The Study

Phase I consisted of twenty-three face-to-face interviews. Initially, participants from the Project Management Advisory Council (PMAC—companies that advise the Project Management Specialization at the University of Calgary) served as lead contacts. These contacts allowed us to use the "snowball technique" to identify additional interviewees. Where possible, paired participants were interviewed, e.g., a project manager and executive from the same company and at times, a consultant who had sold project management services to that firm. Interviewees fit into one of three categories:

Senior Managers (Executives, CEOs, chief information officers (CIO), or Vice Presidents): The influential group of individuals making decisions to purchase or not purchase project management (n = 10).

Project Managers/Practitioners (Project Management Office Managers, Project Managers, or Directors of Project Management): Those championing/selling project management largely in the context of their own organizations (n = 6).

External Project Management Consultants/Experts (smaller and larger independent sellers): Experts whose experiences included both successful and unsuccessful attempts to sell project management to organizations (n = 9).

The qualitative, semi-structured interviews required that participants answer between 30–35 semi-structured questions. Questions were of the form: "What is project management?" "What is the value of project management to your organization?" "If you needed to sell project management to your manager, colleague, or peer, how would you do it?" The complete interview protocol is available from the authors of this chapter. We pre-tested the questions on a panel of project management practitioners to ensure that they were meaningful and capable of extracting the information needed to address the research questions. Two researchers were present for almost all the interviews for validation purposes. Each interview was taped and transcribed. The transcriptions comprised the data we analyzed in this chapter.

A grounded theory approach served to make sense of the Phase I findings. Results are "inductively derived from the study of the phenomenon it represents … it does not begin with a theory and then prove it but begins with an area of study to allow what is relevant to that area to emerge" (Strauss and Corbin 1990, 23). The analysis focused on identifying trends or themes related to successful implementation strategies. Grounded theory allows for the analysis of interview transcripts concurrently so that patterns become clearer during data collection. As anticipated, recurring patterns appeared by the fifteenth interview. Common themes and shared perceptions about selling project management appeared, and very little new information emerged after this point.

Data analysis consisted of five steps. First, all four researchers read the transcripts and identified key themes and processes. Second, we met as a group and came to consensus on the meaning and importance of the various themes identified. Third, these themes were summarized for each important question and for each participant in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that allowed us to compare themes across questions and participants. Fourth, we met as a team to brainstorm the linkages and relationships between the themes identified and the underlying processes. Finally, we drew linkages from discussions with relevant academic and practitioner resources to support and verify the validity of these preliminary findings. Rigorous analysis using the ATLAS computer-assisted qualitative analysis tool occurred into April 2000.

Participants represented a diverse set of organizations producing various products and services, including oil and gas, healthcare, new product development, and information technology. In terms of age, fourteen (61 percent) were between 36–46 years and nine (39 percent) were between 46–55 years. At the time of this research, two participants had their Project Management Professional (PMP ) certification and two were in the process of certification. In general, the participants represented an experienced and educated group of executives, project managers, and consultants.

Phase I is an exploratory phase subject to the limitations of the sample size of a distinct population subset. A few of the limitations of the study were that our sample size was localized to Calgary, Alberta; Canada and we had a small number of female participants. During Phase I we identified questions that will be relevant to ask in Phase II, e.g., project management's brand. The results of this study should be interpreted cautiously and within this framework.