1^st Project Management Conference with International Participation – UKPYK 2014

Dear Colleagues;

1^st Project Management Conference with international participation – UKPYK 2014 will be firstly held at the Istanbul Technical University Maçka Campus, Istanbul Turkey, on 19-20 September 2014 in cooperation of Istanbul Technical University Management Engineering Department and Project Management Institute, Turkey Chapter.

As known, there is a growing need for academic and professional events where the current research and practices from both academia and industry on Project Management can be shared and discussed. In order to serve this need and to highlight the impact of effective project management on global, national, industrial, organizational and individual context, this conference aims to bring together researchers, engineers, practitioners and students from different areas together to actively exchange and share their knowledge, experiences, research and practices on Project Management. In this context, we expect the conference to contribute to the expansion and diffusion of knowledge on Project Management by the involvement and support of researchers and practitioners from disciplines and areas that utilize and apply project management and its tools.

Project management includes not only the planning, scheduling, budgeting and control activities to meet the project objectives, but also and beyond, it refers to the integration, change, communication, resource management as well as to social disciplines like human resource management, leadership, conflict management and resolution etc. Hence, the conference is planned to provide a platform for presenting and discussing the works of research and practice in all of these knowledge areas.

Today, project management is among the major disciplines that the most advanced systems of change management is applied and developed within. Since the beginning of the knowledge age that the sustainable business and scientific results have been highly dependant on technological development and knowledge creation, requirements that constitute the scope of the projects became evolutionarily changing rather than staying frozen and standardized. Especially in systems development and R&D projects, frozen/completely defined requirements and specifications are being transformed to “managed scope definitions” where the changes in scopes are managed together with the customers/users. This transformation forced all project management professionals and theoreticians to reserve a unique place for managing change in this discipline. It is not possible to manage a project without managing change or to create change without applying project management techniques. In fact, by their nature, the projects are the agents of change by. In other words, change is the critical key component that realizes the strategic benefits of the projects. Therefore, this year’s conference main theme is “Project Management and Change” in allignment with the focus of this year’s PMI Summit.

Main motives of the conference can be summarized as follows:

- Improving the interdisciplinary approach:

Project management is taken as a multidisciplinary research and practice area, where various techniques from different disciplines of engineering, operations management, management and organization, finance, information management and technology management are used concurrently, simultaneously in coordination with each other. Therefore, the conference is expected to contribute to the development of interdisciplinary approaches and methods.

- Sharing the Project Management practices from different industries and technological areas

Besides the evolutionary development of basic, standard methods and techniques that are applicable to all projects, there is also a growing need for focused and customized approaches and solutions for different kinds of industries and technologies in the field of project management,. We hope that this conference may act as a platform where the results of project management research and practice from different industries and technological areas are shared and discussed.

- Underlining the interrelations between the Project Managament and the Management of Technology and Innovation

Economic development is highly dependant on the technology capability building. Innovative activities plays the major role for technological development, by enabling the creation of high value added products and services that can bring sustainable competitive advantage to companies and nations. Innovative products/services are the outputs of productively, efficiently and effectively managed new product/service/process development projects and R&D projects. In this framework, Project Management maturity and project management skills are highly required for innovativeness. Especially in developing countries that are in need of closing the technology gap between them and developed world, the effective and productive usage of resources becomes more critical . Therefore, in the conference, results of research and practice on the management of new product development and R&D projects are prioritized.

- Discussing the contemporary approaches and issues in Project Management Education and Training

To achieve project management maturity, organizations are in need of employing project management professional who are competent in project management methodologies and techniques. Hence the universities, professional organizations and NGOs increasingly offer various educational programs and trainings on project management. For improving the quality of these educational activities, it is essential to create a collaboration and knowledge-sharing platform between academia, industry and the organizations like PMI. With this aim, conference is expected to contribute to establishing such platforms.

We kindly would like to invite all practitioners, academics, students to present their research and to share their experiences related to contemporary developments and trends in the field of Project management. All research, case studies, best practices and theoretical analyses are welcomed, as well as proposals of panel discussions. Abstracts can be submitted electronically at the Conference web site until May 15, 2014. Authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited to submit their full papers until June 15, 2014.

Papers can be written and presented in English or Turkish. Seperate sessions will be organized for each language. Also in the conference, panel discussions will take place by the participation of key note speakers with high level of project management experience and knowledges.

All abstracts and full paper submissions will be double blind and peer reviewed. All accepted papers will be published in digital Conference Proceedings Book. Also, the selected papers presented in the conference will be invited to publish in the following international indexed journals: ,

• International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector (IJISS)
• International Journal of Information & Decision Sciences (IJIDS)

Kind Regards,

On behalf of Organization Committee of UKPYK 2014

Conference Co-Chairs

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ferhan Çebi, İstanbul Technical University
Assoc. Prof. Dr Bersam BOLAT, İstanbul Technical University
Dr. Nihan Yıldırım, İstanbul Technical University