FEATURED PAPER
By Pawel Paterek
AGH University of Science and Technology
Krakow, Poland
and
Karolina Jarocka
Krakow, Poland
Abstract
Project management development has become increasingly advanced, with many methods, tools, certifications, guidelines and recommendations created to enhance its professional edge. There are some professional organisations like PMI, IPMA, Axelos and many agile project management-related institutions, experienced in project management, who deliver the latest and possibly greatest guidelines and recommendations. Agile Manifesto has presented four key values and twelve principles as mandatory rules for software development projects delivering complex and custom-made software products and services. However, project management rules and values largely depend on the people themselves – project managers, project teams and their organisational context. Each project manager (PM) has different knowledge and experience, a different set of competencies and skills, making them professional, and a different set of values driving them to what is most important in the project management profession.
The primary goal of this paper is to respond to the vital question about the possibility of creating the project manager’s manifesto and present the individual case study as an example with the guidelines and values representing the most important ones from the perspective of the project manager’s professionals. The second goal is to present how the project manager’s manifesto can be created from scratch in a given organisational context using elements of the design thinking method.
The elements of the design thinking method were applied to gather example case studies. The example of an individual project manager’s manifesto is presented as empirical research results. The research results focus on responding to the key title question and a few related ones: What is important to the PM in their project management profession? What is the direction of work for each PM? What are PM’s beliefs, and what areas would they like to change? What are the PM’s values that are identified in their profession?
The results showed it is possible to create the project manager’s manifesto from scratch adapted to the specific group of people working together in the project and its organisational context. An example of a case study with applied elements of the design thinking method resulted in an example PM manifesto presenting ten rules and values of the professional project manager. They are related to methods, standards and practices; PM’s competencies and experience; the integrity of projects, people, customers, communication and transparency; data-driven decisions; PM’s autonomy and project organisation context.
Keywords: project management development, project manager’s values, project manager’s manifesto, project manager’s profession, project manager’s competencies, design thinking.
JEL code: M15, O15, O32.
Introduction
Professional project management organisations like PMI, IPMA, Axelos, and Agile project management institutions including Scrum.org, Scrum Alliance, and Scaled Agile continuously develop and deliver the latest and greatest guidelines and recommendations for project management professionals. Nowadays, the complexity of products and services and, even more, systems and solutions delivered to customers as project results require continuous learning, continuous development and knowledge sharing from modern and professional Program and Project Management professionals (Marnewick C. & Marnewick A., 2021; Khelifi, 2023; Locatelli et al., 2023; Saladis, 2023). Each project manager (PM), together with their knowledge, experience, set of competencies, skills, behaviours and own values, creates a society of the project manager’s profession (Kulkarni, 2021; Panasiewicz, 2021; Ribeiro et al., 2021). There are many conditions, for example, project domain, national and company culture, company domicile, country of origin and many others, that result in the split of this society into smaller groups of professional PMs with their standard way of working, shared values, attitudes and behaviours (Kisielnicki, 2016; Chmielewiec, 2018; Kulis, 2020; Gheni et al., 2021).
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How to cite this paper: Paterek, P. and Jarocka, K. (2023). Is it Possible to Create the Project Manager’s Manifesto? PM World Journal, Vol. XII, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/pmwj133-Sep2023-Paterek-Jarocka-is-it-possible-to-create-the-project-managers-manifesto-2.pdf
About the Authors
Pawel Paterek, PhD
Krakow, Poland
Pawel Paterek, PhD Eng. has received a master’s degree (M.Sc. Eng.) in telecommunications engineering and Ph.D. in IT project management, speciality: business informatics. He has also completed postgraduate studies in IT project management, human resources development and finally MBA program. He completed postgraduate studies in data science for business applications. The areas of his scientific interests are IT project management, agile methods and data science. He has been working as a Project Manager and/or PMO Leader for over 12+ years in the telecommunication and automotive industry, both using waterfall and agile methods. He is the author of several scientific publications and co-author of one book. He is also University Guest Lecturer in the project management field.
Pawel can be contacted at pawel.paterek@gmail.com.
Karolina Jarocka
Krakow, Poland
Karolina Jarocka is a project management expert, since 2010 associated with the IT industry. In the course of her years of work, Karolina has met organizations of various scales from dozens of people with local capital to international corporations. She had the opportunity to implement complex projects for clients from the financial, energy, construction, legal, network, pharmaceutical, and industrial sectors. Currently, Karolina supports organizations in achieving their business goals as a co-founder of KA:MA Consulting. She is also a co-founder of the training company Twoje Drzwi do IT, and an author of the kjarocka.pl blog, and a project management lecturer at the Tischner European University.
