Social Project Management · Cases
SPM becomes relevant where projects have to coordinate different evaluations of problems, solutions and desirable outcomes.
Cases are not prescriptions. They are situations in which the SPM approach can be developed, tested and questioned.
Why cases?
Social Project Management is problem-driven. Its relevance therefore depends on the particular constellation in which a project takes place.
The cases below identify different situations in which evaluative plurality can become consequential for project development.
The analytical question
A project may appear to have a technical, organisational, financial or procedural problem. Looking more closely may reveal that different actors evaluate the situation according to different principles.
The relevant task is therefore not immediately to find a solution, but to reconstruct how the problem is constituted and what makes coordination difficult.
SPM asks what becomes difficult when different evaluations have to become part of the same project.
Five problem constellations
The following cases represent different constellations in which evaluative plurality can become consequential for project development.
A technological implementation project may be evaluated differently by management, employees, technical specialists, data protection actors and service users.
What counts as successful implementation can therefore extend far beyond whether the technology technically works.
Research case · in developmentTransformation projects redistribute responsibilities, routines, knowledge and decision-making.
Different organisational positions may therefore produce different evaluations of what constitutes improvement, efficiency or successful change.
Illustrative caseDigitalisation projects are frequently framed through technical functionality, efficiency and measurable outputs.
In practice, usability, professional standards, organisational routines, accessibility and legitimacy may introduce additional criteria of success.
Illustrative caseProjects serving public or social purposes often bring together economic, legal, professional, political and societal evaluations.
What appears efficient from one perspective may be problematic from another, while all may be institutionally consequential.
Illustrative caseSome projects cannot fully specify their objectives before the project begins because the relevant problem and possible solutions are themselves contested.
Here project development includes the development of the project's own criteria for success.
Illustrative caseCase 01 · AI & Digitalisation
The implementation of AI can be described as a technical project: select a system, configure it, train users and introduce it into organisational routines.
But implementation also changes expectations, responsibilities, forms of knowledge and evaluations of professional quality.
Employees may evaluate a system according to professional adequacy and usability. Management may emphasise efficiency and organisational viability. Technical actors may focus on functionality and reliability. Data protection may introduce another set of requirements.
The technology can work while the implementation does not.
This makes AI implementation a particularly instructive setting for developing SPM.
Reading a case through SPM
Make the different evaluations visible.
Which criteria, expectations and understandings of quality are relevant to the actors involved?Understand where evaluations meet.
Where are evaluations compatible, where do they conflict, and where does one depend on another?Make differences actionable.
Develop forms in which heterogeneous evaluations can inform project decisions and practical arrangements.Examine what the project has stabilised.
Identify which evaluations have become embedded, which remain contested and what this means for further development.What cases can show
A method becomes more useful when its limits become visible. Different cases make it possible to examine whether the same conceptual distinctions remain productive under different conditions.
The purpose of the cases is therefore not to demonstrate that SPM always works. They provide settings in which its assumptions, concepts and practical usefulness can be tested.
Cases are part of method development, not merely examples of an already finished method.
Current development
The AI implementation case provides a concrete empirical setting in which questions central to SPM can be investigated.
Investigating how technological implementation interacts with professional expectations, organisational routines, quality requirements and forms of knowledge.
Developing concepts and methodological procedures capable of translating observed evaluative differences into structured project work.
Examining whether the approach can be transferred to other project environments without turning it into a universal one-size-fits-all procedure.
The wider idea
Each case reveals particular forms of evaluative plurality. Comparing cases makes it possible to distinguish what belongs to a specific situation from what may be relevant across different project environments.
SPM develops by moving between conceptual abstraction and practical specificity.
This movement is essential if the method is to remain both analytically precise and practically usable.
Concept Paper
The Concept Paper sets out the conceptual foundations of SPM, its understanding of evaluative plurality and its approach to project development.
Read the Concept Paper