Creating a Climate for Project Success

Authors

  • Pedro Serrador Project Management Consultant Canada
  • Andrew Gemino Simon Fraser University Canada
  • Blaize Horner Reich Simon Fraser University Canada

Keywords:

Project Management, Project Success, Organisational Climate

Abstract

Project Success is known to be influenced by many individual factors: organizational, technical and psychological/social. In this paper, we build on organization and IS theory to propose a second-order factor called Climate for Project Success. Climate is a useful concept in that, unlike culture, it is comprised of elements that a project manager can influence. Three dimensions (top management support, sufficient resources, and willingness to adapt) are identified and tested to measure their ability to predict different aspects of project success. Results of a regression analysis of data from 449 projects showed that Climate for Project Success was a significant and strong predictor of both Stakeholder Success (R² =.346, p=.000) and Budget/Time success (R² =.154, p=.000). Top Management Support and Willingness to Adapt positively influenced Stakeholder Success; Top Management Support positively influenced Budget/Time Success. Interestingly, Budget Flexibility, an element within the Sufficient Resources dimension, was negatively related to both Stakeholder and Budget/Time Success. Further ANOVA testing identified variables with weaker but significant influence on Project Success. We conclude that Climate is a useful academic and practitioner concept and research could identify additional dimensions to predict Budget/Time Success. Organizations that wish to improve their project success should focus on developing a Climate which includes senior management support, stakeholder engagement, fully dedicated teams, support for agile methods, frequent meetings with product owners and a good team attitude toward accepting changes.

Author Biographies

  • Pedro Serrador, Project Management Consultant Canada

    Pedro M. Serrador, PMP, P.Eng., MBA, PhD is a writer and researcher on project management topics and owner of Serrador Project Management, a consultancy in Toronto, Canada. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and Humber College in Toronto. He specializes in technically complex and high risk projects, vendor management engagements, and tailoring and implementing project management methodologies; he has worked on projects in the financial, telecommunications, utility, medical imaging, and simulations sectors for some of Canada’s largest companies. His areas of research interest are project success, planning, and agile and he has presented a number of peer-reviewed papers on these topics at academic conferences. He an author of books and articles on project management and is also a regular speaker at PMI global congresses. He was the recipient of the PMI 2012 James R. Snyder International Student Paper of the Year Award and the Major de Promotion Award for best PhD Thesis 2012-2013 from SKEMA business school. He holds an Hons. BSc in Physics and Computer Science from the University of Waterloo, Canada; an MBA from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland; and a PhD in Strategy, Programme & Project Management from SKEMA Business School (Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Lille). He can be contacted at pedro@serrador.net

  • Andrew Gemino, Simon Fraser University Canada

    Andrew Gemino, BA, MA (Econ) MBA is an Associate Dean and Professor in the Beedie School of Business, at Simon Fraser University. He received his doctorate from the University of British Columbia in Management Information Systems. His research focuses on information technology project management, business systems analysis and data-driven decision making.

  • Blaize Horner Reich, Simon Fraser University Canada

    Dr. Blaize Horner Reich is the dean of the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University. Her areas of expertise, both practical and academic, include the use of information technology to improve business processes, knowledge management, project management, and strategic planning. As the RBC Professor of Technology and Innovation, Dr. Reich’s research focuses on IT Governance and IT project management.

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Published

2022-05-20

Issue

Vol. 6 No. 1 (2018): The Journal of Modern Project Management

Section

Articles-JMPM

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Copyright (c) 2022 Pedro Serrador, Andrew Gemino, Blaize Horner Reich

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

Creating a Climate for Project Success. (2022). The Journal of Modern Project Management, 6(1). https://journalmodernpm.com/manuscript/index.php/jmpm/article/view/JMPM01605

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