Crisis at the Organizational Interfaces
of a Cross-Corporate IT Project
Project Business Management
SERIES ARTICLE
By Dr. Jude Joseph
Ontario Canada
Abstract
Crises in cross-corporate projects rarely start inside one firm. They start at the seams between organizations, where contract terms, decision rights, and information do not line up.
This essay sets out a typology of six interface-origin crisis types and traces how each one appeared on a single, well-documented Vancouver, British Columbia information technology project, TransLink’s Compass fare payment system, built by the San Diego vendor Cubic Transportation Systems for the regional transit authority TransLink, the Mayors’ Council, and the Province of British Columbia.
The essay draws on current project business management and project governance research to set out practices that reduce the chance of an interface crisis and practices that help a project recover once one has started.
A conceptual map positions the six crisis types by interface ambiguity and escalation potential, giving practitioners a screening tool and giving researchers a testable starting point for further study.
The essay closes on the practical and scholarly contribution of treating the organizational interface, rather than the single firm, as the unit of crisis analysis in project business management.
Keywords: project business management, project governance, interface management, project crisis, information technology project, Vancouver public sector technology
Introduction
A cross-corporate project brings together firms with different goals, cultures, and appetites for risk under one delivery structure. When something goes wrong on a project of this kind, the fault line is rarely inside a single organization’s scope of work. It sits at the interface, the point where one firm’s contract, information, and authority meet another’s. A performance requirement that one party considers final and another considers a draft, a hardware standard that one party assumes matches another’s system, a launch date that neither party can agree is actually ready: these are the ordinary conditions under which a project crisis grows, and they apply as much to a large public-sector information technology (IT) program as to a construction megaproject.
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Editor’s note: This series of articles is by Oliver Lehmann, author of the book “Project Business Management” (ISBN 9781138197503), published by Auerbach / Taylor & Francis in 2018. See author profile below.
How to cite this work: Josephe, J. P. (2026). Managing and Resolving Crisis in the Project: Crisis at the Organizational Interfaces of a Cross-Corporate IT Project; Project Business Management, series article, PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue VIII, August. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/pmwj167-Aug2026-Joseph-Managing-and-Resolving-Crisis-in-the-Project.pdf
About the Author
Dr. Jude P Joseph
Oshawa, Ontario Canada
Jude Joseph, PhD, C. Mgr, MPM, FAAPM, PBP, ACE is a project management consultant and corporate trainer based in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in Project Management from LIGS University with a minor in Artificial Intelligence, an MBA, and the Chartered Manager designation from CIM. He mentors project professionals worldwide through The PMO Leader and leads Northbridge Learning and Development, delivering PMO setup, Agile and Scrum transformation, and executive coaching.
He is an Accredited Education Partner for the Project Business Professional certification through Project Business Foundation. He has over 20 years experience working as a professional Application development Project Manager in Canada and the United States of America. He has taught project management at five Ontario colleges and university and published a book on project management. He has been a member of the Project Management Institute since 2001 and holds a Government of Canada Enhanced Reliability Security Clearance.
Jude Joseph’s philosophy and professional engagement are guided by principles of freedom, responsibility, inclusiveness, and continuous improvement. These principles inform his every interaction with students, colleagues, and the community, driving him toward creating a more equitable, thoughtful, and engaged society.
He can be contacted at jude@northbridgelearn.com
His website is https://northbridgelearn.com
Dr. Jude Joseph is the author of the following books:
- Common-Sense Project Management for Churches: A field Guide from Chaos to Clarity in Ministry (ISBN 978-1-0673861-1-5) Published 2026
- Communication Strategies for Multicultural Teams – A Framework for Effective Communication in Diverse, Hybrid, and Virtual Project Environments (Coming soon – October 2026)
- Dr. Jude P Joseph’s research papers can be found here at Researchgate.net
