Academic Research and Discourse

Introduction

Large numbers of companies adopt project approach as the medium to pursuit organizational goals (Pinto and Prescott, 1988; Andersen et al., 2006; Hyvari, 2006). "Project management is now well developed and well accepted domain for the exercise of professional expertise and as an area for academic research and discourse" (White and Fortune, 2002, p.1). The rising demand for project management solutions, trainings and developments indicates its maturity and importance in managing projects (Rozenes et al., 2006; Crawford and Pollack 2007).

Several authors and professional bodies had developed tools, techniques, methods and methodologies for initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and controlling. These tools, techniques, methods and methodologies are widely available in books and journals for the professionals who are engaged in the managing projects and are being taught by the professional bodies and universities (White and Fortune, 2002). Jessen (2008) has hypothesized that when project managers know what project triumph and dynamics under their command could impact on outcome, project performance would perk up. However, there is a difference between project management and project. Munns & Bjeirmi (1996, p. 81) define project as

" A project can be considered to be the achivement of a specfic objective, which involves a series of activitites and task which consume rescources. It has to be completed within a set specification, having definite start and end deadlines"

And project management as

"The process of controlling the achievement of the project objectives. Utilizing the existing organizational structures and resources, it seeks to manage the project by applying a collection of tools and techniques, without adversely disturbing the routine operation of the company"

Since there is a difference between project management and project. Thus there ought to be a differnce between how to measure the successs of both. Wit (1988) explains project success "measure against the overall objectives of the project". With the advancement of literature, number of variables have been proposed and added to the criteria to judge the success of project.

This research is about the real work experience of project personals practices in project management in Pakistan. In this research, in addition to traditional/iron triangle project success measures within budget, within schedule, intended quality and other criterions are empirically checked and ranked. Side effects including both, desirable and undesirable effects of project on the organization and project personals are identified. Methods, methodologies, tools and techniques used by project manager/personals and the limitations faced when applying as a real world application are documented.

Purpose of the Study

The focus of this research study is to empirically study the practices of project managers in Pakistan. The present research will address the following questions:

• To empirically identify common criteria used for defining project success.
• To check whether the success criteria measures interrelated with other success criteria measures.
• To identify the methods, methodologies, tools and techniques in current use of Pakistani project personals.
• To identify limitation faced using particular methods, methodologies, tools and techniques in current use of Pakistani project personals.

Examination of the aforementioned questions would help us understanding project management practices in Pakistan. The limitations, unexpected side effects faced by project personals while working in the developing economy would help us develop success criteria application in a developing economy where the project personals face uncertainty on regular basis.

Literature Review

The literature review was conducted to identify success criteria factors, desirable and undesirable effects faced by the project personals while working on the project and method, methodologies, tools and techniques which were used by various authors/researchers in their intended field of study. The literature review is divided into three sub parts. In the first and second part, project success and side effects on projects are identified. In the third part, project management tools, techniques, methods and methodologies are discussed.

1. Project Success

Several studies Shenhar et al., (1997); Atkinson, (1999); Lim and Mohamed, (1999); White and Fortune, (2002); Weterveld, (2003); Khan and Sheikh, (2006); Warchol and Amadi-Echendu, (2007); Khang and Moe, (2008); Toor and Ogunlana, (2009) have identified success criteria in their intended field of study and empirically have agreed upon the general criteria of iron triangle to judge project success; within budget, within scheduled Time and intended Quality but the ranking of these factors differ from study to study.

The triumph of project was considered barely on the accomplishment of general criteria of iron triangle. This commonly considered criterion was appropriately found in the project management literature, but the circumstances have changed because of expanded strategic understanding required by the project stakeholders and now it is important to identify broader set of factors to judge project triumph (Andersen et al., 2006).

Atkinson (1999) proposed a square route model to judge the project success. In broader terms, the model is divided into four categories namely, iron triangle, the information system, organizational benefits and stake holder benefits. In these categories he proposed number of variables to judge the success of the project.

White and Fortune (2002) in an emperical study mentioned eight criterias to judge the project success. Beside iron triangle, meets client requirments, meets organizational requirments, yeilds business/other benefits and causes minimal distrubtion.

In an emperical investigation study of large scale public development project, Toor and Ogunlana (2009) reveals nine key performance measure (KPI) or success criteria to judge the project success. They identified variables through review of literature and checkup interviews. The identified variables are iron triangle, efficiently use of rescources, safety, free from defects(high quality of workman ship) conforms to stakeholder's expectations, doing the right thing (effectiveness) and minimized construction aggravation, disputes and conflict. They also run correlation test in order to check the association of KPI's with each other. The findings revels almost all of the KPI's are postivilty and "moderatly to strongly" corelated with other KPI's. From correlation they concluded that KPI's are not only interrated but also logically interconnected. Thus the KPI's are inseperable and therefore should be taken as a set in order to measure the project succes.

2. Side Effects of Projects

Every project has outcome, beside actual outcome there are desirable and undesirable effects on the project and client organization. Five desirable side effects on the organization and nine undesirable side effects were also identified from the study of White and Fortune (2002). The identified side effects are used to check whether they are similar in Pakistan. This would help us in understanding how project personals fails to understand the micro and macro environment while planning and working on the project.

3. Project Management Tools, Techniques, Methods and Methodologies

Project management tools, techniques, methods and methodologies help project developers and personals for effective planning, development , monitoring, evaulating and for the achievment of the desired results in the project activites as they unfold. Desirable results can be realist scheduling, identifing, eliminating/mitigating risks, removing multiple activities to reduce cost, estimating the effect of running crushing on project activities, developing parameters for inspecting quality etc.

Number of tools and techniques are available for project managers but the usability vary from industry to industry and availability of organizational resources (Besner & Hobbs, 2008). The most frequently used tools are Gantt charts and Work breakdown structure (WBS) because of their easiness to use and do not require extra organization resources (White & Fortune, 2002; Besner & Hobbs, 2006).

White and Fortune (2002) provided respondents with 44 methods, tools, techniques and methodologies which were extracted from the standard text books on project management and from literature, grouped into six categories and asked respondents to mention those which they have used in their recent projects. Project management software, in house project management methods and Gantt bar charts got the highest count of usage.

Besner and Hobbs (2006) provided the list of 70 tools and techniques which are specific to project management. The selected tools and techniques are more specific to day to day practice, closer to the things project mangers regularly do. On the basis of responses received, tools and techniques were grouped into three categories, "From limited to extensive use", "From very limited to limited use" and "Less than very limited use".

The study of Khan and Sheikh (2006) explains the project management working in Pakistan governmenet in which WBS has been used in the prepartion/improving of the scope of the project. With the help of Earned Value Analysis (EVA), defects are identified earlier and the important performance indexes like cost and schedule are prepared to review the performance by the higher dicision makers.

Method

1. Measures

Conceptual frame work of the study is taken from the study of White and Fortune, (2002); Toor & Ogunlana, (2009). Project personal characteristics and organization background variables, which are gender, total work experience, project work experience, position held in the organization, project type, project classification, organization turn over quarterly, project size in terms of rupees, type of organizational structure, number of activities in last project, duration of last project, outcome of the project and number of people employed in the respondents organization are taken from Hyvari (2006) and White & Fortune (2002).

Project success criteria variables are taken from White and Fortune (2002) and Atkinson (1999). To measure the importance of project success criteria factors, likert scale was used, where 1= not important and 5 = very important.

Five desirable and nine undesirable side effects faced during and after the project completion were taken from the study of White and Fortune (2002). Five methods and methodologies from White & Fortune (2002), seventy one tools and techniques specific to PMBOK (2004) were taken from the project scope, time, cost, quality and risk knowledge areas. These methods, methodologies, tools and techniques are provided in order to identify which are being used in projects in Pakistan. Also, in order to check the application to the real world scenarios of methods, methodologies, tools and techniques used by the organizations and project personals. Respondents were asked to indicate method, methodology, tool or technique which they feel contains limitation, when they apply in the real world scenario. It is to be noted here, only limitation is indicated, description of the limitation is beyond the scope of this research.

Data collected was primary in nature and was collected by contacting project managers or project personals who were involved in any recent project. The data collection instrument used was a close ended questionnaire. Expert judgment and a pilot survey were conducted to check the content validity of the questionnaire.

In this study, project personal perception about project critical success factors and success criteria are used rather than the critical success factors and success criteria of the project provided by the organization.

2. Sample

Since the total population of project personals and the number of projects presently running in Pakistan are not known, therefore "All sample you can afford" technique was used. The qualifying condition for the survey participation was that the respondent had worked in any project which was concluded, whatever the outcome of the project was, a complete failure or a complete success. Data was collected over the internet and physically. Overall, above 1000 questionnaires were sent and only 94 were received out of which 90 were selected for further analysis.

The questionnaire was sent to a number of non-governmental organizations (NGO's), private and public sector organizations, PMI Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad Chapter groups on internet, two project management test preparation sessions in Islamabad and Lahore, in which participants were from various cities of Pakistan, in the PMI session where PMO case study was presented in Islamabad and two universities where master of project management are being taught.

Participants of the survey are project management personals working on different projects in Pakistan. The characteristics of the respondents are shown in the Table 1.

Out of 90 respondents almost 90% of respondents were male and 10% were female. Thirty seven percent (34) of the respondents are either project managers or managers, team leader and staff personals are 13.3% (12) and 11.1% (10) respectively.

Respondents have classified their industry in which most of their projects are: government/civil services are 17.8% (16), telecommunication got the second highest hits 14.4% (13), computer/IS and other got the third highest 11.1% (10) each. Project type shows which type of project our respondents are mostly involved. Almost 25% (22) of the project are of research and development, new product development 12.2% (11) and other counted for 25.6% (23).

Most of the respondents 45.6% (41) have total working experience of 0-4 years, whereas 5-10 years of working is mentioned by 31.1% (28) of the respondents. Ninety percent (81) of the respondents have project experience of 0- 10 years. Out of the 90%, 60% (54) have project experience of 0-4 years and rest 30% (27) has project experience of 5-10 years.

Results

1. Analysis Method

The data analysis is done with SPSS version 17 and Microsoft Excel 2007. In order to rank the variables, the sum of combined ranking given by each respondent to a particular variable is issued. Mean and standard deviation is used to rank the success criteria. Correlation analysis of success criteria is run to check whether success criteria used by the organizations are interrelated or dependent. By this we determine how much they affect each other.

The sum of each desirable and undesirable effect of projects on the organization is used to rank them and to see which one is most reported in organizations. Similarly the sum of mentioned method, methodology, tools and techniques is used to rank them, according to the use in the organization.

2. Cronbach's Alpha

To check the internal reliability of the variables, cronbach's alpha is run. Cronbach's alpha of success criteria is 0.783. The high value of Cronbach's alpha indicates high internal construct consistency and reliability.

3. Respondents Organizational Profile

The size of the organization is mostly determined by the turn over of the organization and the number of people employed by that organization. Organization profile of the respondents can be seen in Table 2.

Respondents who mentioned the organization turn over quarterly, 26.7% (24) have turnover of above 200 million or above quarterly. Total of 84.4% (76) respondents mentioned their quarterly turn over, rest 15.6% (14) did not mention as they belong to NGO's or public organizations where the turnover are not made public. Thirty one percent of the respondents have worked on projects size in rupees of 100 million or above. Whereas quite contrasting the second highest 21.1% (19) reported they are involved in project of Rs 0-10 million.

From the responses received, 44.4% (44) mention project organization while second highest 32.2% (29) works in the functional organizations structure.

Personals working in the organization also determine the size of the organization. 34.4% (31) of the respondents work in the organization where they have 1-100 people working for the organization which are normally solution provider to large organizations. 23.3% (21) of the respondents belong to large organizations as they work for the organization, where the organization employs more than 2000 employees.

Numbers of activities, define the size of projects and complexity of the project. Majority 64.4% (58) of the projects mentioned by the respondents have 0-100 activities, 20%(18) projects have activities ranging from 201 or above and lastly only 15.6% (14) have mentioned they have worked on project which have 101-200 activities in the project.

Duration of the project was divided into eight categories. Six to twelve months projects got the highest hits as 30% (27) of the respondents have mentioned they are involved in such duration of projects. The second highest 18.9% (17) of the respondents mention they are involved in projects of more than 49 months.

4. Project Outcome

The most interesting finding in this study is the project outcome as shown in figure 1. The finding is in accordance with the findings of White and Fortune (2002) where more than 85% of the respondents mention their projects as complete success or partial success and in this survey 79.8% (71) of the respondents mention their projects as partial or complete success but White and Fortune (2006, pp. 3) also mention in their study, "This success rate is far higher than that reported in the literature". The reason behind this can be the perception of the project personals.

Project Excellence Model proposed by Westerveld (2003) was designed around appreciation by different personal involved directly or indirectly in the project. Other than traditional iron triangle, Project Excellence Model measure the project success: by appreciation by the client, project personals, users, contracting partners and stake holder, which are ranked fifteenth, eleventh, eighth, twenty first and seventh respectively.

Toor & Ogunlana (2009) derived nine success criteria variables which also include the iron triangle from the perception of stake holders. When comparing the ranking of this survey with their study, it wasfound that other than iron triangle variables, apprication by the user are ranked same i.e. seventh, improved intended efficiency is ranked eighth and in this survey twelveth. The main contrasting factors from their study is the ranking of minimum repeat work and causes minimal business disruption which are ranked sixth and nineth respectively and in this survey ranked 22nd and 24th respectively. This may be due to reason that the succuss criteria variables used by Toor & Ogunlana (2009) are nine whereas in this study a broad set of success criteria variables are given.

6. Correlation between the Success Criteria

In order to examine the success criteria association with other success criteria used by the organization Pearson Correlation Analysis was run. Table 5 shows that majority of the success criteria are significantly and positively correlated with other success criteria variables.

Meet organizational objectives, moderate to strongly correlate with iron triangle variables except meets quality/safety standard. Second in the ranking, Personal development is slightly to moderately correlated with only professional learning.

Taking the iron triangle variables correlation with its own variables. Within schedule and within budget has weak to moderate relationship with intended quality/safety standard 0.235 and 0.233 strengths respectively. Whereas moderate to strongly relationship with each other i.e. schedule and budget relationship strength is 0.584. The finding supports the reason that delay in schedule leads to increase in the budget of the project.

Within schedule has significant correlation relationship with 12 other success criteria variables. Relationships strength is weak to moderate and ranges between 0.209 to 0.597. Within budget has significant relationship with twelve other variables. Relationships strength are weak to moderate and strength ranges between 0.220 to 0.584. Meets quality/safety standard which is also an iron triangle variable, has ten relationship with other variables, but all relationships strengths are weak to moderate, ranging between 0.233 to 0.427.

Strategic goal achieved has weak to moderate relationship with within schedule and within budget. Appreciation by stakeholders has number of relationship, having strength of weak to moderate with other success criteria variables. Similarly appreciation by the user of the project has number of relationship with other success criteria variables but they are all weak to moderately correlate with appreciation by the user. Appreciation by client has significant relationship with number of other variables, but all are weak to moderate relationships with strength ranging from 0.230 to 0.576. The strongest relationship of appreciation by client is with organizational learning with relationship strength of 0.576.

7. Unexpected Side Effects Faced During the Project

No matter how much time and recourses taken by project planners, there are always unexpected side effects. They can be desirable side effects which affects the project in the positive way, sometimes provide a new opportunity and understanding which helps the organization to prosper more than the intended outcome of the project. Also side effects can be undesirable which affect the project in the negative way and affect the performance of the project by causing delays and extra usage of recourses.

White & Fortune (2002) found that lack of awareness of the envirnoment and tools and techniques used were poor at real world modeling. 14.5% (11) reported they face desirable side effects, 10.5% (8) responded they face undesirable side effects. A huge portion 65.8% (50) of the respondents mentioned that they face both desirable and undesirable side effects. 7.9% (6) respondents mentioned that they don't know what type of side effects were faced by them. Only 1.3% (1) respondents stated that they did not face any kind of side effect in the project which means that the project actual outcome was achieved.

Desirable side effect with their respective number of counts can be seen in the table 7. Knowledge gain/new understanding is the highest counted (47) desirable side effect.

Overall 154 number of times undesirable side effects were reported by the respondents as shown in table 8. Problem with staff/client/contractors/suppliers is the highest number of time (30) reported by the respondents. Underestimation of cost/time is the second most reported (25) undesirable side effect. The reason may be that the tools and techniques which are used in preparing the estimates are not according to real world application. The technical limitation got the third highest count (24) and the reason behind this undesirable side effect is that the product specification or working requirements has to be changed due to which under estimation of time and cost occurred.

Change of goals/objectives which is considered to be the major contributor to the delays in the project has got only 16 counts in this survey. Also the lack of awareness has low ranking i.e. ranked seventh with the count of ten thus negating the argument that was suggested from White & Fortune (2002) study that lack of awareness of the envirnoment and tools and techniques used were poor at real world modeling. The project planners don't have proper awareness of the environment.

Limitations of the Study

The results of the study are based on the self reports of the project personals. This has allowed us to include project personals from various organizations from different industries. But at the same time our results can be biased because the usage of every variable is not applicable in every industry. The second limitation of this study is that the sample size is not large. Working professionals found it hard to find time to fill the questionnaires. Third limitation of study is that most of the questionnaires are not self administered.

Conclusion

The findings in our study have empirically ranked the real world criterions which are being used by project personals and evaluators to judge the project success. From this study, it can be concluded that besides the traditional measure (iron triangle), other criteria's can be used by organization and project personals to judge project success like meeting organizational objective and personal development. From the correlation analysis, it is concluded that project success criteria variables do not act independently instead they are dependent upon one another and should be treated as one set to measure project success.

Organizations and project personals face both desirable and undesirable side effects while working on project which are due to the poor understanding of the surrounding environment. The frequently used technique in projects is expert judgment while the method used to develop, control and evaluate project activities is MS project. In this survey, limitations are also identified when applying methods, methodologies, tools and techniques used by organizations in the real world.

Keeping in view the aforementioned discussion, the significant implications of this research will help project personals and organizations in developing project evaluation and monitoring criteria. The findings of this study have identified and ranked variables which are being used to judge project success by project personals and organizations. Since the variables have been identified, project personals and organizations can priorities criteria to judge the project success. Significant relationships of success criteria variables and their effect on each other are also identified. These significant relationships will help project personals and organizations to understand the impact of particular success criteria variable used on other success criteria variables used. The research also identifies what types of problems are being faced by the organizations while doing project. This helps project personals to address these issues in project planning so that projects do not get into delays and require additional resources from the organizations.