Project managers should learn and creatively use various ways of managing over a project life cycle
Interview with Professor Shankar Sankaran, PhD
Fellow of Engineers Australia
Professor of Organisational Project Management
School of the Built Environment
University of Technology Sydney
Sydney, Australia
Interviewed by Yasmina Khelifi
International Correspondent, PM World Journal
Paris, France
Introduction to the interviewee
Shankar Sankaran – PhD MEng PMP CPEng, Fellow Engineers Australia (FIEAust), Life Senior Member Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Shankar is a Professor of Organisational Project Management at the School of the Built Environment in the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He joined academia after several years working in industry as a project manager and technical director.
Shankar’s research spans organisational project management, systems thinking, sociotechnical systems, project leadership and governance, and participatory research. He has supervised 50 doctoral students to completion and is supervising seven more.
Shankar has won awards in project management with Ralf Müller and Nathalie Drouin, including PMI’s Research Achievement Award in 2022; the International Project Management Association Research Award in 2021; the PMI David I. Cleland Project Management Literature Award in 2021; and Walter Lipke Award in 2019.
He has been involved in editing/writing 15 books, 47 book chapters, and 115 refereed articles in journals, has presented 90 conference papers, published nine reports and worked on 13 guest editorials in peer-reviewed journals. His Google Scholar profile can be found at https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=UZSbLncAAAAJ&hl=en.
With an h-index of 42 and over 9,400 citations, he is ranked 37th among project management scholars worldwide over the past five years by ScholarGPS®.
He is an Associate Editor of the Project Management Journal and is on the editorial boards of International Journal of Project Management, International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, Project Leadership and Society (Strategic Board) and PM World Journal (Hon Academic Advisor).
Shankar was a member of the Global Accreditation Centre of the Project Management Institute’s board (2018-2024) and its Chair in 2021-22. He still volunteers for PMI On-site Visit Teams for GAC accreditation. He is a Past President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences (2019-2020) and a member of the College of Leadership and Management at Engineers Australia – Sydney Division since 2021, leading an initiative on project governance. He was elected as a Fellow of Engineers Australia in 2024 and awarded a Fellow of PMI in 2025. He is also a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a Fellow of the Action Learning and Action Research Association.
Shankar is a member of the Sydney Rotary Club where his classification is Project Management. He was recognized as a Paul Harris Fellow for his contribution to Rotary’s humanitarian and education programs. He has been nominated for the 2025 PMI Fellow Award.
Contacts:
Email: shankar.sankaran@uts.edu.au
Profile: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Shankar.Sankaran
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shankar-sankaran-260320a/?originalSubdomain=a u
Interview
Q1: First, thank you for agreeing to an interview for the PMWJ. I think you are one of the busiest people in the entire project management world; it’s hard to know where to start. But can you please first inform our readers about your role as a professor and teacher of project management at UTS Sydney? How long have you been there and what courses do you teach?
Prof Shankar Sankaran (Sankaran): Thank you. I do keep busy, but I am sure there are busier people than me in the project management world. I joined UTS in 2006 as a Senior Lecturer and became a Full Professor in 2014. Currently, I teach advanced level subjects in our Master of Project Management Course. They are Organisational Project Management (covering Governance, Portfolio and Program Management and PMOs), Systems Thinking for Managers, Leading Projects in Organisations, and a new one starting in 2026 on Digital Transformation in Projects. For six years I was Program Director of the course. I worked as a project manager in industry before I joined academia in 1999. I started my academic career in Southern Cross University in Australia and taught project management to MBA students in Australia and overseas before joining UTS in 2006.
At UTS we teach project management subjects in four-day blocks and try to emulate a real-life project environment where students work in teams on assignments. We teach our subjects along with practitioners from industry. So, I do not teach all the content by myself but work with others who are experts in the content. I try to help students understand the theories behind the topics we teach, while the practitioners bring their practical knowledge of actual project problems. Our students benefit from the way our course is structured due to the mix of theory and practice, which helps them to understand and use both as project managers.
Q2: In addition to your position as a professor of project management, you are also an associate member of the Robotics Institute at the UTS faculty of engineering. This seems like a very interesting subject. Can you explain what that institute does and your involvement?
More…
To read entire interview, click here
How to cite this interview: Khelifi, Y. (2025). Project managers should learn and creatively use various ways of managing over a project life cycle; Interview with Professor Shankar Sankaran, PhD; PM World Journal, Vol. XIV, Issue XI, November. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/pmwj158-Nov2025-Khelifi-Interview-with-Prof-Shankar-Sankaran-2.pdf
About the Interviewer
Yasmina Khelifi
Paris, France
Yasmina Khelifi, PMP, PMI- ACP, PMI-PBA is an experienced project manager in the telecom industry. Along with her 20-year career at Orange S.A. (the large French multinational telecommunications corporation), she sharpened her global leadership skills, delivering projects with major manufacturers and SIM makers. Yasmina strives for building collaborative bridges between people to make international projects successful. She relies on three pillars: project management skills, the languages she speaks, and a passion for sharing knowledge.
She is a PMP certification holder since 2013, a PMI- ACP and PMI-PBA certification holder since 2020. She is an active volunteer member at PMI France and PMI UAE, and a member of PMI Germany Chapter. French-native, she can speak German, English, Spanish, Italian, Japanese and she is learning Arabic. Yasmina loves sharing her knowledge and experiences at work, in her volunteers’ activities at PMI, and in projectmanagement.com as a regular blogger. She is also the host and co-founder of the podcast Global Leaders Talk with Yasmina Khelifi to help people in becoming better international leaders.
Yasmina can be contacted at https://yasminakhelifi.com/ or LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yasminakhelifi-pmp-telecom/
Visit her correspondent profile at https://pmworldlibrary.net/yasmina-khelifi/
To view other works by Yasmina, visit her author showcase in the PM World Library at https://pmworldlibrary.net/authors/yasmina-khelifi/
