Project Management Courses in IS Graduate Programs: What is Being Taught?

Journal of Information Systems Education, Summer 2004 by Du, Stephen M, Johnson, Roy D, Keil, Mark

2. BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

IS projects are becoming more important for corporations, as companies seek competitive advantage through the application of IT. Still the rate at which IS projects fail to achieve or fall short of their desired objectives is high. According to Johnson (1999), only 26% of IS projects are completed on time and on budget and classified as successful. One possible explanation for this lack of success is a deficit in the educational background of project managers, which accounts for a lack of familiarity with good PM principles. A remedy for this deficit might involve requiring a course in PM for all students of IS. Alternatively, graduates could obtain familiarity in these topics through continuing educational programs from professional societies such as the Project Management Institute (PMI).

PMI is a nonprofit organization of PM professionals that has codified a comprehensive set of PM practices and knowledge into a framework with component processes. The core component processes are organized into nine knowledge areas that are summarized in Table 1. During the management of a project, these component processes are envisioned as interacting in a progressive, iterative, and overlapping fashion as the project moves closer to its intended goal of project completion. In order to achieve successful outcomes, a project manager needs to understand all knowledge areas and how their interacting processes change throughout the different project phases.

In a recent study, an example of a graduate PM course was described which is part of the core curriculum at GSU's CIS masters program (Keil and Johnson, 2003). The authors (one of whom was involved in the development and delivery of the course) describe the underlying approach of the course as one in which students develop the ability to identify and appraise elements of IT projects that may lead to failure. Students in the course learn about PM through case method teaching, group presentations, and minilectures. First hand experience in PM techniques is gained from in-class group exercises and homework assignments that use PM software.

Course content draws from articles published in practitioner and scholarly journals, business case studies, and a novel about software PM (DeMarco, 1997). Topics cover areas of broad management concern such as project chartering, risk management, measuring project success, project escalation, and de-escalation. The course also includes examination of several specific techniques of PM such as work breakdown structure, critical path method, resource loading and leveling, and post project audits. A summary of topics from the course outline is presented in Table 2.

Students in IS programs need to understand concepts and techniques of PM if the success rate of IS projects is to improve. PMI has become widely recognized as a standards body in defining PM practices and skills and has taken the lead in certification exams. Therefore, it is important to understand the extent to which existing courses in IS PM conform to the knowledge areas identified by PMI. At Georgia State, which houses one of the larger IS graduate programs in the U.S., they have implemented a core course in IT PM as part of their Master of Science CIS curriculum. This course has been documented in the literature and is used as a second benchmark in this paper for examining other programs' offerings in IS PM. In this paper, the following research questions are addressed: