To compete in today's increasingly global marketplace, many organizations are initiating projects as a way to meet their strategic objectives and goals and to accomplish several business results, such as implementing new processes, expanding capital, and managing time-to-market goals for new products (Birk, 1990). To manage projects, organizations are applying specific processes and decision-making tools and techniques to accomplish project objectives. The present form of project management evolved from engineering scientific management processes, from a horizontal, cross-disciplinary approach that takes a wider operational view for improving project control, customer relations, and business returns (Lee-Kelly & Leong, 2003). With this, more organizations are using technology to improve and automate their business processes and to advance organization-wide efficiency and effectiveness. Companies that are investing in project management tools and techniques are also using technologies such as software programs for tracking schedule and budget performance and organizational process designs like concurrent engineering (Thamhain, 1999). Specifically, organizations apply information technology (IT) and knowledge management (KM) tools to support their project managers in dealing with project complexity, conflict, communication, and team management issues.
Because projects are executed in teams, project managers must integrate multiple disciplines and diverse skills to successfully accomplish a project's objectives. And in today's increasingly project-oriented business environment, serving on a project team is an inevitable feature of the contemporary worker's professional experience (Smith, 2001). Projects are managed using teams for two reasons: First, each project is unique; second, conditions for team selection and motivation are often far from ideal (Smith, 2001). In addition to uniqueness and complexity, projects are often described in relation to unfamiliarity and are often associated with organizational change. Successfully achieving a project's objectives and goals is often determined by the project leader's vision and ability to cope with change (Kotter, 1999).
Many studies have noted the importance of project leadership to project success (Cleland, 1995; Thamhain, 1999; Thite, 1999; Weiss & Anderson, 2003; Wirth 1992); these emphasize the role of leadership in relation to project performance. According to the literature, most of the past studies refer to the importance and style of leadership for achieving project success. However, the leader's specific role on the project team—and how this can lead to project success—is an area that needs further study. My research objectives are to identify the factors that contribute to project performance and to understand how these factors interrelate and to determine the role of the project leader. Thus, the primary focus of this research is understanding the role of project leadership.
Below, I review the literature, first to understand technology in projects and then to document the importance of project leadership as well as the types of project leadership. After I discern the project leader's role, I then examine the way that technology can help project leaders perform their role. From this, I identify a list of people-related factors that contribute to project performance, discuss a research methodology for collecting data on these factors, develop a process for identifying the underlying relationships among these factors, and explain the structural links between these factors. I also discuss how to use these linkages to determine the leader's role in project success from a research and practitioner's perspective; I then analyze the role of technology in relation to project leadership and performance. I close by identifying the study's research limitations and by suggesting opportunities for future research.
Background
In the present economy, globalization and a free-market philosophy are affecting—more than ever—the way organizations meet customer needs. These forces are driving organizations to develop products and services faster, cheaper, and better. Such competitive advantages are attained and maintained by practicing project management and integrating technologies for improving IT and KM efficiency, effectiveness, and innovation.
A common contemporary business practice that many organizations use to achieve and maintain their competitive advantage is outsourcing. As a result, it is the virtual project team—those teams working on outsourced project—that are driving many projects in the current economy. For such teams, technology plays a major role in their performance. A case in point is Infosys Technologies Limited, which uses technology to manage projects. It has a conference room in Bangalore, India that can hold a virtual meeting—for any project at any time, via its super-sized screen—involving the key players working within its entire global supply chain (Friedman, 2005). Such meetings enable Infosys to integrate project functions and work as an effective project team. For project managers, leading a virtual project team significantly affects their role and the process they use to manage their projects.
Technology and Project Management
In the context of this paper, technology refers to both IT and KM. This is for two reasons: First, KM serves as a bridge between IT and business operations; second, both KM and IT can—when combined—provide organizations with opportunities to enhance project performance. Martin, Hatzakis, Lycett, and Macredia (2004) showed that KM is a holistic way to manage the complex relationship between business and IT. Martin et al. contend that effective KM, which promotes one vision and improves communication, directly affects a firm's ability to bridge the gap between IT and end-users, which thereby impacts the organization's performance.
Many organizations invest in technology to improve organizational performance and gain competitive advantage. There are several studies that link IT or KM methods and models to improved organizational performance (Ahn & Chang, 2002; Jennex & Olfman, 2002; King, 2002; Marchand, Kettinger, & Rollins, 2000). It is important to understand, however, that technology plays a limited role in actual performance. It is true that technology facilitates large amounts of data and that it helps organizations store information and quickly and easily retrieve information. From a KM perspective, however, IT is only useful for the efficient conversion between data and information: It is a poor alternative for converting information into knowledge (Ra, 1997). Prieto and Revilla (2004), citing other research studies, suggested that the process of converting information to knowledge is best accomplished by human actions; they also explained that humans are slower than IT systems in converting data into information. This suggests that the role of technology as a supporting system for project leadership and performance is limited.
Technology's role in project performance depends on how well organizations design their technology systems. A recent study (Anantatmula & Kanungo, 2005) suggested that—after identifying measures of effectiveness for IT, KM, and project performance, after also studying the relationship among these measures—organizations should develop IT systems to meet specific business and project needs and that they should not design such systems in isolation and with the assumption that people will use it for productive purposes. Anantatmula and Kanungo (2005) concluded that developing IT systems to meet specific business and project needs will help organizations link technology with business results.
In this study, I am concerned with the relationship between the outcomes individuals achieve by using technology and their role in supporting a desired level of project management performance. To understand this, it is important to learn about the likely outcomes of applying technology in organizations. In one study of IT investment and its effect on business performance, one that included more than one thousand senior managers from 98 organizations, Marchand et al. (2000) concluded that information operation—which measures an organization's capabilities to effectively manage and use information—influences business performance. Likewise, my previous research on KM outcomes (Anantatmula, 2005), in a study involving 147 organizations from 21 countries, showed that effective communication enhances collaboration and improves employee skills, decision making, and productivity. Together, these studies suggest that technology plays a role in supporting management and team development.
Additionally, technology can help improve project management processes. Projects are characterized by unknown factors and ambiguity that can delay the development of detailed scope and specifications until late in the project planning stage. Technology (IT and KM)—by helping store, develop, and share knowledge of past and present projects—helps organizations develop detailed specifications and reduce the impact of these uncertainties. Technology also adds value to available information: It helps organizations identify potential problems associated with ongoing projects and increase their awareness of risk, which can lead to the development of risk mitigation strategies. As a result, the technology (IT and KM) supports project performance. According to Kasvi, Vartiainen, and Hailikari (2003), successful project outcomes are determined by accumulated knowledge and individual and collective competence. But gauging such outcomes is difficult: projects usually experience frequent personnel changes and project teams are often dispersed when projects end. As a result, transferring, and sharing knowledge is often challenging (Karlsen & Gottschalk, 2004).
Earlier studies suggest that organizations achieved a less-than satisfactory level of performance in transferring and sharing knowledge, despite the many project management tools and techniques available. However, more recent studies (Thamhain, 2002b) indicate that IT is profoundly affecting project management capabilities, scope, and leadership style. These technologies provide project management tools for planning and Web-based support systems, which are essential for communication, conflict resolution, knowledge sharing, and integration of complex projects. The shift to using sophisticated project management tools—driven by factors such as navigating increased project complexity and working in diverse cultures requiring new management skills—is profoundly affecting project leadership: These results show the significance of communication, decision making, commitment, and risk-sharing as well as the impact of shifting to a team-centered, self-directed form of project control (Thamhain, 1999).
Importance of Leadership in Projects
The significance of leadership in project performance is well-documented. Cleland (1995) considered that a project's success or failure is the result of the way project stakeholders are led. Because leadership is considered a critical success factor for projects (Thite, 1999), Day (1998) argued that there is a greater need for leadership rather than management. In a study on IT projects, Thite (1999) concluded that the size of the project determines the importance of the leadership: The larger the project, the greater its importance and style.
A discussion on differences between management and leadership is relevant in the present context. The distinction between management and leadership is that management is usually focused on classic functions such as planning, organizing, and controlling. It is also involved with project decision-making, as related to the processes and functions. Leadership, on the other hand, is more about motivating and guiding people to realize their potential and accomplish challenging organizational goals. Among the various leadership styles, it is the situational leaders who focus on the various tasks and the relationship behaviors (Hersey & Blanchard, 1996). Transformational leaders, on the other hand, may inspire followers, meet their developmental needs, and encourage new approaches and more effort toward problem solving (Selzer & Bass, 1990).
For project managers, in addition to working across functional and organizational environments, they must also meet other challenges, such as leading without documented formal authority and working in matrix organizations where unity of command is an issue (Cleland, 1995). With this, project managers are perceived as individuals leading a diverse set of people while holding little direct control (Cleland & Ireland, 2002). Ra (1997) suggested that the process for selecting project leaders involve informal internal networks, which play an important role in projects.
Although projects are complex and require multi-disciplinary teams, not all project teams are the same: Each has varying consequences for leader behavior and effectiveness (Keegan & Den Hartog, 2004). Furthermore, project performance is significantly influenced by the leadership style, by the integration of the management tools with the team, and by the project management process (Thamhain, 1999). To achieve a successful outcome, project managers must manage different types of work—associated with different types of products—differently. Although project management theory, practice, and tools are transportable between different types of projects, it is the specific application in the context of each project that is different (Wirth, 1992). It is the project leader who determines this application. Thus, the situational leadership style to adopt project environments is important. It is interesting to note that several studies identified transformational leadership as related to project success.
Christensen and Walker (2004), after analyzing four case studies, argued that since projects are transformations, and because vision is an idealization of this transformation, transformational leadership should be evident in successful projects. Leban & Zalauf (2004)—in studying 24 project managers from various industries—argued that a project manager's transformational leadership style has a positive impact on actual project performance. Likewise, Thite (1999), in a study of 32 organizations, found that managers of successful IT projects exhibit transformational and technical leadership behaviors to a greater extent than managers of less successful IT projects. These leadership behaviors could be attributed to the roles of IT leaders, which are strategic with an external focus and involves change management and business problem-solving skills (Weiss & Anderson, 2003).
Achieving positive results through transformational leadership is not limited to IT projects. In studying 66 industrial R&D project groups, Keller (1995) found that transformational leadership accounts for higher project quality in research projects However, one of the project leader's challenges is their limited role in acting as a transformational leader: Although an integral part of transformational leadership is helping subordinates fully develop their potential, projects offer a limited capacity to accomplish this in relation to the traditional hierarchy of functional organizations (Keegan & Den Hartog, 2004). This limited role is attributed to both project formation and organizational structure: these differ from those used in traditional organizations, including the time-bound participation of people in multiple projects reporting to different project leaders.
There is no definitive skill and leadership style mix that is appropriate for handling different types of projects; project leadership orientation is not related to project structure (Lee-Kelly & Leong, 2003). This brings us back to the issue: project managers need to understand which type of leadership is effective (Keller, 1995). Presenting a different perspective, Keegan and Den Hartog (2004) concluded that there are no significant differences between perceived leadership styles of line managers and project managers in terms of their transformational leadership behavior. They suggested that developing new leadership theories with multiple forms of governance, such as those commonly associated with project management.
Although the studies discussed above focus on the importance and style of project leadership, these ignore the role of the project manager as a leader of project teams. This study, however, examines how project leaders can achieve project success.
Research Methodology
From the literature, I identify project success and project failure factors. I then select those factors that signify the leader's role in relation to their project team. From this, I outline a questionnaire on the Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology that I used to determine the underlying relations among these factors, which I used to survey and interview project management professionals.
Literature Review on Project Performance
The research indicates that not many organizations have a formal selection and priority process for projects at the business unit level (Mullaly, 2004). As a result, organizations initiate projects that may not meet their organizational priorities and goals. This can lead to a lack of top management support, lack of adequate funding, and poor project performance. Once a project is selected, the project leader plays a significant role in the level of realized success (Fedor, Ghosh, Caldwell, Maurer, & Singhal, 2003). Thamhain (2004a) concluded that many factors which drive project team performance are derived from the human side.
In a study of 400 professionals, Thamhain (1999) identified five factors for effectively managing project teams:
1) Understanding the tasks and roles of the project team members
2) Creating an environment of trust and support in problem solving
3) Motivating team members and encouraging open, effective communication
4) Defining each team member's individual responsibilities and role and level of accountability
5) Providing appropriate communication tools, techniques, and systems.
Other studies also underlined the importance of some of these factors. Day (1998) stated that project leaders clearly define each team member's roles and responsibilities. Thamhain (2002a) found that to be effective, project leaders must build fast, flexible, project teams capable of working dynamically and creatively toward established objectives within a changing environment. Fedor et al. (2003) concluded that team leadership and organizational support were positively related to project success: When team members believed that they had a higher impact on the rest of the organizations, they tended to feel more satisfied with their projects.
Day (1998) found that close communication is critical to the success of fast track projects and that a clear, concise statement of project objectives is important. Fedor et al. (2003) suggest that leadership can either facilitate or constrain the free flow of information and ideas. Managing conflict and problems is another important factor that determines project success (Thamhain, 2004a). Successfully managing projects in challenging business environments requires that project leaders use appropriate tools, techniques, and processes, as well as employ sophisticated people management skills. These people skills focus on fostering a climate of active participation and minimal dysfunctional conflict (Thamhain, 2000). Such skills can create an environment of trust, consistent project management processes, and clarity in communications.
Mullaly (2004), in a benchmark study looking at how more than 550 international organizations practiced organizational project management, identified several key attributes and drivers of PM success and failure: establishing an environment of trust, creating transparency in decision making, employing consistent processes, ensuring comprehension of expectations, and delivering results. There were also factors specific to causing project management failure: not defining processes and roles, not developing and using a project selection process, not mandating consistent processes, and not managing the attainment of organizational outcomes. Likewise, Weiss (2001), in his study of E-businesses, identified several barriers to—and drivers of—project success, including barriers such as poorly defined processes and communication and drivers such as effective project leadership and the ability of leaders and team members to articulate and communicate problems and solutions effectively as well as a collaborative, fun environment that promoted satisfaction.
Potts (2000) linked project failure on large projects to the project leader's inability to form teams effectively, provide appropriate leadership, understand how to persuade, select an appropriate negotiation style, achieve good communication, and develop problem-solving behavior. Potts further argues that these soft skills make a considerable difference to project effectiveness and efficiency.
Project Performance Attributes
Based on the discussions above, along with several other research studies, I developed a list of significant project performance factors (Table 1). I used seven of the project performance factors identified above in conjunction with Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to develop a model.
| Factor | References | Description |
| Create clarity | Day (1998), Mullaly (2004), Thite (1999), Weiss (2001) | Clarity in defining project goals and outlining likely project outcomes is critical, specifically during the early stages of a project. Failure to do so could lead to not identifying some of the project requirements. Incorporating these requirements at a later stage of the project could lead to time and cost overruns. |
| Define roles and project management processes | Mullaly (2004), Thite (1999), Weiss (2001) | It is essential to provide a definition of tasks and assign responsibility for these tasks. Clear assignments of roles and responsibilities without ambiguity or overlapping responsibilities are important for conflict resolution and productivity. And without formal definition and approval of roles and processes, specifically in functional and matrix organizations, projects will lack organizational and functional support, which can cause a both internal and external project conflict. |
| Communicate expectations | Day (1998), Mullaly (2004), Potts (2000), Thite (1999), Weiss (2001) | Failure to define and establish expectations from all the stakeholders at the project process level is a common problem that will eventually result in both perceived and actual incidences of not delivering expected results. This is particularly true with stakeholders who are not actively involved with the project. Objective and formally defined decision-making processes, objectivity in how decisions are made within and outside projects, and communicating all key decisions are some of the means to communicate what is expected of all stakeholders. |
| Employ consistent processes | Mullaly (2004), Smith (2001), Thamhain (2000, 2002a, 2004a) | Many organizations manage projects with no formal processes. Studies show that several organizations manage projects with either informal processes or no processes at all. Mandating consistent and formal processes would improve risk management and project management maturity. |
| Establish trust | Mullaly (2004), Thite (1999) | Trust is critical for knowledge sharing and teamwork. An environment of trust is established by clear definition of roles and responsibilities, which encourages team performance. An environment of trust is influenced by the organizational culture, which can promote transparency and collaboration. |
| Facilitate organizational support | Fedor et al. (2003), Thamhain (1999), Thite (1999) | Obtaining organizational support for projects is one of the challenges project managers in both functional and matrix organizations face; resources are generally controlled by functional managers. Failure to facilitate organizational support would lead to project delays and cost overruns. |
| Manage outcomes | Cleland (1995), Fedor et al. (2003), Mullaly (2004), Rad (2002), Thite (1999) | Most perceptions of project failure and project success are based on unspoken and personal indices. As a result, different people assess the same project differently (Rad, 2002). There is a need for a set of performance indices that formalize the process and make explicit what is implicit in these seemingly subjective evaluations. Such a organizational system would promote project excellence. Unfortunately, not many organizations use such systems. Research shows that only 37% of organizations studied formally define the criteria they use to evaluate completed projects (Mullaly, 2003). |
Table1: Project performance factors
ISM approach
After I established a set of factors for assessing project performance (Table 1), I studied the shared underlying organizational framework in which these factors operate by using ISM. This method falls into the soft operations research (OR) family of approaches. Although soft OR methods can augment traditional quantitative methods, these cannot replace traditional tools and techniques (Glasow, 2000).
ISM helps groups of people structure their collective knowledge; it refers to the systematic application of graph theory in such a way that theoretical, conceptual, and computational leverage is exploited to efficiently construct a directed graph—or network representation—of the complex pattern involving a contextual relationship among a set of elements. In other words, it helps to identify a structure within a system of related elements. It may represent this information either by a digraph (directed graph) or by a matrix. This process allows users to pay explicit attention to the assumed nature of the causal relationships between the chosen variables. ISM methodology is explained in detail in Appendix A.
I presented Figure 1 to my survey respondents; I asked them to fill out the colored-part of the matrix by following the directions provided below.
Figure 1: ISM Methodology
I translated the respondents' inputs using symbolic values (Figure 1); I used binary values to develop the directional graph, shown in the next section. (In Appendix A, I explain how I used a detailed ISM methodology to develop the directional graph.) Using this methodology; I was able to identify the direct and indirect relationships between attributes of project performance and develop a way to include the softer variables into my analysis.
Research Results
I contacted project management professionals and practitioners via e-mail and telephone. Fifty four (54) professionals responded and participated in the study. On an average, the respondents had 10 years of project management experience. Of those that participated, 53% are project managers, 20% consultants, and 20% senior executives. Respondents represent various segments of the economy: 23% from government, 20% from IT industries, 20% from telecom industries, and 17% from consulting; the remaining 20% were from the manufacturing and automotive industries.
Using the research data collected, and following the steps described in Appendix A, I developed an interpretive structural model (Figure 2). I established the contextual relation based on a pair-wise study of all seven factors shown in Figure 1. A majority (75%) of the respondents agreed to a specific relation between any two elements. The contextual relationship for this structure was “leads to” and each arrow is read as “leads to.” The intermediate computations and the raw data are shown in Appendix B.
Figure 2: Project manager attributes model
Discussion
Most project managers must manage multiple constraints while working with much complexity and many changes. Consequently, as compared to functional managers, project manager's face many more challenges: time and budget constraints, uncertainty, complexity, demanding expectations, lack of formal authority over project team members‥ Kotter (1999) reported that management deals with complexity while leadership focuses on guiding people to significant changes. Successful project managers must possess high levels of both management skills and leadership ability. Figure 2 depicts these roles by identifying the underlying relations among critical attributes of the project manager. Studies have shown that project managers may spend 90% or more of their working hours in some form of communication; Figure 2 examines communication in regards to the management and the leadership roles.
Managing project complexity involves resource integration, resource utilization, and stability plan implementation. Leading projects, on the other hand, requires convincing people about the need to change, aligning them to a new direction, and motivating people to work together to achieve project objectives— often under difficult conditions and within demanding environments. Because projects more or less deal with uncertainty and unknowns, project requirements change constantly. When such changes are significant, the leader's role assumes greater importance. When projects are process-oriented and well-defined, however, the project manager focuses on managing resources.
Management
Part of Figure 2 (right side) reflects a project manager's management role. The underlying concept of project management is to make use of resources efficiently and effectively. Project planning, which includes cost estimation and scheduling techniques, is designed to make optimum use of all resources. Work packages and associated tasks require people from multiple disciplines—when working with a high degree of coordination—to accomplish a task within project constraints. For these reasons, it is essential—to achieve stability and order—that roles and processes are clearly defined. Without such formal definition and approval of roles, projects would lack organizational and functional support. The resulting conflicts of interest—both the internal and the external—would hinder project performance. Defining the roles and processes would logically lead developing formal processes that would facilitate an understanding of the organizational requirements needed to internally and externally support the project.
Because project management employs a multidisciplinary approach, it needs people from different functions; each person brings specific expertise and experience to the project team (Gray & Larsen, 2005), which contributes to making the team a complex and challenging entity for the project manager to manage. It is because of this that defining each project team member's role is critical to the project's performance and outcome. Consistent processes aid in managing a diverse group of people. Multidisciplinary teams— and the complex nature of project tasks—require that project managers obtain support from different organizational functions.
By defining the project team's roles and process, and by identifying the project's organizational support needs, project managers can successfully lead teams and effectively accomplish the expected project outcomes. Defining the roles of project team members and all the stakeholders would help both project team members and project stakeholders understand what is expected of them. These factors help project managers define and manage project goals and outcomes.
Leadership
The other part of the Figure 2 (left side) represents a project manager's leadership role. Trust and open communication are essential to nurture human relationships; predictability and openness are important factors in establishing trust (Gray & Larsen, 2005). By defining processes and roles, project managers can establish both predictability and openness, which they can use to develop expectations and predict outcomes.
By communicating clearly, project managers can establish an environment of openness and transparency, one where team members establish practices for communicating project goals, expectations, and likely project outcomes. These factors also instill trust—among the project team—in their leader. It is interesting to note that establishing trust usually takes time but projects are time-bound; this fact heightens the project manager's challenge.
Trust, in turn, encourages project team members to collaborate, network, and innovate. Ring (1996) analyzed trust at the interpersonal level and found it a precursor to forming ongoing networks. Although it should evolve mutually, trust is more important for leaders as they try motivate others to accomplish a vision and to realize project goals. And by establishing trust, leaders can also mitigate conflicts, a deterrent to project performance.
Nielsen (2004) found that a relationship between trust and performance remains somewhat elusive in collaborative relationship). Citing several researchers, Nielsen suggested that trust has a positive; though limited and indirect, impact on performance. My research agrees with Nielsen's findings (Figure 2).
Because people are motivated by challenges and opportunities to further their career goals, those who are assigned to project teams are almost always interested in accomplishing personal and professional goals in addition to completing their project responsibilities. This means that project managers should understand the personal aspirations of their project team members and support them in their aspirations. As leaders, project managers play an important role in motivating and guiding people to simultaneously grow as professionals and complete their project responsibilities.
Technology Role in Leadership and Performance
Projects usually involve much data and information, driven at times by concerns unknown and unique. Because of this, the project manager must focus on the relevance and applicability of such data and information and on the ways of capturing each stakeholder's tacit knowledge, which includes lessons learned and knowledge gained from the project experience. As discussed earlier, research has shown that IT can efficiently convert data into information but cannot suitably convert information into knowledge. Thus, project managers should use KM in conjunction with IT. Although the role of technology is limited, literature research has shown that organizations should develop technology systems to meet specific business and project needs.
There are several project management software tools available to manage such project management processes as developing detailed schedules, estimating cost, allocating resources, and monitoring project progress. Referring to project manager attribute model (Figure 2), technology can efficiently and effectively help project stakeholders accomplish five project management functions:
- Document the defined project roles and implement related processes.
- Establish formal and consistent processes.
- Communicate expectations of processes and roles.
- Communicate openly among all the project team members, including virtual teams.
- Monitor and manage project outcomes.
Specifically, technology plays a major role in helping project teams develop and formalize project processes and establish channels of open communication. By using technological tools, team can access and convey organizational and tacit knowledge of past projects and historical data; this information can help project teams improve their project performance (Figure 3). For this to happen, project managers must perform project reviews after the team completes the project; this will enable project managers to identify the lessons learned and establish best practices. Likewise, project managers can also review and document project information periodically during the project execution phase; this will enable them to document important project information when ideas and experiences are fresh in the minds of the project team members. This approach will help project managers capture both tacit and explicit knowledge that their project team members possess.
Figure 3: Role of technology in project performance
The affect of using technology to improve project performance, as shown in Figure 3, suggests that project managers can use technology to not only capture data and information but also to facilitate knowledge development and transfer. This shows that project performance data—stemming from various project segments—can feed back into data repositories and database systems; the result is a fluid knowledge flow between project management and technology systems that facilitates project team learning. Project managers can achieve a level of continuous improvement in project performance by applying—throughout the project life cycle—numerous technology tools:
- Selecting projects by using knowledge-based decision systems informed by quantitative and qualitative criteria
- Developing a resource breakdown structure (RBS) for the project environment and keeping it current by using resource cost information from historical project data and resource database systems
- Developing project plans and scope by using historical data from knowledge repositories related to project plans and scope definitions.
- Estimating—accurately and realistically—project costs by using historical cost and effort estimation and earned value data of past projects
- Developing a work breakdown structure (WBS) by using standardized WBS packages maintained in database systems
- Developing a project schedule by using historical schedule data and “After Action Review” information from knowledge repositories
- Managing resources by using actual resource usage data from similar projects and database systems
- Reducing risk by using available project information and knowledge
In essence, technology can help project managers improve the project processes they use to manage project complexity, project integration, and resource utilization. Going beyond these processes, technology can help project managers promote open communication, learning, knowledge transfer, and productivity. Project managers may also choose to develop electronic yellow pages listing project experts in specific interest groups, such as scope definition, scheduling, cost estimating, and risk management. Specifically, technology such as electronic yellow pages, video conferences, Internet and Intranet can help project managers lead project implemented by virtual project teams. These technologies help project managers communicate effectively with their virtual project teams and integrate project tasks effectively.
The outlined attribute model (Figure 2) shows the significance of establishing trust in relation to managing and leading project teams. Research has shown a positive relationship between trust and learning capacity when moderated by IT (Prieto & Revilla, 2004); IT facilitates interaction between organizational members, encourages discussions, and promotes the flow and collection of knowledge. Several studies have shown that trust is also positively associated with knowledge sharing. KM promotes communication, employee skills, collaboration, decision making, and productivity. Consequently, technology (IT and KM) helps project leaders promote project performance, team development, and competency.
Limitations and suggestions for future research
In this study, I have interviewed 54 PM professionals from a wide variety of industries operating in the United States. Others can expand this research to confirm these results. Additionally, the leadership and technology roles could be different, based on the disposition of project characteristics and the industry in which the project is executed. Likewise, leadership roles could be industry-specific due to differing industry-specific work cultures and competitive environments. Future research efforts should consider project leadership roles for different types of projects and different industries.
Conclusion
The study showed that defining project processes and roles is the first and most important step for managing and leading projects successfully. Doing so establishes the foundation that project teams need to communicate expectations, employ consistent processes, and create clarity. This research effort also identified management actions that are prerequisite to defining and monitoring project outcomes. While technology promotes knowledge sharing, team development, efficiency, and effectiveness, it is the project leader and their ability to establish—among the project team members and project stakeholders—trusting relationship and open communications that most effectively encourages knowledge sharing, team development, and innovation.