Project management has been based on a wide range of authority for the project manager. Project expediter, project coordinator, matrix project manager, and line project manager represent increasing degrees of authority. Underlying these organizational approaches to project management, however, are the highly formalized techniques of applying specifications, work breakdown structure, work packages, critical path network planning and control, and reports of performance cost time.

Adherence to such methods for managing human, financial, physical and time resources has increased the effectiveness and efficiency of managing the uncertainties which are characteristic of the development of projects. The approach to project management has been deliberately mechnaistic, based on the assumption that if target dates and financial plans are achieved, then all is well. The productivity of humans has been implicity assumed to be at a historically established level.

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http://www.pmi.org/learning/library/managing-human-resources-project-management-1740