Why the Institute exists
Project management emerged from the industrial age with the admirable intent of bringing order, planning, and accountability to complex work. Over time it developed standards, certification paths, and professional communities. Yet in its current form it lacks a foundational trait common to all high-stakes disciplines: a commitment to scientific inquiry.
In medicine, aviation, and engineering, decision-making is grounded in controlled trials, replicable research, and measurable outcomes. Best practices are not declared; they are earned through evidence. In contrast, project execution has remained loosely tethered to scientific rigor, with frameworks multiplying without validation and tools deployed because they are familiar rather than because they are proven.
The Project Science Institute exists to close that gap. Our mission is to formalize and advance Project Science, an evidence-based field that studies how human cognition and systems interact to transform intention into structured outcomes under constraints, and to make rigorous project research freely available to practitioners, scholars, and the public.
From best practice to evidence-based practice
The transition from best practice to evidence-based practice is not semantic; it is structural. It means replacing “what worked for me” anecdotes with studies that control for variables. It means shifting from popularity-based frameworks to effectiveness-based methods. It means making room for failure, not as stigma, but as a necessary part of knowledge generation.
A scientific discipline requires four components: a defined phenomenon of interest, testable hypotheses, methods of validation, and a community of practice. Project Science meets all four. Its phenomenon is the prediction and execution of projects. Its hypotheses include behavioral interventions, planning techniques, and control models. Its methods span neuroimaging, ethnography, data analytics, simulation, and field trials. Its community is emerging across universities, research labs, and public institutions, and the Institute exists to convene it.
A note on terminology. Project Science is the science of managing projects, not the project management of scientific research. It concerns basing the methods by which we manage projects in evidence and scientific inquiry. The distinction matters: there is a radical difference between the science of management and the management of science.
The lineage of the work
The Institute grows out of more than a decade of research. Its intellectual roots include the development of behavioral project management as a research program, the co-authored work NeuralPlan, the founding of the Institute for Neuro & Behavioral Project Management, and the Project Integrated Lessons Learned (PILL) Framework for institutionalizing epistemic accountability in delivery. The book Project Science sets the vision; the Institute implements it.
What guides us
Science, at its core, is not a collection of facts but a method for reducing error. It brings humility: it acknowledges what is not yet known and treats failure as a source of insight. The Institute carries that stance into everything it does, from the research it pursues to the journal it publishes. We do not mistake motion for progress; we ask whether the work created lasting value, whether the solution was context appropriate, and whether it built trust rather than extracted compliance.