Chapter 13: The Role of Trust in Project Management

Francis T. Hartman, Ph.D., PMPUniversity of Calgary

Introduction

A series of projects are being undertaken in a program intended to develop a theoretical model of the mechanics of trust and then to test that model. The initial studies identifying the need to better understand trust and that trust carries a price tag have been completed. The initial Trust model has been developed and the first two individual projects to test and further develop this Trust mechanics model are under way.

The research program has a general objective of enhancing project performance through a better understanding of the key underlying drivers for enhanced project delivery. The focus on trust was developed following a review of five years of research at the University of Calgary. Trust was a factor in all of the projects whether they studied alliances, distributed teams, team effectiveness, time to market, cost reduction, resource usage and allocation, progress reporting, or value engineering to mention a few. Trust is a commonly recurring theme in research reporting and recurs frequently in papers.

The research into trust in project management is intended to help understand the trust phenomenon, and to learn from this understanding how people and organizations need to work together in order to deliver projects more effectively.

The research program is using different approaches to test and develop a Trust model and to see how this model affects project management. Some examples of how this work will be undertaken are introduced and discussed.