussion, research and development of novel approaches to project management and systems engineering.