What Practitioner Posts Reveal About How Project
Managers Solve Real-World Challenges
PEER REVIEWED PAPER
By Dr. Avital Zadok and Prof. Daphne R. Raban
School of Business Administration
University of Haifa, Israel
Abstract
Project management increasingly takes place in complex, uncertain, and interaction-driven environments, extending beyond the application of formal methodologies. While existing research relies primarily on surveys and interviews, the development of professional knowledge through online peer discourse remains underexplored.
This study examines how project management knowledge is constructed in digital professional communities. A corpus of approximately 15,000 posts from Reddit and Stack Overflow was analyzed using a combination of natural language processing (NLP), large language models (LLMs), and sampled expert validation.
Findings indicate that online discourse is predominantly centered on challenges, with most posts focused on sharing challenges and seeking context-specific solutions. The most prevalent challenges relate to planning, team dynamics, and stakeholder management. A statistically significant alignment was found between types of challenges and corresponding solutions. Notably, even without explicit methodological terminology, solutions tend to align with structures resembling formal frameworks such as PMBOK. Sectoral variation further highlights the role of context in shaping discourse patterns.
The study contributes to Project-as-Practice research by conceptualizing online discourse as a mechanism for practice-based knowledge construction. Methodologically, it demonstrates how large-scale professional discourse can be systematically analyzed using hybrid NLP approaches. Practically, the findings emphasize the centrality of interpersonal and coordination skills in project management.
Keywords: project management; online communities; professional discourse; PMBOK; Project-as-Practice; natural language processing
- Introduction
Every day, thousands of project managers turn to online communities to ask the questions that no methodology handbook fully answers: how to handle a sponsor who keeps changing scope, how to rebuild a schedule after a key resource leaves, or how to manage a team that resists a new way of working. Platforms such as Reddit and Stack Overflow have quietly become one of the profession’s most active sources of practical knowledge, where insights, dilemmas, and solutions are shared based on direct, hard-won experience. Yet despite the growing importance of these communities, remarkably few empirical studies have systematically examined the professional discourse taking place within them.
This gap matters because most of what we formally know about how project managers cope with challenges comes from formal frameworks and from studies relying on surveys and interviews. Previous work within the Project-as-Practice (PAP) research tradition has emphasized that project management is not limited to the application of formal methodologies, but is enacted through everyday interactions, coordination among actors, and sensemaking processes in practice (Blomquist et al., 2010; Kalogeropoulos et al., 2020; Klitgaard & Gottlieb, 2024). However, how project managers actually cope with real-world challenges, and how they develop solutions through professional interaction with peers, has received sparse empirical attention. Online communities function as informal spaces where practice-based knowledge is created through accumulated experience and trial and error, offering a rare window into how project complexity is addressed beyond formal methodological frameworks.
The aim of this study is to examine how professional knowledge in project management develops in practice within digital peer-to-peer discourse. To this end, we analyzed approximately 15,000 posts from project management communities using text mining and large language models (LLMs), in order to identify the common challenges raised by project managers, characterize the solutions proposed by the community, and examine the relationships between types of challenges and coping strategies. In addition, the study examines the extent to which knowledge generated in online professional communities relates to established methodological frameworks such as the PMBOK Guide (Project Management Body of Knowledge), thereby enabling an examination of the relationship between formal frameworks and the way professional knowledge is shaped in everyday practice.
The study is situated within the Project-as-Practice (PAP) research tradition and conceptualizes online professional discourse as a structured mechanism of knowledge construction in project management. As the findings will show, this discourse is inherently challenge-driven: project managers articulate context-specific challenges and co-construct solutions with peers. Strikingly, even in the absence of explicit methodological terminology, these solutions tend to organize around patterns resembling formal frameworks such as PMBOK. Beyond its theoretical interest, this has direct practical relevance: the challenges that dominate the discourse relate primarily to coordination among people, expectation management, and stakeholder communication, underscoring the importance of these skills in project management training and professional development.
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How to cite this paper: Zadok, A., and Raban, D. R. (2026). Project Management Knowledge in Online Communities: What Practitioner Posts Reveal About How Project Managers Solve Real-World Challenges; PM World Journal, Vol. XV, Issue IX, September. Available online at https://pmworldjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/pmwj168-Sep2026-Zadok-Raban-PM-Knowledge-in-Online-Communities.pdf
About the Authors
Dr. Avital Zadok
Haifa, Israel
Avital Zadok holds a PhD in Information Science from Bar-Ilan University and has been a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Business Administration, University of Haifa, since 2024. She combines academic research with extensive industry practice as an R&D software group manager, leading cross-functional development teams and large-scale software projects, and is a certified PMP (PMI Global) and PMO (PMI Israel).
Her areas of expertise include natural language processing and AI-based analysis of unstructured texts; specifically, she studies how historical, regulatory, and professional corpora can be transformed into structured knowledge that enables systematic analysis, comparison, and inference – including computational social-network analysis of Rabbinic literature, AI-based risk identification in healthcare supervision reports, and knowledge construction in the online discourse of project managers.
Her work has been published in refereed journals including AI & Society and Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, and in the Emerald volume AI-Driven Knowledge Management: Strategies for the Modern Business Landscape (2026).
Prof. Daphne R. Raban
Haifa, Israel
Daphne Raban is a full professor in the School of Business Administration, University of Haifa, former Academic Head of the Library, and current Chair of CODATA Israel National Committee (under the Israel Academy of Science). She founded the Department of Information & Knowledge Management and was a member of LINKS, the Israeli Center of Research Excellence on Learning in a Networked Society.
Her areas of expertise include the information society and the information economy; specifically, she studies the perceived value of information, information markets and business models, knowledge sharing, information diffusion, social media and serious games.
Her work has been published in refereed journals including JASIST, Scientometrics, JCMC, EJIS, ICS, CHB, JIS, PLoS One, Internet Research, Simulation & Gaming and more.
She co-edited the book: The Elgar Companion to Information Economics (2024).
