Page 273 - Global Project Management Handbook

13-10 COMPETENCY FACTORS IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

IMPLICATIONS OF USE OF THE PIP

The PIP is a managerially useful tool for tracking and controlling a wide variety of
human factors and activities that can have a dramatic impact on the likely success of a
project. While other tracking devices exist and are popularly used (e.g., earned-value
management), they may not communicate “actionable” information in a manner that
allows a project manager to immediately target problematic areas and begin formulating
means to resolve potential danger points as the project moves forward. Thus the PIP
should be used to supplement existing tracking metrics and devices if the project organi-
zation wishes to gain the widest possible perspective on how its projects are performing,
where problems are likely to occur, and what concrete steps the project manager and
team can begin taking to alleviate or resolve these critical “choke points” before they
become a serious budgetary and/or schedule drain on the project.
The PIP has proven highly useful in another arena, namely, that of project manage-
ment research. Offering a series of empirically derived critical success factors and project
performance assessment, it is being used increasingly in university settings as a means for
investigating a variety of projects and their causes of success and failure. Currently, it has
been employed to study projects in settings as diverse as Australia, China, Argentina,
Nigeria, Europe, and South Africa. It is also being used to compare and contrast critical
success factors in public- versus private-sector firms, Department of Defense projects,
NASA-sponsored pure research projects, Air Force systems development projects, and so
forth. In fact, the literature on and use of the PIP since its development demonstrate clearly
the broad acceptance of both the PIP and its efficacy in studying critical success factors.
Research and theory on project critical success factors has continued to grow apace
for the past two decades since the seminal work of Baker, Murphy, and Fisher (1988)
first brought the subject to our general attention. Through the general acceptance and use
of the PIP, critical success factor research has made tremendous empirical and conceptual
strides, shedding important new light on those factors which can improve the likelihood
of project success, a goal toward which we are all working.

REFERENCES

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Cooke-Davies T. 2002. The “real” success factors on projects. Int J Project Manag 20:185–190.
Lechler T. 1998. When it comes to project management, it’s the people that matter: An empirical
analysis of project management in Germany, in F Hartman, G Jergeas, J Thomas (eds.), IRNOP
III: The Nature and Role of Projects in the Next 20 Years: Research Issues and Problems.
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Pinto JK, Slevin DP. 1987. Critical factors in successful project implementation. IEEE Trans Eng
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Pinto JK, Slevin DP. 1992. Project Implementation Profile. Pittsburgh: Innodyne, Inc.
Shenhar A. 2001. One size does not fit all projects: Exploring classical contingency domains.
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