Chapter 19: Selling Project Management to Senior Executives - What s the Hook?

Janice Thomas, Ph.D.Athabasca University and University of Calgary
Connie L. Delisle, Ph.D.Athabasca University
Kam Jugdev, PMP, MEng, M.H.S.A.University of Calgary
Pamela Buckle, MBAUniversity of Calgary

Introduction

Worldwide, project management continues to gain acceptance in many industry sectors. Increasingly, companies espouse project management as a key competency. On the one hand, we note a growing interest in using different elements of project management in virtually every segment of every industry. On the other hand, over 30 percent of projects end up being cancelled in midstream and over half of projects run as high as 190 percent over budget and 220 percent over the original time estimate (KPMG 1997; Standish Group 1995). Despite the pervasive high failure rate of projects and advocacy of project management by practitioners, the serious, long-term investment in project management remains a tough sell at the executive level. At the same time, KPMG's (1997) survey of over 1,400 senior organizations found the lack of top management commitment to be a key factor in failed projects. Clearly something needs to be done about this disconnect.

Over the last ten years, the topic of "selling" project management has generated a significant amount of interest within the Project Management Institute (PMI ) as evidenced by papers presented at PMI conferences (for example; Block 1991, 1992). Recently, PMI (1999) sponsored a research study to investigate the challenges of selling project management to senior executives. The authors of this chapter were awarded the research grant. This chapter presents the findings of Phase I of our two-phased study. In Phase I we investigate the root causes of the issue. A brief summary of Phase II that is currently under way is provided in the section entitled Future Research. By exploring situations where project management has been successfully or unsuccessfully introduced into organizations, this research seeks to:

• Identify the compelling arguments of how project management benefits the organizations.

• Articulate the practical and political approaches for selling at the executive level.

We set out to understand how the very people who best understand project management within particular organizations seem to have the hardest time selling it to their executives. At the same time we know that consultants and project management experts make a living selling project management to executives. Understanding this paradox provides a firm footing to better identify best practices necessary to build senior management awareness of the values and benefits of project management needed to sell the concept. Phase I was designed to be a small-scale exploratory study to build a framework for more extensive research. The research team interviewed three groups of experienced practitioners familiar with selling and purchasing project management—internal project managers, project management consultants/experts, and senior executives with project management purchasing power. A grounded theory approach identified trends or themes related to successful and unsuccessful sales strategies as they emerged from the data. The researchers paid particular attention to the similarities and differences in how the sample groups understood project management and its benefits.

This chapter provides a summary of Phase I of the research. The background literature sets the foundation for understanding the gaps in the knowledge this study aims to fill. The theoretical foundation provides a way to validate preliminary results and sets the boundaries for the field of investigation for the second phase of the research. In the next section, we summarize the most important findings and conclusions about marketing and selling of aspects of project management to senior executives.