Ing. Sistema

PMI Virtual Library
© 2010 Eri Swager

Project Management: Not Just for
Big Corporations
By Eri Swager, PMP

As the variety of products and services that organizations offer
become more diverse and complex, many businesses are trying to find a
way to become more effective and to keep their competitive edge.

T

he history of project management is relatively wellestablished.According to Mantel and Meredith
(2002), project management has existed since the
days of ancient Egypt, and it started gaining its current
level of popularity in the 1960s. In order to deepen the
understanding of how project management can contribute
to organizations, many studies have been conducted in a
variety of industries. Different aspects of the subject—from
the relation between theproject owner’s experience and
project cost to how cultural barriers influence project
management—have been examined. There are hundreds
of thousands of papers in the literature on the topic, but
few touch on whether the size of an organization or project
affects project management effectiveness.
As the variety of products and services that organizations
offer becomes more diverse and complex,many businesses
are trying to find a way to become more effective and to keep
their competitive edge. Today’s executives consider project
management to be one of the potential solutions to managing
organizational activities and solving corporate problems
(Kerzner, 2002). In fact, more and more large organizations
are adopting project management these days (Milliken, 2005).
So, are small andmedium businesses being left
behind? Is project management simply not relevant to these

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organizations? Historical events such as the Manhattan Project
and Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency’s Internet project have already shown that project
management makes the execution of the most daunting
activities possible. But is there any example out there that
suggeststhe usefulness of project management methods for
smaller projects?
When I was in graduate school studying project
management, all of the project case histories we read
illustrated highly public endeavors that cost millions of dollars
and took many years to complete. One might conclude that
project management was only for large organizations such as
IBM and the International OlympicCommittee, and that
that’s exactly where you would have to work if you wanted a
career as a project manager.
However, throughout my career I have worked
predominantly for small and medium-sized organizations, and
most of the projects I have managed have been rather small
compared with those my professors used as examples.
Ten years ago, I managed inventory software development
for a localtelecom company, which had been struggling to
implement a new system for nearly a decade prior to my
involvement. When asked the reason why they were having
such a hard time implementing a new system, many co-

workers suggested that the programmers the company had
hired in the past weren’t competent. However, it was quite
clear to me that the problem had nothing to do with the
programmers.After conducting an initial assessment, I found
their approach to be very diffused and arbitrary, with no
designated person leading their efforts. What was interfering
with their progress was a lack of process. I came to the
conclusion that project management was the solution that the
company needed.
Upon my suggestion, the CEO issued a charter.
I subsequently assembled a project team andstarted
approaching software development and system
implementation in a more systematic and cohesive way. The
telecom software project was quite successful in terms of
budget, time, and quality. Most importantly, the company
finally had the system it desperately needed.
This first project management experience proved to me
that project management is not just for big corporations;
smaller...