Factors affecting successful project management of technology-intense projects

Today, engineering and other technology intense businesses are increasingly carried out in project form. This allows better use of scarce resources, a simplified decision-making process as well as specific organization forms being tailored to the task at hand. However, despite these advantages, complex industrial projects often fail in the sense that budgets, time-frames and customer requirements are not met. Organizations also spend lots of money on introducing project models and certifying their project managers. Are these actions really efficient, i.e. do they lead to improved management of projects? The aim of this article is to describe the impact of (i) use of project model, (ii) project manager certification, and (iii) size of organization on (a) employment of risk analysis, (b) existence of project sponsor, (c) existence of steering committee, and (d) existence of project manager task description, respectively. This paper presents correlations derived from N=59 semi-structured interviews with project managers of technology centered projects from several countries. Two statistically significant relations were found through a correlation analysis: between the use of a project models and the existence of steering committee and between the use of a project model and the existence of a project manager task description.