Organizational project management methodologies - Structures, contents, and use

This research investigates organizational project management methodologies – structured collections of project management knowledge and experience – by focusing on their structures and contents, and the specific reasons why organizations use them. This research comprises a mixed-method multiple case study among ten organizations: Qualitative data are first collected from 57, and then quantitative data from 53 respondents. The findings identify project management structure, cost and budget management system, time schedule management system, risk management system, and reporting, communications, and information system as the most important organizational project management methodology structures. Additionally, the findings recognize document templates, process descriptions and guidelines, role definitions and descriptions, project minimum and compliance requirements, and time schedule management materials and instructions as the most important organizational project management methodology contents. Further to these, the findings show that providing a common way of working, providing structure to projects, standardizing projects and providing consistency, providing a common project language and vocabulary, and enhancing quality of project management are the most important reasons why organizations use organizational project management methodologies. These results highlight the similarities among organizational project management methodologies, however, also unique features and differences among organizational emphases on methodology structures and contents, and reasons why such methodologies are used can be identified from the findings. The findings show that organizations use unique combinations of organizational project management methodology structures and contents to address the specific reasons why they use such methodologies. This suggests that there is no single best way to manage projects. The findings also suggest that the organizational project management methodology structures and contents, and the reasons why methodologies are used depend on project management challenges, which relate to organizational and project contexts. Furthermore, the findings suggest that organizations focus their organizational project management methodologies on the project management subject areas in which they find most room for improvement, and which they consider most likely to enhance chances of project success. Finally, the findings suggest that organizations adopt ideas for their organizational project management methodology structures and contents, and for reasons why such methodologies are used from public-domain and commercial project management methodologies, as well as from project management challenges related to organizational and project contexts.