THE IMPACT OF PROJECT MANAGER ON PROJECT
SUCCESS – THE CASE OF ICT SECTOR
BÁLINT BLASKOVICS
1
1
Assistant Professor, Strategy and Project Management Department, Corvinus University Budapest
E-mail: balint.blaskovics@uni-corvinus.hu
The project management literature on project success is rich. Numerous papers focus on the evolution
of the understanding of project success, identification of success criteria and critical success factors.
Critical success factors increase the potential for achieving project success, while project success can be
evaluated with the help of success criteria. Although the interrelationships between critical success
factors and success criteria are rarely analyzed, yet there is a strong demand for it. The aim of this paper
is twofold. One of the aims is to identify the impact of one of the critical success factors, the project
manager’s project management attitude on project success. The other aim is to highlight the
interrelationship between the project manager’s personal characteristics and project management attitude
and leadership style, which are three critical success factors. These aim to address the shortcoming
mentioned above, which is considering the lack of the interrelationships between critical success factors
and success criteria. The research outcomes are drawn from qualitative field research at the Hungarian
subsidiaries of multinational companies operating in the ICT sector.
Keywords: project success, success criteria, critical success factors, project manager’s knowledge,
leadership style
JEL code: M19
1. Introduction
Organizations spend high amount of money on projects. By the new millennium, the total
spending on projects reached almost 20% of the world’s GDP (Bredillet 2007). However, the
success rate achieved on projects is very low. Only a bit more than one-third of the projects
are finished successfully (Fehér 2009; Standish Group 2013), while the rest do not reach the
predefined parameters. The situation is worse in the IT sector, where the success rate is one-
third (Standish Group 2013), however, the newly introduced methodologies, such as agile
project management, have increased this rate in the past few years. Both cost and time
overruns are very common to IT projects, while more than 20% of these projects are cancelled
before even commencing (Lee-Kelley – Loong 2003).
The Standish Group (2013) highlighted the most important reasons for failure: a)
inappropriate project scope definition; b) inappropriate project communication; c) lack of
appropriate project management competencies. The study also draws the attention to the
importance of the organizational characteristics as well, like the applied project management
methodology, project management expertise, tools and infrastructure.
Taking the amount of money spent on project into account, achieving project success is a
must for organizations (cf. Schaltegger 2011). To achieve this, it is required to clearly
understand the success criteria and the critical success factors, as well as the relationship
among them.
Various authors have already identified certain critical success factors, while Fortune and
White (2006) provide a comprehensive overview of them. Among others (see e.g. Görög
2003; Müller – Turner 2010; Yang et al. 2011), they pointed out the key role of the project
manager to achieve success on projects. Although the literature highlights the relationship
between the project managers’ managerial features and the likely project success, yet an in-
depth analysis was not carried out.
The primary aim of the paper is revealing the interrelationship among project success
expressed in terms of success criteria and the project managers’ project management attitude.
In order to do so, there is a need for highlighting the interrelationship between personal
features, and leadership style and attitude.
2. Literature review
Considering the defined aims of the paper, there is a need for providing a review of the
literature on the understanding of project, the phenomenon of project success, personal
characteristics, leadership style, and the project management attitude of project managers.
2.1. Understanding of a project and project management
Understanding the concept of a project has developed considerably in the last decades. For a
long time, projects were considered as unique tasks (see e.g. Olsen 1971). Lundin and
Söderholm (1995) realized in the mid 90s that projects are temporary organizations. Cleland
(1994) states that projects are building blocks of strategic implementation, i.e. projects create
the beneficial changes needed for organizations. Nowadays, projects are unique tasks,
temporary organizations and strategic building blocks at the same time. Görög (2013: 9)
defines them as follows: ‘...projects are one-time, complex and unique set of activities carried
out in a project organization with time and budget constraints and they have a predefined
project result to be implemented.’
The role of project manager has developed in accordance with the understanding of concept
of project success (see e.g. Görög 2002; 2013). Earlier, when projects were defined as unique
tasks, project managers were supposed to focus on the process of the project, thus managing
the implementation process considering the project results, and the time and cost constraints.
As the understanding of the concept of a project widened, the role of the project manager also
advanced. The management of stakeholders and the delivery of the beneficial change became
part of his/her role. These days the most important roles are as follows: planning the projects,
implementing the plan, managing stakeholders and delivering the beneficial change (see e.g.
Fekete – Dobreff 2003; Project Management Association 2006). Thus project management
can be considered as an application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project
activities to meet the project requirements (Project Management Association 2006: 24).
2.2. Understanding of project success
Due to the increased complexity of project and project management, project success also
became a complex phenomenon, which may be considered both from input- and output-
oriented perspective. The output-oriented perspective evaluates project success by means of
success criteria (see e.g. Cooke-Davis 2002). While the input-oriented perspective analyzes
the factors contributing to project success by means of critical success factors (see e.g.
Fortune – White 2006).
The understanding of project success has developed during the decades considerably, and this
process was in accordance with the understanding of the concept of project and project
management. At the beginning, papers on project success were focusing on the classical
project triangle (time, cost, quality). Later, this was enhanced by considering stakeholder
satisfaction and the strategic aspect of the client. This development requires the consideration
of the interrelationships among the components of the project success: the success criteria and
the critical success factors (Judgev – Müller 2005; Mészáros 2005).
2.2.1. Success criteria
Success criteria are those base values, on which project success can be evaluated (Görög
2013). When defining the appropriate success criteria, two important factors should be
considered (based on Judgev – Müller 2005):
Holism: the evaluation model should contain every relevant criterion, against which, a
project success can be properly measured.
Realism: the model should not divert the actual outcome, i.e. a model should not
classify a successful project as unsuccessful and vice versa.
Since both project and project management are complex phenomena, success criteria should
also reflect this. In the course of defining the proper success criteria, it is also necessary to
consider the understanding of the concept of project and project management. This means that
from the point of view of project success, both the project result and project management
should be considered. Project result success focuses on the project result, whether the project
result, which was created by the project, satisfied the desires of the most important
stakeholders. Project management encompasses managing the implementation of the project,
the stakeholders and the delivery of beneficial change. In this way, its success focuses on the
appropriate use of resources and appropriate management of stakeholders. Thus project
management success encompasses the efficiency of project delivery, while project success
embodies the effectiveness of project delivery.
As a result, the efficiency of the project completion (implementation of the project) and
effectiveness of the project completion (managing the project team and delivering the
beneficial change) should be measured (Baccarini 1999; de Wit 1988; Görög 2013). The first
term can be measured against the project triangle (see e.g. Cooke-Davis 2002; Görög 2003),
the latter term can be measured against client satisfaction and stakeholder satisfaction (see e.g.
Atkinson 1999; Baccarini 1999; Görög 1996).
Thus an appropriate model should evaluate the project completion (efficiency) and the project
result (effectiveness) containing the following criteria (see e.g. Atkinson 1996; Görög 2003;
Project Management Institute 2010; Shenhar et al. 2001): project triangle (time, cost, and
quality), client satisfaction, and stakeholder satisfaction. This triple criterion system provides
a complete, thus a holistic approach.
Besides this triple criterion system, there are alternative evaluation models, like the key
performance indicator (KPI) based or financial indicator-based (like NPV or IRR) evaluation
models (see e.g. Toor – Ogunlana 2010; Yu et al 2005). These models can be very effective in
certain projects, but they face serious shortcomings when they have to evaluate projects which
are hard to quantify. Based on that, these models cannot be considered holistic.
Besides holism, a criterion system or a model should satisfy realism as well. From this point
of view, two kinds of approaches exist in the literature. The non-hierarchical approaches (see
e. g. Atkinson 1999; Project Management Institute 2010; Wateridge 1997) and hierarchical
approaches (see e.g. Baccarini 1999; Cooke-Davis 2002; Görög 2003). The first one assigns
equal weight to the criteria, while the second distinguishes the criteria and they can
compensate each other to a certain extent. There are projects which exceeded the time and
cost constraints and were still found to be successful (see e.g. Kun 2005); in this way
hierarchical approaches are appropriate.
Thus an evaluation model should be a hierarchical model containing the following criteria
(Görög 2003): project triangle (time, cost, quality); client satisfaction; and stakeholder
satisfaction.
2.2.2. Critical success factors
Besides the output-oriented perspective, the input-oriented perspective, i.e. the critical success
factors should also be considered. Critical success factors are as follows (Boynton – Zmud
1984: 17): ‘those few things that must go well to ensure success for a manager or an
organization.’
The evolution of critical success factors is very similar to the evolution of understanding of
project success (Judgev – Müller 2005). Until the mid 90s, the literature mainly focused on
the project triangle (see e.g. Fortune-White 2006), as of today the focus has widened, and the
