Digitalization of Project Management : A phenomenographic study of project manager’s perceptions regarding challenges and actions to handle them

Sammanfattning

As project-oriented work, project management, and digitalization is growing in society,more and more attention is given to these fields. The benefits of project-oriented work andproject management lead to an increase in utilizing it in organizations and industries.Projects enhance organization flexibility, can provide a competitive advantage, increase thequality and value for the customer, and lead to quicker response capability such as speed tomarket, among others. Moreover, digitalization is vital for organizations in today's society.New technologies are disrupting the market, providing opportunities like efficiency,reduced costs, and better customer knowledge. But both fields have inherent challenges. Forexample, in the field of project management, challenges can occur if the project team islacking in collaboration, problem solving, or if they are missing opportunities. Moreover,challenges with digitalization can be related to lack of digital skills, resistance to change,and inefficient virtual teams.As digitalization is moving into all aspects of society, project management is also highlyaffected by it. Digitalization of project management is said to restructure the nature ofproject management and its practices, affecting both the way people work as well asbusiness models, structures, etc. It includes new technologies being used as tools in projectmanagement. Technologies like automation, cloud-computing, artificial intelligence (AI),and data analytics, among others, are used to enhance both success-rate, decision-making,productivity, and innovation, if done correctly. But, as for the parallel fields of projectmanagement and digitalization, the conjoined field of digitalization of project managementalso has challenges. Several challenges are described, but these are not described from theproject manager's perspective based on their perceptions. There is also a gap in research onhow these challenges are actually perceived and are perceived to be handled by projectmanagers. Moreover, digitalization of project management is also relevant in the Swedishcontext, where Swedish project management professionals see the need for digitaltransformation and to start using new technologies and systems in project management. Buteven though Sweden is a highly developed country from a digitalization aspect, there arechallenges related to it.A phenomenographic study has been conducted on seven project managers from differentorganizations and industries in Sweden. Data has been collected through semi-structuredinterviews. This study resulted in three categories of descriptions regarding perceivedchallenges of digitalization of project management; (1) challenges related to digitalizationof project management as technological, (2) challenges related to digitalization of projectmanagement as human factors, and (3) challenges related to digitalization of projectmanagement as leadership complexities. The study also resulted in three categories ofdescription on how these challenges of digitalization of project management are perceivedto be handled; (1) actions to handle challenges related to digitalization of projectmanagement as organizational, (2) actions to handle challenges related to digitalization ofproject management as guidance, and (3) actions to handle challenges related todigitalization of project management as adapting.