To be able to discuss how people operate within a project, it is important to have some kind of idea in our head about people, their behavior and how they interact. Some kind of model. Of course a model is a simplification of reality; we leave things out, we make stuff easier, just to be able to understand it all. This might be a small problem, but we have no choice. Without ignoring aspects and making a few assumptions there is no way on earth our brain will get it. Sorry to bring this to you: but our mind is too small for reality.
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For the context of projects I will focus on a special type of systems: Complex Adaptive Systems, or CAS for short. I will first throw you off guard with a formal definition, after which I will explain a little more. The following definition is from John H. Holland:

Photography by Phauly.

"A Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is a dynamic network of many agents (which may represent cells, species, individuals, firms, nations) acting in parallel, constantly acting and reacting to what the other agents are doing. The control of a CAS tends to be highly dispersed and decentralized. If there is to be any coherent behavior in the system, it has to arise from competition and cooperation among the agents themselves. The overall behavior of the system is the result of a huge number of decisions made every moment by many individual agents." (source: Waldrop, 1992)

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Whatever your take is on projects, at the end of the day it is just a bunch of people working together to achieve a certain goal. During this endeavor to laugh, cry, pull pranks, play dirty tricks and have all other kind of behavior towards each other. If you are lucky they even work to reach the final goal. If you take everything away, and put people in the center of what a "project" is, you will see a group of stakeholders interacting with each other, just like any other group of people would do.

Just to make things easier on our lives, we call the result of all this behavior "the project". In this sense it is nothing more than an abstraction. If we say "the project is late", this doesn't mean that some creature or entity from outer space showed up later than expected; it is the result of the project people working together that wasn't finished on the time we predicted.
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Project life can be quite frustrating when one day after another turns out not how you planned it. The software should be ready when you said it would. It has to. Otherwise you have people waiting, customers complaining and bosses getting annoyed. It is your reputation and ultimately your job on the line. If you just plan harder, more detailed, than the plan must be correct. Right? Of course not. I know, it is becoming some kind of mantra for me, but, yes, it is a shocker for a lot of people, you can't force reality in sticking to your plan. Forget it. It is not going to happen. Ever. Because it seems to be a habit hard to break, a state of mind hard to get rid of, it is worth spending a little closer look into this matter. Why can't we predict project future?
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Some weeks ago I had to introduce new IT employees into the magical world of Project Management methods. These guys were completely new to the industry, so references to "real project life" were not going to save me (like it normally does :)).

I finally came up with the following start to kick of the training. It broke the ice and it worked very well. So if you are looking for an opener for your presentation, this might help you out.

Photography by j / f / photos.

The application that I used was "Google Earth" . BTW That looks great on big screens I used the zoom and slide function to talk about how methods limit your view, how you can choose to watch details, or how you can go for a global perspective. But using one limits you. So be aware of the level that is under attention.
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It seems only fair that I share with you the current research model I have about projects. I personally think that if you raise doubt and questions you also have to be part of the solution.

It may not come as a surprise that I view projects as a network of people that interact and have relationships. These networks are not stable and are not limited to the project itself. Networks emerge, people join and people leave, the networks collide and merge, or one network splits to become an almost independent unit. Of course almost, in the end our entire society is one big freaking network.

In the fashion of complex adaptive systems each network (=system) has global properties. In human networks this are shared properties that are projected to the outside world (the non-network members) and give the network itself direction. The global properties of the system are the result of the interactions of the members (=agents), but their value influences also the individual agents.

At this moment I recognize 4 types of relationships among the agents of interest:

Task
Interactions that are the result of intermediate steps to get to the goal of the network.

Information
The flow of information through the network. The interaction itself is communication

Coordination
I assume that the tasks cannot be done by one single person, and that the amount of resources (skills) are limited. Therefor coordination within the network is needed for the allocation of scarce resources, communication about intermediate results, coordination of goals, capabilities and forecasting of the (near) future.

Association
People have also relationships within the network (and within other networks) as means as a social expression.

Of course this view will alter. But it is the basic thinking structure I have at the moment, and I hope it will help you understand why I am posting on certain topics.