Which Ways to Develop a Project Management Culture

Except for an open question to complete the internal project management landscape, eight dimensions have been proposed in the questionnaire to characterize the project management culture: use of specialized software, specific training programs, project management initiation program, formalization of projects roles, formalization of project documents, specific internal manual in project management, use of specialized consultants, and think tank. In Figure 7 are the general results for the sample.

Figure 7: Ways of Development of Project Management Culture

Exploring more precisely the findings (Figure 8), we can say that the use of a specific manual in project management and the formalization of project roles are clearly growing in proportion with the size of the company. The very big companies are the champions of training programs in project management (57 percent). The public sector, although it is composed mainly of very big firms, seems to be more active in comparison with the private sector: respectively 57 percent versus 40 percent for training program, 49 percent versus 33 percent for project management initiation, and 42 percent versus 30 percent for the formalization of the project roles. Evidently, the variable project-oriented company or department is very discriminative: 67 percent of project-oriented companies use specialized software against 42 percent, 34 percent have a specific manual versus 26 percent, 56 percent develop training program versus 39 percent, and 48 percent formalize the project documents versus 34 percent. Surprisingly, whether companies are project oriented or not, there are only 30 percent that animate a think tank in project management!

Figure 8: Ways of Development of Project Management Culture According to Company's Size