ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a set of related concepts for understanding how the work within projects is articulated. Projects characteristically have narrative histories: they evolve over time. While that evolution may entail the alteration or elaboration of the original goal or goals, the work itself and the work relationships of project members do develop over time. Even in the literature on organizations and organizational theory, there is a dearth of analysis about how work in general is articulated within organizations, yet pragmatically all will define some situations as displaying failures of articulation, in such terms as “Things are going wrong.” In thinking about how to reach the project goals, the initiators must consider money, personnel, skills, sites, equipment, schedules, time, participants’ commitments, and so on. The organization of the project influences the probability that disruption in interactional alignment will occur and affects the severity, duration, strategies used to overcome it, and impact on other aspects of project work.
