Rapidly Advancing Project Management Maturity Through Action Research

Authors

Matthew C. Muga, CISATFollow

Abstract

Popular literature states that an IT PMO department has a higher likelihood of project delivery success, a higher social harmony of its team members, a better understanding of risk, and a better alignment to corporate strategy as it reaches more mature levels. Those maturity levels are reached over accepted timelines as seen in various frameworks popular in the field today. However, examining literature in the area of Project Management focused on Technology companies specifically, one starts to see a shortage of useful current empirically based studies. According to the 2005 text What Project Management Really is About: Alternative perspectives on the role and practice of Project Management, the author states “Much classic research on project management has, however, focused on the planning and scheduling activities of project management. Traditional writings within the area even seem to treat project management as a discipline of planning or an application of systems analysis. Much of this work, however, falls short on empirical grounds.” (Soderlund, 2005). Additional AR focused studies in this domain will elevate empirical studies. According to the 2008 work by Hodgson, et. al. The Other Side of Projects: The Case for Critical Project Studies, that team saw through their research that “ Project management research would engage with (and serve) not merely project managers but practitioners at all levels of the project hierarchy, often with the aim of initiative some transformation in how actors perceive themselves, their voice, their broad responsibility and their influence in shaping their own social place.”(Hodgson, et. al., 2008). Similar in research performed by Cicmil & Hodgson in their 2006 work entitled New Possibilities for Project Management Theory; A Critical Engagement, they saw in their research that “Governed by the tradition of ‘natural sciences’ (e.g. systems theory), the project management body of knowledge emphasizes the role of project actors and managers as ‘implementers’ narrowing down their role to the issues of control (time and cost) and content (planned scope of work), marginalizing their wider potential role as competent social and political actors in complex project-labelled arrangements.” (Cicmil, et. al., 2006). Ultimately all these elements from the strategy, the tools, the processes, and the people can be measured in some form or another in terms of maturity. Using the IT PMO team within a Fortune 1000 Tech company based in Southern California as the test environment, can an Action Research (AR) project introduce a novel intervention to accelerate maturity in a measurable fashion and promote new learnings to advance the field? This is the focus of this study.

Recommended Citation

Muga, Matthew C., "Rapidly Advancing Project Management Maturity Through Action Research" (2020). AMCIS 2020 TREOs. 79.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/treos_amcis2020/79