ABSTRACT
People have been writing about the people side of project management since the 1970s, so it has not been totally ignored. Writers have considered project organization, people working in project teams and their motivation. However, the Optimization Perspective and the associated memes of project management have been so strong that even 30 years later it takes three and a half days of a project seminar before the people issues and project organization are mentioned. Projects are temporary organizations, and so designing an appropriate project organization, staffing the project and managing the individuals and the project team are essential elements of project management. This perspective is influenced by ideas from the fields of organizational behavior (OB) and human resource management (HRM).
