The Impact Of It Project Management Tools And Leadership Self-Efficacy On Project Success
Authors: Sameh Shamroukh
Year: 2019

The present study is concerned with improving IT project outcomes, specifically in relation to the possible effects of Leadership Self-Efficacy (LSE) and the use of Information Technology Project Management (ITPM) tools. Though logically connected to effective project work and outcomes, the literature review on project management, leadership, LSE and tools did not uncover empirical studies raising the questions of the relationship of these factors with project outcomes or studies seeking to determine the direct effect of each of these two factors on project outcomes. The present study focuses on filling this gap in research by addressing these questions and presents a research model that has provided statistically reliable evidence of the positive impact of each of these two factors on the odds of project outcomes at the component level of the project dimension. 
The study was designed based on an abbreviated version of an IT project, consisting of four project dimensions: communication management, requirements gathering, risk management, and project support transition, and two dimension-specific ITPM tools for each dimension. Data was collected using 1) a questionnaire to measure each participant’s level of LSE, 2) a survey of tool use and outcomes in the four dimensions for each of ten projects managed by each participant, and 3) recorded personal interviews with twenty-nine highly qualified and experienced IT project management professionals who have cumulatively handled 1,000+ projects in 400+ companies across four industries (high-tech, retail, automotive and logistics). 
The data from the LSE questionnaire was used to assess each participant’s level of LSE. The LSE data and the data of each participant’s reports on ten projects was analysed using logistic regression. The results showed that 1) project managers’ possession of LSE and 2) the utilisation of dimension-specific ITPM tools each increased the odds of successful outcomes in each project dimension with statistically significant results with the exception of one tool. 
The interview transcripts were analysed qualitatively for trends in these experts’ viewpoints regarding the practical reality of IT project management. With the aim of gleaning insights into the possible relationship of LSE and project managers’ perspectives on success and failure and on tool use, the interview transcripts were further analysed quantitatively with a word to vector text analysis (a Natural Language Processing technique) for word associations regarding concepts of success, failure, ITPM tools, and related project manager activities. The results showed a notable difference in degree of cosine similarity for word associations of selected word pairs found in the transcripts of the group with higher LSE scores compared to those of the group with lower LSE scores, in almost all cases, providing more evidence that the factor of LSE is influential. 
This study makes important contributions to the background literature on LSE and project management and offers a reproducible research design that yielded statistically reliable results that confirm the influences of LSE and tools on project dimension outcomes. Furthermore, this study applied a text analysis technique to explore the factor of LSE and word associations regarding IT project dimensions and tools. These contributions, along with insights from the literature review, can be applied to training and development for IT project managers. Besides its immediate applications, this study has taken a step toward empirically and statistically researching factors contributing to IT project outcomes and provides a base study and context for future research in this area.