Over 4 years ago, the Project Management Institute (PMI) initiated a research project titled "Researching the Value of Project Management." The project, which came to be known fondly as the Value Project to all involved, began as a discussion between two researchers in a cafe in a small town in rural Alberta in July 2004. Ultimately, it grew to involve 48 academic volunteers within the core team, as well as 17 case-study research teams on four continents around the world over a period of almost 4 years. If nothing else, the management challenges associated with such a large and complex research project would be interesting for this audience; it is certainly not easy managing a research project of this scale, which requires the development of strategies to address volunteer participants and multiple time zones, languages, and cultures. Engaging though these stories are, they are discussions that we will leave for another article or issue. Here, we explore, through multiple perspectives and through the lenses of many gifted researchers, the different views that have emerged on the value that project management delivers to organizations.
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