Coping with client-based ‘people-problems’: the theories-of-action of experienced IS/software project managers

Through interviews with experienced IS and software project managers (PMs), I identify the strategies that they would recommend to others for addressing a range of serious client-based ‘people-problems’. The problems I focus on include: unrealistic customer expectations; lack of real ownership of the project; disagreement on project goals; personal deficiencies on the part of the customer’s PM; reluctant users; and the presence of hidden agendas or ‘nasty’ politics on the customer’s side. Many of the strategies are based on the same underlying principle: ‘Protect yourself through explicitness, clarity and formality’. I show that a number of the strategies are rational when judged in the light of agency theory and the literature on interorganisational trust.