ABSTRACT
The process of sense-making has led to understandings about the reality of projects as practised that challenge mainstream thinking. The mainstream methods of project management are a set of mechanistic artefacts–rules, standards, typical documents, control systems–that relate to a way of working that is in fact hypothetical. The field of projects as a whole would benefit from an enhanced generic vocabulary, which could improve the subject's comprehensibility to the outside world, aid the induction of new practitioners, and support the development of local vocabulary. The importance of local vocabulary is such that the development of the vocabulary as a component of ProjectCraft. The interrogation of the practice stories was therefore largely informed by rethinking project management and organizational theorizing, testing preferred theories against the practitioner's stories, and testing the stories against theories. A major contribution to the mode of investigation has come from the 'Rethinking Project Management' research network.
