Project Management Circa 2025

By Bopaya Bidanda

Project Management Circa 2025 provides the basics about how project management is used in the present, and how organizations will create a new state-of-the-art for project management. As readers learn what the future of project management might be, they will also see the likely impact on their own organizations, now and in the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Project Management Institute
• Release date: Oct 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781935589143

Book preview

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Preface

Asignificant body of book literature in project management has evolved over the last 50 years. This literature has addressed a wide range of approaches to the management of projects, including theory, processes, and principle.

Edmund Gosse (1840-1928) noted that The Future comes like an unwelcome guest. Unfortunately there has been little literature on what the likely future of project management might be. In order to fill that void, this book will present the likely future of project management in terms of the possibilities and probabilities of how the discipline will be used to manage the tactical and strategic changes that will impact current and forthcoming products, services, and organizational processes.

As the technological, economic, political, legal, and competitive world changes, what strategies should be developed and implemented to facilitate survival and growth? The evaluations are done by professionals who have extraordinary credentials in the use of project management, and are the best qualified to identify and evaluate the likely future changes in their environment.

We believe that this first-of-its-kind book will create awareness of what future changes can be expected in the use of project management. The thoughts contained can be used to facilitate the management of current and future change.

David I. Cleland, Ph.D.

Bopaya Bidanda, Ph.D.

University of Pittsburgh

Introduction

Project management has evolved over many centuries as a means for organizations to deal with change. It was not until the 1950s that the literature began to reflect the evolving theory and practice of this discipline. The proposed book draws from the collective experience of project management leaders from around the world to develop a project management based scenario for the year 2025.

The project management practitioners authoring chapters are knowledgeable experts in the theory and practice of project management. These contributors, drawn from different industries and countries around the world, have written their chapters from a perspective of the likely forces and factors that will influence the probable state-of-the-art in project management for the period circa 2025.

The principal guiding criteria for the chapter authors were: (1) A very brief introduction of the current state-of-the-art of project management in their industry or environment; (2) A general overview of the expected and future technological, economic, social, political, and competitive characteristics of their industry or environment; (3) Identification of current trends in their industry or environment that will likely affect the manner in which project management is used in the future in their environment; and (4) Identification of the major characteristics of project management likely to be found in their industry or environment for the period circa 2025. The authors were given wide latitude in preparing their material and describing their knowledge and the experiences that influenced their foretelling of what the likely appearance of state of both theory and practice of project management in 2025.

The book is organized into five parts as follows:

Part 1 Examples of Projects from Geographic and Industry Applications

Part 2 Project Management Systems Applications

Part 3 Project Management Organizational Applications

Part 4 Project Management in Government

Part 5 Likely Growth of Project Management

Each part brings together for the reader the probable state-of-the-art in diverse environments for the year 2025. It provides the basis for the reader to learn of the varied uses of project management in the present, and how the cultural ambience of the organizations of the future will impact the probable state-of-the-art of project management circa 2025. As readers see what the future of project management may be, they might see how their organizations could be impacted. A brief outline of the parts and chapters follows.

Part 1: Examples of Projects from Geographic and Industry Applications

Several projects are described in this part from different geographic areas. These projects describe how the strategic change management in their particular areas have been initiated and executed to deal with the alteration of the employment of organizational resources to accomplish desired objectives and goals. While there is a central theme of generic project management in these projects, there are provincial characteristics to be found as well.

In chapter 1, Christophe N. Bredillet presents a chapter on the deployment of project management in the Europe of 2025. He makes the key point that the project management discipline will likely continue to grow and is expected to be adopted more and more by companies and organizations, including governments, non-government, business and non-profit organizations and associations. The overall purpose of this chapter is to analyze the contribution of two organizations in the deployment of project management and compare their deployment within the European countries by 2025.

In chapter 2, Alfonso Bucero, PMP, explains that project management is becoming more and more popular in Spain, but is still understood as a tactical set of methods and tools focused principally on the project manager. Very few Spanish organizations spend time and money training their executives in the strategic part of project management and in their critical role as project sponsors. The author points out that the board of directors of many Spanish companies do not see the need of being trained as sponsors. There is a need to develop and train skilled project managers in both the hard and soft skills used in the management of projects.

Raju Rao, in chapter 3, has a vision of India where the role of the project manager is critical in transforming a nation from developing to developed. India has consistently maintained an economic growth of over 9% over the last several years. World Bank reports state that India will be the third-largest economy by the year 2025, although the rapid growth is threatened in terms of environmental issues, sustainability, degradation, infrastructure resource inadequacy, social imbalance, cultural differences and the lack of appropriate managerial skills. The chapter closes with the provocative question: Can project management as a discipline be used to handle these opportunities and threats?

In chapter 4, Brian Kooyman describes how project management will likely change in the Australasian and Pacific Region. The first part of the chapter addresses the geography of the region followed by a review of the current levels of project management and application in the region. Then a summary of the likely developments and changing environments in the region is presented. This is followed with hypotheses on how the region will cope with these changes. The last part of the chapter considers how these hypothetical changes may be managed.

Chapter 5 by Charles R. Franklin, PMP, Naceur Jabnoun, Ph.D., and Shriram R. Dharwadkar, Ph.D, states that project management in the Arabian Gulf region will be impacted by factors which include emerging and rapidly changing technologies, economics as the region's economies make a shift away from their dependency on oil and gas, critical issues in human resources development, and the increasing size and complexity of projects. These will result in new challenges to business in general and projects specifically. Some of the major challenges may be categorized as knowledge management, innovation, business, ethics, and safety. Project professionals of 2025 will have developed new competencies both to meet these challenges and to leverage the opportunities they present.

Part 2: Project Management Systems Applications

In chapter 6, Elaine Bannon and David Pericak say that although external factors change over time, the key personal values and deliverables of project management that deliver excellent results do not. This chapter describes those key elements, how to measure them, and discusses the health of your project management organization and how a high performing team can thrive in time of significant change. It is critical for organization to recognize and deliberately foster these key personal values and core deliverables in order to strengthen their companies in any set of external factors, whether they are deemed challenging or enabling.

Chapter 7 by Janice Lynn Thomas, Jenny Krahn, and Stella George provides insight into the shape of project management research to come. They believe that those most successful in predicting the future are not so much predictors as shapers. What great shapers do is recognize the trends and needs that are about to become important to the world. Shapers support change through innovation. Considering the direction of changes in the world of work, project management is well-placed to shape itself to meet coming needs. The future of project management needs to be innovatively responsive to the leading edge of work.

Chapter 8 by Randall L. Speck focuses on the legal framework for projects circa 2025. The author notes that legal systems inherently resist change and rely on precedents. Statutes, he says, do not change easily or quickly and usually lag behind changes in economic relationships. Legal systems protect parochial, entrenched interests based on territorial jurisdiction. There is the need to develop legal constructs that will promote projects in a global, instantaneous, and transparent environment. Different legal traditions clash as globalization requires cross-border relationships, which also leads to the difficulty of assigning jurisdiction in one locale. The role of government regulations complicates the legal issues.

Stacy Goff admits at the beginning of chapter 9 that prediction is difficult. His chapter hedges that difficulty by applying several scenarios to establish alternative futures for the portfolio, program, and project management software industry. The chapter applies experience of industry veterans, interview results with several product managers of current market leaders, and insights from several more who are involved with changes in the industry's direction. A trajectory scenario traces key project management software achievements of the past

Chapter 10 discusses the likely growth of quality management in projects circa 2025. Sandra K. Ireland explores the history of quality management from original meaning of words through the turbulent quality revolution of the 1970s, where a sharp focus changed the thrust of quality from defect correction to defect prevention. This prevention focus is carried forward into the future with suggestions on what will cause changes and where some changes will occur by 2025. All of this is described within the context of projects, the environments that influence project work and organizational changes that meet the quality challenges of 2025.

In chapter 11, Edmund M. Ricci and Beth A. D. Nolan describes scientific program evaluation in a comprehensive framework of concepts and methods. This is used to assess the resources, activities, outputs, and outcomes used in the design and implementation of a time-limited project. Initially the chapter describes current concepts and methods used in scientific program evaluation. While certain aspects of scientific program evolution share similarities with project management, in reality their scope and methods are significantly different. The chapter concludes with suggestions describing how these two intellectual systems should be merged in the future to create a robust framework for monitoring an assessment of all aspects of time-limited projects.

James S. Pennypacker, in chapter 12, presents three vivid scenarios, each an equally plausible, yet very different story, about what might happen to project portfolio management (PPM) in the future. Facts about the future demographics, geographic, and industrial information, along with plausible social, technical, economic, environmental, educational, and political trends are key driving forces in creating these three possible futures. The result will be a surprising look into the future, offering insight into what the general shape of the future of PPM might be, and a framework for dealing with it.

Part 3: Project Management Organizational Applications

In chapter 13, Kam Jugdev, Ralf Müller, and Maureen Hutchinson examine the likely interdependence of strategic and project management circa 2025. The chapter authors view strategy as matching an organization's capabilities to changing market environments to achieve better competitive positions. They note that increasingly, companies are turning to project management to help them be more effective and efficient. The question is posed for the year 2025: What are the likely interdependences between strategic management and project management? To help answer this question, the authors refer to some key concepts in strategy followed by a discussion of trends today as they relate to strategy. The chapter reviews macro environmental factors, and then discusses these factors for the year 2025 to develop perspectives on the links between strategy and project management.

In chapter 14, Howard Bruck, PMP, examines the likely future of financial services circa 2025. He predicts that fierce competition exists on a global scale. The traditional barriers to entry and competition are no longer in play, so he posits that the project management practice for financial services in 2025 will be much more demanding and specialized. The success of projects will be judged for several years after initial completion as the results are not a static solution, but one which will evolve over time. The degree to which the project manager can advise the firm along the way will separate the profitable projects from those that quickly lose their value.

Writing in chapter 15, Belle Collins Brown believes the research and development (R&D) project manager will continue to evolve away from his or her process roots. Future R&D managers must be prepared to face the reality that most of today's work—planning, status tracking, reporting—will be automated into large development systems designed to provide portfolio-level views for an organization's R&D activities. Project managers of the future must develop leadership competencies rather than managerial capabilities alone. Such project managers will no longer be involved in discrete functional entities in silos crying out for coordination. Instead they will be part of project-based organizations that require real leadership.

In chapter 16, Hugh Woodward reviews the role of project management professional societies in connecting and networking, circa 2025. Project management professional associations, especially the Project Management Institute, have been growing exponentially since the early 1990s and one is tempted to predict that continued double-digit growth will occur through 2025. He then asks the question of whether the professional association of 2025 will just be bigger versions of what we see today. Demographic trends and technological advancements will continue to affect the way we work, and even the nature of work itself. These trends are likely to impact the project manager's relationship to his or her professional associations. The professional associations will have to adapt, and the resulting organizations will look different than what we have today.

In chapter 17, Richard E. Boyatzis, Mary Fambrough, David Leonard, and Kenneth Rhee look at the emotional and social intelligence competencies of effective project managers. They note that emotional and social intelligence competencies have been shown to distinguish effective from ineffective managers and leaders at many levels in organizations around the world. Using original data from a study of effective versus less effective project managers at the R&D facility of a major government based research organization, they present a model of the competencies distinguishing outstanding project managers is presented. Implications will be discussed for the selection, retention, and development of effective project managers.

In chapter 18, Stephen R. Thomas, Ph.D., P.E., Edward J. Jaselskis, Ph.D., P.E., and Cory McDermott examine the trends likely to affect the future of construction project management. They note that the construction industry is fortunate to have an industry-driven process in place with the specific purpose of identifying trends likely to affect the construction industry. This process is a function of the Construction Industry Institute (CII) Strategic Planning Committee. CII is recognized as the principal construction industry forum for addressing current and future issues because CII members represent the leading owners, contractors, suppliers, and academics that are actively funding, directing, and performing research to improve competitiveness and prepare the engineering and construction industry for the future.

Part 4: Project Management in Government

In chapter 19 Michelle R. Brunswick describes how project management and defense acquisition in 2025 will likely look. The purpose of her chapter is to focus the reader on U.S. Department of Defense acquisition and how it will meet future threats. The chapter has three areas of assessment: Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) including political atmosphere, the armed forces, and industry perspective. The first section of the chapter is a top-level vision and will address the OSD viewpoint of 2025 considering the political and economic global environment. The second section will narrow in on how the military services perceive the threat. The third section will cover how industry is prepared to meet the future vision of 2025.

In chapter 20, Dorothy J. Tiffany, CPA, PMP, will examine what new frontiers will exist in space exploration. The chapter author asks the obvious question: What does the future hold for space exploration? She believes that some of the most revolutionary changes in project management occurred during the years between 1983 and 2008, and equally important changes will take place over the next few decades. Just as the space hardware and software systems become more complicated, project management techniques matured and grew as well with the building of the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope, Phoenix Mars Lander and other trail-blazing missions. That maturation and growth will continue.

In chapter 21, Jonathan Weinstein, PMP, and Timothy Jaques, PMP describe how U.S. state governments are currently using project management. Such governments will face tremendous upheaval in the next 18 years in the scale and scope of the services they deliver to their citizens and the methods by which those services are delivered. The chapter focuses on the key drivers of project management, specifically addressing the types of likely projects, the organizational design utilized, maturity levels, tools, processes, and skills and capabilities required of project teams. The chapter includes the results of interview and focus-groups session with state government project management personnel.

Part 5: Likely Growth of Project Management

In chapter 22, Dr. Hans J. Thamhain looks at the future of team leadership in complex project environments. The author believes that team leadership has become critically important to project performance. The twenty-first century is bringing new technologies, social innovations, and a closely-linked world but also brings constant change, uncertainty, and disruption. This has provided great business opportunities, but also enormous managerial challenge. Team leaders of the future must understand the dynamics of people and organization at all levels, including the cognitive structures that create change and influence decision-making, in order to build and sustain high-performance project teams. This chapter provides an insight into the changing social processes and organizational environments that drive team performance.

Chapter 23 by Storm Cunningham provides insight into important global trends in project management. Four major trends are opening a vast gap between today's project management disciplines/tools and those that will be increasingly needed as this century progresses. These trends are restorative development, integration, engagement, and partnering. The strategic need to plug this gap is already urgent, and presents possibly the best career path for project managers just entering the field. The author argues that by 2025, these four trends will be well-established as the norm. Project managers who aren't intimately familiar with the technical, legal, and managerial challenges of all four will likely find they are obsolete. One of the many outcomes of this confluence of trends will be the ascendancy of program management over project management.

In chapters 24 and 25, David L. Pells provides an examination of new frontiers for project management. An examination is provided of seven new industries where projects and project management will play a significant role, with tremendous potential impact on economies and society. These new frontiers will be nanotechnology (applied across various industries and scientific fields); new energy supplies; humans in space (colonization of the moon, flights to Mars, space tourism, commercialization of space, etc.); climate change and sciences (near space research, development and technologies); economic development, especially in Africa, Asia and Latin America; health and medicines; and global security. Most of this area will require global cooperation, global programs and projects, and application of portfolio, program, and project management models.

The title of chapter 26 by Rebecca Ann Winston, Why are We Still Conducting Risky Business? prepares the reader for the challenges coming forth in the next two decades. The author explores the business drivers that will still be operable in the year 2025 that will drive risk management in projects. The exploration begins from the first strategic decisions to initiate the project to how risk will be disseminated in lessons learned. The focus will be on medium to large corporations and government corporations. The author believes that the connection between the business drivers and how risk management should be conducted has been and will continue to be ignored in many areas of project management. The chapter will highlight those areas and the impact on the whole (the net bottom line) when one does not holistically view the impact of the connection between business drivers and risk management within project management.

In chapter 27, Guiping Hu, Lizhi Wang, and Bopaya Bidanda review the likely connection between sustainable manufacturing and project management, circa 2025. Sustainability/sustainable manufacturing has gained popularity in a broad spectrum of societal sectors. Sustainable manufacturing can be viewed as the implementation of a group of projects the product's life cycle evolution process. Therefore, it is important to incorporate the concept of sustainability into the project management process. In this chapter, the authors discuss how to implement and manage projects within the sustainability concept. A case study is utilized for demonstration purposes. In addition, quantitative models are also be discussed to assist decision making problems for stakeholders.

Project management in a flat world is the subject of chapter 28. Ozlem Arisoy, Murat Azim, David Cleland, and Bopaya Bidanda note the growing offshoring trend forces companies to transfer their high-cost activities to low-labor rate countries. A systematic project management approach during the process of global sourcing decisions is usually the key driver to success and will likely grow in importance over the next few decades. Offshoring decision-making processes can be considered as large-size projects that impact a company's strategies and future operations. Although these projects can be managed based on the classical project management principles, modifications and extensions are inevitable to support the wide scope of growing globalization.

In chapter 29, Jang Ra focuses on predicting the roles of project managers circa 2025 and using that knowledge to provide better education and training by reshaping the project management curriculum, teaching methods, delivery means, faculty and students. This approach is taken on the premise that future organizations will survive mainly through innovative and successful projects, within a globally competitive environment representing many different cultures and time-zones, and by completing transformation cycles faster than their competitors.

PART 1

Examples of Projects from Geographic and Industry Applications

CHAPTER 1

The Deployment of Project Management: A Prospective View of G8, European G6 & Outreach 5 Countries in 2025

Christophe N. Bredillet

Background

The world is moving fast and turbulently. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), one of the measures of a country's economy defined as the total market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period of time (Wikipedia, 2008), is used as a development indicator for countries, regions and for global levels. For example, the Economist Intelligence Unit expects for China a real GDP growth in 2008 of 9.8%, less than the 11.9% expansion recorded in 2007, with an expected further slowing to 9% in 2009 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008a). The slowdown in India, according to EIU (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008b), will be relatively shallow, with real GDP growth slowing to 7.7% in 2008-09 and 7.1% in 2009-10. For the U.S., real GDP is forecast to grow by just 0.8% in 2008 and recover modestly to 1.4% in 2009 (Economist Intelligence Unit, 2008c).

The major organizations and governments need more and more to know about the past performances, but also to better predict the future in order to quickly define or re-define their strategies and policies in various domains. This need has been created in the past few decades because of an environment in which international organizations such as the United Nations (UN), International Monetary Funds (IMF), World Bank, or governmental organizations such Energy Information Administration (EIA), Eurostat, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), are developing important standards and frameworks to collect and process the information related mainly to social, financial, economical, environmental, demographic, and technological domains at the country, regional, and worldwide levels. A look at the publications and databases of these organizations shows the huge amount of information collected, processed. and made available through public means such as the Internet. While there is a great deal of historical data at the major databases, the forecast data is rarely available. Some short-term two-to-three-year projections may be accessible for some domains, but mid- and long-term forecasts are absent or not available to the public.

The project management discipline is a part of this moving world. The United Nations and OECD¹ reported in 2005 that about 22% of the GDP of the economies in transition and developing economies is gross fixed capital formation (United Nations, 2007), which is almost entirely project-based². The professional associations aiming at developing and supporting project management continue to grow globally and regionally. The Project Management Institute (PMI) announced more than 275,000 members by July 2008 (Project Management Institute, 2008) and the International Project Management Association (International Project Management Association, 2007) announces more than 73,000 members by end of 2007. The actions initiated by the educational systems in many countries, and the worldwide certifications programs supported by standards development continue to progress and to contribute to project management deployment (Bredillet, Ruiz, & Yatim, 2008a).

The major trends that characterize the 21st century such as global competition, rapid technological change, short product life cycle, process improvement, the complexity of undertakings, and the focus on quality all require extensive and professional use of the project management discipline (Lientz & Rea, 2002).

As part of this moving world, project management deployment needs not only to be observed, but also to be predicted like any other important social or economical indicator. Business organizations as well as project management professional bodies should have the possibility to predict the project management deployment status in the future. Can we perform a projection of the project management deployment in the future? What will be the project management deployment situation in a given country at a given year, for example? How the countries can be compared in terms of project management deployment in the future?

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a framework that allows the construction of a prospective view of project management deployment in the future. This framework will then be used to present the prospective views up to 2025 for the G8, G6 and O5 countries presented in a former paper (Bredillet, et al., 2008a).

Project Management Deployment and Forecasting

To be able to build a forecast model that predicts project management deployment, we first need to adopt a tool that measures this project management deployment. This paper relies on the project management deployment definition and the project management deployment index (PMDI) indicator defined in Bredillet, et al. (2008a) and presented below.

Project Management Deployment Index (PMDI)

The measurement of project management deployment is defined as the level or the degree of deployment of project management within a country (or group) by dividing the total number of the project management-certified individuals within this country (or group) by the total population of that country (or group) during a given point in time (a year). The certification figures considered in this paper integrate those from PMI and the International Project Management Association (IPMA). For a given country, the sum of certified individuals from these both organizations is considered. This restriction to PMI and IPMA figures should have a negative impact on the PMDI by lowering its real value, and very serious impact in some countries like Japan and Australia, where other project management certification bodies are operating.

Forecasting

Second, we need to design a forecasting model that fits best to the project management deployment setup. The literature review reveals no studies addressing the project management deployment forecasting topic as per the date of this paper. In economics, for example, an econometric model is used to forecast future developments in the economy, and econometricians measure past relationships between variables and then try to forecast how changes in some variables will affect the future of others. Most forecasters believe that analysts judgment should be used not only to determine values for exogenous (outside of the model) variables, but also to reduce the likely size of model error (endogenous variables unpredicted variations) (Hymans, 2008). Based on historical time series data, the past relationships between the project management deployment and some influencing factors such as the gross domestic product per capita and the national culture dimensions have been studied in Bredillet, Ruiz, and Yatim (2008b) without proposing any forecasting model. The regression model generated with the above-mentioned cultural study could have been used to forecast the values of PMDI in the future, based on the values of GDP per capita and cultural dimensions scores. But we have excluded it because the national culture is generally stable and not changing significantly from one year or one decade to another (Hofstede, 1983). Thus, the variation in PMDI will be only linked to the GDP per capita growth, which is assumed not enough to explain the future predictions.

With the absence of a forecasting model or a theory of how various factors influencing project management deployment interact with each other, we focused in this paper on the trend model derived directly from the past recorded time series of PMDI values, bearing in mind that:

Any forecast of the project management deployment for such a period of about 20 years is subject to uncertainty and error. This is due to unpredictable changes and events that may take place during this period of time. An example of such unpredictable events is the effect of the new certification exam PMI announced to take place by September 2005. At the end of 2005, the results show 86% growth in the U.S. (PMDI passed from 174 in 2004 to 323 in 2005), compared to 44% in 2004 (PMDI passed from 121 in 2003 to 174 in 2004), and 20% in 2006 (PMDI passed from 323 in 2005 to 388 in 2006).

Basing our forecast only on the past experience (growth trends) of project management deployment is not enough to carefully predict the future. This past experience should be correctly analyzed with other possible influencing factors to elaborate better forecasting models (NOBE, 2002).

Methodology and Data Choices

Trend model

The proposed trend model is based on PMDI, argued to be a valid measurement tool for project management deployment measurement within a country or a region; and is based on the concept of project management certification process supported by the major project management professional bodies and adopted more and more by the business organizations (Bredillet et al., 2008a).

For this paper, we consider a forecast approach based only on historical past trend data. This presupposes that, in the future, project management deployment will behave the same way as it did during the past recorded years and that the impact of the influencing variables will continue to be exactly the same. This assumption introduces a non-measurable error that may appear in the final forecasting results.

The trend equations have been calculated for each country and the polynomial (degree 2), having goodness-of-fit (R2) greater than 96% for all of the considered countries, and have been selected as the trend equations that best represent the trends based on the past recorded data.

The absence of inflexion points in the analyzed data dismissed the possibility of an S curve in the near future. This confirmed the general increasing trends of PMI and IPMA members and certified individuals and of the GDP per capita for the considered countries.

Accordingly, we propose the following framework based on the application of the trend equations of the past values of PMDI:

–Select the country or the set of countries that will be the objects of the projection (forecast)

–Select the past period of time for which the PMDI values for the selected countries are known

–Elaborate the trend equation(s) based on the best-fit extrapolation of the past data

–Proceed with the application of the elaborated trend equation(s) to calculate the PMDI values for the projected period of time for each selected country.

Selected Countries

We have selected the following 15 countries to deal with for this study. Apart from their important roles as major economic and social actors on the international market, this selection is dictated by the fact that we have already presented and discussed project management deployment within these countries during the period 1998-2006 (Bredillet, et al., 2008a) and that we have at our disposal the related set of data. These 15 countries are grouped as follows:

–The G8 countries constituted Canada, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States. The selection of these countries was based only on their economic size (about 65% of the world economy) and their presence at the international level as the most developed countries.

–The European G6 countries constituted France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and United Kingdom. They constitute the largest European countries in terms of population and economic sizes.

–The O5 countries constituted Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa—also called the emerging powers. The selection of these countries was based on their significant growth rates and economic readiness as the most important developing countries.

Selected Past Period

We have selected the period of 1998-2007 as the past period of time for which we have calculated and reproduced the PMDI data in Table 1. The year 1998 is considered to be the beginning of significant deployment of project management for each of the considered countries. In fact, the data collected from PMI shows a total of 2,537 certified individuals up to 1997, present mainly in the U.S. (2,062) and Canada (282). The data from IPMA (International Project Management Association, 2007) shows a total of 8,123 certified individuals up to 1999, present mainly in U.K. (4,194) and Germany (3,346).

Selected Projection Period

We have selected the period of 2008-2025 as the projection period of time for which we will be calculating the forecasted (projected) values of PMDI for the selected countries.

Data Results

The Trend Equations Model

Based on the past data presented in Table 1, we have elaborated the polynomial (degree 2) trend equation for each selected country. The resulting equations are summarized in Table 2 where x indicates the time (year) and R2 indicates the coefficient of determination that reflects the goodness of fit of the equation model.

Based on the polynomial trend equations, we have calculated the projected PMDI in the years 2008 to 2025. The results are shown in Table 3.

The following example illustrates the calculation of the projected PMDI for France in 2008 and 2009:

PMDI(France, 2008)=0.4924*(2008-1997) ² - 0.0758*(2008-1997) + 0.3265= 59.07

PMDI(France, 2009)= 0.4924*(2009-1997) ² - 0.0758*(2009-1997) + 0.3265= 70.32

The same calculation has been performed to obtain the results of Table 3.

Based on the PMDI definition (PMDI = (the cumulative number of certified individuals) / (the population within a country)), Table 3 allows calculation of the forecasted number of certified individuals for each country during the period 2008-2025 considering the population forecasts during this period given by the U.S. Census Bureau – International Data Base. The results are presented here after in Table 4.

Table 2.Polynomial (2) Trend Equations For The Selected Countries – Based on PMI and IPMA data – PMDI 1998-2007

The Certified Individuals per country per year = PMDI (Country, Year) * Population (Country, Year).

The Populations of the Selected Countries during 2008-2025 are based on the forecast data from US Census Bureau – International Data Bases.

Results Discussion

Note on S-Time Distance

The conventional statistical measurement and comparisons tools are used for data analysis. We mean that the growth variations are recorded mainly on a time-period basis (generally one year), and comparisons are made among these percentages to evaluate differences between measured units (countries, regions, or socio-economic groups). The current state-of-the-art of comparative analysis is based mainly on some conventional statistical measures which are recalled here after the definitions of the most-used of them. In the following formulation the subscripts (i) and (j) indicate respectively two time-series or units (i) and (j). X indicates the level of the indicator (variable) at time t (Sicherl, 2004c).

Absolute difference between units i and j at time t:

Ratio between units i and j at time t:

Percentage difference between units i and j at time t:

According to Sicherl (1998a), existing methods in economics and statistics fail to extract the notion of time embodied in the existing data and to fully use the information content with regard to time.

Comparative analysis based on time-series data does use time as an identifier only to mark the occurrence of events at a given time. It does not incorporate time as an indicator that can be measured and compared. The analysis of disparities among different units (for instance, among different countries) results in a one-dimensional view of the analyzed variable(s) (for instance, per-capita income) that only relies on static measurements losing the dynamic perception of time. The degree of disparities of the studied situation may be very different when incorporating the time measurement to complement the conventional static measurements (Sicherl, 1998a).

Sicherl (2006) derived from the time-matrix presentation of the time series the novel statistical measure, the S-time-distance measure, as the horizontal time difference for a given level L of the variable XL:

This statistical S-time-distance (S stands for Sicherl) measure is intended to enhance the analytical framework of the time-series comparisons process by adding a new dimension of analysis: the time dimension (Sicherl, 1998b). Based on existing time-series data, the S-time-distance offers a new perception (time distance) of the data, offering to the comparative dynamic analysis a new and complementary instrument that brings new insights, in addition to static measures and a general presentation tool (Sicherl, 2004g).

This generic concept of time-distance analysis is applied in a variety of domains: economic and social development (Sicherl, 2000, 2001, 2004a, 2004b, 2004e, 2004f), social indicators (Sicherl & Vahcic, 1999), information society (Sicherl, 2005), monitoring implementation of development goals (Sicherl, 2007), and other socio-economic domains (Sicherl, 2004c, 2004d, 2004g). Granger and Jeon (2003) used the concept of time-distance as a criterion for evaluating forecasting models. It is used to analyze a variety of problems in time series comparisons, regressions, models, forecasting and monitoring, the notion of time distance was always there as a hidden dimension (Sicherl, 2004g).

Time-distance analysis is a supplementary statistical tool that complements the existing conventional statistical tools.

Current Situation of project management deployment – S-Time Distance 2007

Before proceeding with the presentation of our prospective results, it is important to show the current status of the project management deployment for reference and comparison purposes when exploring the prospective results later on. The current status of project management deployment within the selected countries (SC) is shown in Figure 1 with the S-Time distances recorded in 2007.

More than 14 years mark the gap between the leading and lagging countries (i.e., United Kingdom and Russia). The leading group of countries is United Kingdom and Canada, followed by the U.S., Germany, and Japan, which altogether constitute the five countries recording a lead time versus the average PMDI of the selected countries. All the other 10 countries are recording lag time versus the average, led by France and Poland for the European countries, and by Brazil and South Africa for the other countries. Russia is lagging well behind the average with about six years delay.

Prospective Situation Based on Trend Equations – S-Time Distance 2025

Based on the data elaborated in Table 3, we have calculated and presented in Figure 2 the PMDI S-Time distances in 2025 for all the selected countries.

The project management deployment S-Time distances shown in Figure 2 clearly indicate the very important gap expected to take place in 2025. This gap amounts more than 32 years between the leading and lagging countries (Canada and Mexico). The expected leading countries are Canada and the U.S., recording more than 15 years lead time, versus selected countries’ PMDI average—United Kingdom with 12.14 years, Japan with 10.6 years, and Germany with 8.68 years ahead of the selected countries’ average. Poland will be recording a lag time of 4.47 years behind the average. France, Brazil, Italy, South Africa, and China are expected to record between 6.96 and 9.11 years lag times behind the average in 2025. India and Spain will be recoding around 13 years, and Russia and Mexico more than 15 years of lag time behind that average.

We should notice also in Figure 2 that the leading countries (Canada, the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Germany) are expected to be the same in 2025 as in 2007, but the ordering will be change significantly. In fact, Canada and the U.S. will overtake United Kingdom, and Japan will overtake Germany. For the lagging countries, Poland is expected to record high performance, passing far before France, and India before Spain. Brazil is expected to enhance its position against Italy, South Africa, and China, while Russia and Mexico will maintain approximately their relative positions.

Forecasting, GDP, and cultural factors

We mentioned above – in the forecasting paragraph – that based on historical time series data, the relationships between project management deployment and some influencing factors such as gross domestic product per capita and national culture dimensions have been studied in Bredillet, Ruiz, and Yatim (2008b). This led us to develop in this study through stepwise linear regression the following equation:

PMDI(country, year) =

284.46 + 0.004*GDP/Capita(country, year) – 2.156*UAI(country, year) – 1.931*PDI(country, year)

Where:

GDP/Capita(country, year) is the GDP based on purchasing-power-parity (PPP) per capita in U.S. dollars for the considered country at the time year

UAI is the uncertainty avoidance index score for the considered country at the time year

PDI is the power distance index score for the considered country at the time year

And we noticed above that the national culture is generally stable and not changing significantly from one year or one decade to another (Hofstede, 1983), and thus, the variation in PMDI would be only linked to the GDP per capita growth, which is assumed not enough to explain the future predictions.

If we apply this equation to forecasted GDP per country (NOBE, 2002), we obtain these results in 2025, as shown in Figure 3.

Although probably a bit simple, this approach provides another view of the end result in 2025, with some significant differences compared to the approach used in this paper. As usual in forecasting studies, it is always worthwhile to use different approaches to get a picture of the future and then discuss them with a group of experts. This would lead us beyond the scope of this paper, but the reader has thus the opportunity to think about these results and get an idea of what the most probable future could be.

Prospective Situation Based on Trend Equation – Evolution 2008-2025

After the above global view presentation of the S-Time distances in 2025 for all the countries, we present in this section the dynamic prospective view of the PMDI between 2008 and 2025 for the three groups of countries G8, G6 and G5.

Prospective Evolution - G8 Countries

Figure 4 shows the dynamic evolution of the forecasted PMDI values of the G8 countries during the period 2008-2025.

Canada and the U.S. constitutes the leading sub-group, reaching a PMDI score of 4,757 and 4,305 respectively. Japan, United Kingdom, and Germany constitute the medium sub-group, having PMDIs between 1,478 for Germany and 2,080 for Japan. The lagging sub-group constitutes France, Italy, and Russia with 384, 320, and 106 respectively.

We can notice the relative low performance of the United Kingdom and Germany compared to Japan within the medium sub-group. In fact, Japan will overcome U.K. in 2019 and continues increasing the gap until 2025. During the period 2008-2025, the gap among the countries of each sub-group is relatively small, but the gap among the subgroups is important and significantly increases between the beginning and the end of the considered period.

Looking at the performance of the various G8 countries from the perspective of the Period Increasing Ratio (PIR), representing the quotient PMDI at 2025 divided by PMDI at 2008, we can see that Canada for example having a PIR of 7.12 is performing less well than Russia, which will have a PIR of 8.96. Japan will be recording the best performance in term of PIR with a score of 9.05. Table 5 represents the PIR for the G8 countries.

Prospective Evolution – G6 Countries

Figure 5 shows the dynamic evolution of the forecasted PMDI values of the G6 countries during the period 2008-2025.

United Kingdom and Germany will be leading within this G6 group of countries. They constitute the leading sub-group, reaching a PMDI score of 1,767 and 1,478 respectively. Poland, France, and Italy constitute a medium sub-group, reaching a PMDI of 477 for Poland, 384 for France, and 320 for Italy in 2025. The lagging sub-group constitutes Spain, alone recording a PMDI of 167 in 2025.

Poland reaches France in 2103 and continues its progress until 2025 with a difference of 93 points ahead of France. During the period 2008-2025, the gap among the countries of each sub-group is relatively small, but the gap between the leading subgroup and the other two sub-groups is important and significantly increases between the beginning and the end of the considered period.

Table 5.Period Increasing Ratio (PIR) of the G8 countries - PMDI, 2025/2008

Looking at the performance of the various G6 countries from the perspective of the PIR, we can see the high performance of Poland with a PIR of 10.12, followed by Italy with a PIR of 8.4. France, Germany and Spain have almost the same PIR scores of around 6.5. United Kingdom records a very low performance, with a PIR of 4.24. Table 6 represents the PIR for the G6 countries.

Prospective Evolution – O5 Countries

Figure 6 shows the dynamic evolution of the forecasted PMDI values of the O5 countries during the period 2008-2025.

Brazil, South Africa, and China are leading within this O5 group of countries. They constitute the leading sub-group, reaching a PMDI score of 378, 306 and 303 respectively. While China and South Africa are progressing similarly, Brazil is showing more aggressive performance during the period 2008-2025. India and Mexico constitute the lagging sub-group reaching a PMDI of 177 for India and 105 for Mexico in 2025.

During the period 2008-2025, the gap between the countries is relatively important, except for China and South Africa.

Looking at the performance from the perspective of the PIR we can notice a general high performance of the O5 countries with PIR around 9. Table 7 represents the PIR for the O5 countries.

Limitations

The main indicator used in the present study is the PMDI, which should be carefully interpreted with its limitations of not being fully representative of the full picture of project management deployment and its restriction to the PMI® and IPMA certification program (Bredillet, et al., 2008a).

The time-distance analysis applied within the scope of this paper considers the average of the selected 15 countries and, accordingly, the results obtained are closely linked to this average. Any modification in the list of the studied countries could have implied a modification of the referenced average and consequently could have changed the results, but not the global picture: the order among countries would be the same.

Table 6.Period Increasing Ratio (PIR) of the G6 countries - PMDI, 2025/2008

The prospective view presented in this paper should be considered carefully with the following two main reasons:

–The basic values of PMDI used for 2007 have their limitations as not fully representative of the global project management population as mentioned here above. The fact that PMDI values for 2007 are underestimated (we have for instance not considered PRINCE2™ or MSP™ certifications) impacts certainly the prospective values for 2008-2025.

–The trend equation model used in the calculation of the forecasted values should be considered with its limitation of being representative of the historical behavior of the PMDI only. It is assumed that project management deployment will continue behaving the same way as during the past recorded period with no variation in the impact of other influencing factors.

Accordingly, it is important to focus the interpretation of the analysis on the benchmarking and comparison between the countries more than on the absolute values of PMDI for the studied countries. The accuracy of the forecasted PMDI values is limited by the above-mentioned limitations. Furthermore, when some PMDI boundaries or limits are set up and discussed within this paper, they should be seen as comparative tools that help in the cross-countries assessment.

Table 7.Period Increasing Ratio (PIR) of the O5 countries - PMDI, 2025/2008

Conclusions

The paper introduces a framework to forecast project management deployment empirically based on PMDI as a project management measurement indicator (Bredillet et al., 2008a) and the trend equations (see Table 2) estimating the PMDI based on the historical data recorded between 1998 and 2007.

The major 15 economies (i.e., G8, G6, and O5) were used as the experimental setup to apply the proposed framework. The results show important increase of the S-Time distance between the extreme countries (Canada and Mexico) reaching 32 years difference in 2025. The leading countries—Canada, the U.S., U.K., Japan, and Germany—are enhancing their positions from 2007 to 2025, and the lagging countries—Poland, France, Brazil, Italy, South Africa, China, India, Spain, Russia, and Mexico—are deteriorating their positions against the selected countries’ average.

The G8 countries will continue to lead the selected 15 countries, with large scores for Canada and the U.S., reaching PMDIs more than 4,300, compared to Japan, U.K., and Germany reaching respectively around 2,000, 1,700 and 1,400. They will be followed by France, Ital,y and Russia reaching scores of 384, 320, and 106 respectively.

The G6 countries will continue to be at the middle of the selected countries. Behind U.K. and Germany, Poland scores 477 before France and Italy. Spain will reach 167 in 2025.

The O5 countries are expected to record significant results, with Brazil at 378, South Africa at 306 and China at 303. India with a score of 177 will overcome Spain in 2025, and Mexico with 104 will have some difficulties in joining the general trend.

Two prospective views based on the time distances and the dynamic evolution of the project management deployment in the considered 15 countries are presented in this paper. These views could be of great interest for the project management professional bodies, researchers, and business and educational organizations aiming to enhance the project management profession academically and practically, and thus potentially impact and answer the economic and social development.

Further studies can follow focusing on the design of a PMDI forecasting model that integrates the impact of possible influencing factors–for instance, among the factors impacting GDP forecasts, which ones have a key impact on PMDI, or is it PMDI which impacts GDP, and if so, which factors? A kind of eggs and chicken problem! Another approach would be to validate the proposed framework and extending its application to other countries or industries. By the way, the current financial crisis will have probably an impact on the future GDP and project management deployment, and it will be of great interest to pursue these investigations in the coming years to better understand the socio-economic factors influencing project management deployment.

References

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Bredillet, C., Ruiz, P., & Yatim, F. (2008b). Project Management Deployment: The Role of the Cultural Factors. EDEN Doctoral Seminar: 9 schools of Project Management, Lille, France, 18-22 August 2008.

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¹ http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/spreadsheet/1004863-access 6 October 2008

² Definition

Gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) is the acquisition, less disposal, of fixed assets, i.e. products which are expected to be used in production for several years:

–Acquisitions include both purchases of assets (new or second-hand) and the construction of assets by producers for their own use.

–Disposals include sales of assets for scrap as well as sales of used assets in a working condition to other producers: New Zealand, Mexico and some Central European countries import substantial quantities of used assets. Fixed assets consist of machinery and equipment; dwellings and other buildings; roads, bridges, airfields and dams; orchards and tree plantations; improvements to land such as fencing, leveling and draining; draught animals and other animals that are kept for the milk and wool that they produce; computer software and databases; entertainment, literary or artistic originals; and expenditures on mineral exploration. What all these things have in common is that they contribute to future production. This may not be obvious in the case of dwellings but, in the national accounts, flats and houses are considered to produce housing services that are consumed by owners or tenants over the life of the building.

In calculating the shares, gross fixed capital formation and GDP are both valued at current market prices.

CHAPTER 2

Passion, Persistence and Patience: Keys to Convert Project Management Vision to Reality in Spain

Alfonso Bucero, PhD Candidate, PMP

Abstract

Alot of progress may be achieved in the field of project management in Spain in the next decades. Spanish project management has become more and more popular, but it is still thought of as a tactical set of methods and tools focused on the project manager