General and Specific: The Impact of Digital Transformation on Project Processes and Management Methods

When analyzing the development of project management as a particular area of knowledge, it is relatively easy to notice its multithreading and multidimensionality. Moreover, it can be noticed that the research topics are related to the current or fashionable topics of management studies, resulting from the straightforward assumption that projects fit into the conditions of the organization they are performed. It is, therefore, not surprising that the interest in new technologies and digital transformation (DT) is also manifested in project research (e.g., Whyte, Stasis and Lindkvist, 2016; Papadonikolaki van Oel, and Kagioglou, 2019). The broadly understood processes of DT inspire topical research on changes in project management.

My paper is a part of such discussions. I explore here the impact of DT upon the processes, tools, and outcomes of project management. I aim to add to previous research on changes in project management drawing from a modification of existing models of DT, and my objective is to identify the main dimensions and scope of such impact. A qualitative research design is pursued through a cross-sectional study. My findings from the analysis of the respondents’ reflections are summarized as a set of peculiar aftermaths and an elaborated model recapitulating project management transformation.

The paper is constructed as follows: after the delineation of the theoretical framework and the main themes of digitally transformed project management, I demonstrate the result of my empirical research. My investigation has been conducted on a sample of around a hundred of project managers and on the analyses of their perception of the most important aspects of DT.

Coding and analyzing of research materials, supported by the MAXQDA 2020 system, are my foundation for revealing the multidimensionality of the DT impact. I indicate the generic themes as well as the peculiar issues of project management transformation.

DT is an interesting phenomenon willingly discussed both on scientific forums and in the media, during corporate gatherings, as well as various informal meetings. The recent explosion in the adoption of digital technologies brought this topic to the forefront of debates. DT affects everyone and in almost all spheres of functioning. Its impact on organizations’ management has been analyzed in numerous scientific studies (e.g., Vial, 2019), as a catalyst for change (Yoo, 2013), allowing organizations to exploit new opportunities (Matt, Hess, and Benlian, 2015), integrating digital technologies and business processes, potentially facilitating their reconstruction and improvement (Fitzgerald, et al., 2014). Primarily, DT is related to new digital technologies and strategic changes in organizations, but current discussions concern such spheres as communication, innovation, organizational and individual competences (Berghaus and Back, 2016; Warner and Wäger, 2019). The subjects of scientific research – apart from product or technologies – are, for example, entrepreneurship (Yoo, et al., 2012), digital generation (Prensky, 2012), business models and ecosystems (Berman, 2012; Remane, et al., 2017), or digital shock (Andriole, 2017).

Prior studies and their review indicate a multitude of existing definitions of DT. Some indicate synthetically the essence, for example, the use of digital technologies to radically improve the performance or scope of an enterprise (Westermann, et al., 2011).

The others include more complex terminology: an evolutionary process in which organizations respond to changes in the environment by using digital technologies to improve business models, operational processes, and to create value for customers (Morakanyane, Grace, and O'Reilly, 2017). A detailed review of the existing definitions has been summarized by G. Vial (2019). The author, as a conclusion, proposes an own complex definition (Fig. 1): DT is a process in which digital technologies play a central role both in creating and strengthening disruptive changes taking place in industry (sector) and in society.

Figure 1

Disruptions drive strategic responses – companies to remain competitive, use digital technologies to change the way they create value. To this end, however, to overcome the barriers in transformation processes, they must simultaneously implement structural changes. However, these changes not only lead to positive organizational effects (which are often accompanied by changes at the individual or social level), but may also be associated with undesirable results (Vial 2019, p. 122).

DT involves two important constituents: digital technology and digital innovation. DT can be understood as changes in an organization triggered by the development of digital technologies, covering both the exploitation of existing digital technologies to improve current processes and the exploration of digital innovations that can potentially change the organization's business model. A. Singh and T. Hess (2017, p.124) emphasize that the use of the term “transformation” (not “change”) denotes that the organization must go beyond functional thinking; it must comprehensively consider the coherence of activities aimed at exploiting opportunities and avoiding threats arising from new digital technologies. D. Rogers (2016, p.308) points out that DT does not only concern the implementation of new technologies, but is a change in the organization's strategy, as managers have to find a way to capitalize on innovative business models and products, as well as on innovative processes, affecting customers’ experience and understanding of their expectations.

Prior studies confirm that DT has a significant impact not only on the technologies used, but also affects strategies, processes, customer relations, and the attitudes or expectations of employees (Westermann, et al., 2011; Morakanyane, Grace and O'Reilly, 2017; Vial, 2019). In this context, the impact of DT on project management also seems beyond discussion. However, a very broad spectrum of such impacts can be recognized: from extending the scope of project activities resulting from the implementation of transformational processes (Nambisan, Wright, and Feldman, 2019), through the changes in project management methodologies, notably the increasing role of agile approaches (Whyte, Stasis, and Lindkvist, 2016), to changes in the way particular processes, for example, team communication, are implemented (Guinan, Parise, and Langowitz, 2019). Digital technologies radically transform project roles and project delivery.

The first of the indicated issues concerns projectification of management (Schoper, et al., 2018) resulting from DT. Implementation of changes, and therefore transformation, is both a long-term strategic change and a specific strategy of the company, but it is also a set of projects concerning individual stages or detailed technological solutions. DT could stimulate the growth in the number of projects, but also could influence the perception of numerous activities that are referred to as projects. Moreover, employees of many enterprises are aware of the role of project competences; thus, they use the offered training or certification programs. For example, employees more commonly use the terminology traditionally associated with project management, perceiving projects not as one-off projects, but rather as a permanent element of the company's core business. There are new rules for the allocation of resources (including employees), as they are assigned to specific projects, rather than to permanent organizational units.

The reflection on the impact of DT could be also focused on the methodological change. Projects related to DT are often called with the very broad term “IT projects.” For two decades, these have been managed mainly on the basis of an agile approach (Dingsøyr, et al., 2012). As new technologies are adopted in all project-based industries, their use is breaking old rules, enabling more rapid and more agile forms of organizing (Whyte, Stasis and Lindkvist, 2016). Agility is not only becoming the preferred approach in the field of software development, agile practices appear as increasingly customary, offering an impulse for the hybridization of project management methodologies in various organizations.

Furthermore, DT induces changes in project management processes. Mobile hardware, cloud computing, or integrated software are commonly used for storage of data, automated search of information, as well as prototyping and simulation functions (Whyte, Stasis, and Lindkvist, 2016). In this area, communication in project teams (Guinan, Parise and Langowitz, 2019) and contacts with customers or recipients of the project product are changing, for example, owing to cloud-based technologies. For instance, the use of BIM in construction projects has become increasingly popular, because of project benefits, such as time reduction, coordination improvement, lower costs, and fewer returns for information (Papadonikolaki, van Oel and Kagioglou, 2019). As a result of digitization and access to large data sets, the process of decision-making modifies, just as its speed and quality. The widespread use of project management software and the implementation of dedicated applications facilitating project implementation refine the approach to project planning and monitoring, including, for example, continuous assessment of its effectiveness (Mangla, et al. 2020).

Empirical research sought answers to research questions concerning the recognition of practitioners involved in the delivery of projects as to the impact of DT upon project management. The issues under research related to perceiving (or not) DT only as a technological area (IT tools) or rather as including a bundle of adaptations, for example, new rules of team cooperation or communication with other stakeholders. The analyses carried out as part of this research, apart from identifying those areas of project management that are modified most significantly, contained also explorations of attitudes toward such changes, that is, the perceived positive and negative sides in the context of project management.

As the own research concerned perception, that is, recognition, judgment, or understandings of the respondents, the use of qualitative methods seemed to be required. The research was conducted in the spring of 2019 with the computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI; online) method. A simple research tool containing one open question was used to collect the research material for further analysis.

A short textual presentation of the issues was based on the text: “A special type of change that affects modern organizations is digital transformation, i.e., organizational changes that effect the penetration of digital technologies through all aspects of the organization's operation, and results in the integration of digital technologies and business processes, leading to the emergence of a new model of organization functioning.” Next, the following question was formulated: What is the relationship between DT and project management? Identify the three most important aspects, and justify your choice. The respondents were asked to write a short answer presenting their own conclusions, observations, or reflections.

The research sample was a judgmental (quota) sample, as the investigation was addressed to a specific group of respondents, and thus, the method of respondents’ selection was derived from the snowball approach. It was decided to collect research material until 100 answers were obtained. After analyzing the answers and selecting the texts, it was settled to take into account the statements of 88 respondents, 12 responses were rejected because they contained too general discussion or negated the possibility of answering the question.

The survey metric was relatively limited; what is more, the identification questions were not treated as obligatory; hence, unfortunately, not all answers had assigned data. The data provided by the respondents indicated that 42% of the respondents were women, and that 59% of the respondents had experience as project managers, the remaining respondents participated in the work of project teams, and 22% of the respondents indicated that they represent the IT sector.

The qualitative analyses were conducted with the support of dedicated software, that is, MAXQDA, version 2020. The research material was the subject of exploratory investigations in the form of lexical analyses, as well as analyses based on open coding and close coding under the concept-driven coding approach. Five groups of codes were exploited: factual codes related to phenomena described on the basis of respondents' experiences, thematic codes related to the specificity of projects (definitions), models of DT existing in the literature, codes in the form of evaluation categories related to the positive and negative sides of the transformation, and codes of the assessment of significance (ranks) of the indicated aspects of the explored relationship.

The concise review of the texts and topics manifested in the respondents' opinions revealed that six of them spoke rather about the transformation of enterprises implementing projects, ten works dealt with both subjects: DT of projects and projects of DT, and in 72 cases, the respondents focused solely on projects, project teams, tools, and project management processes.

In the first stage of the exploration, the lexical research, that is, the analysis of the vocabulary (terminology) used by the respondents in their statements, was conducted (Table 1). The assumption underlying this type of research was the belief that the language used by the respondents can be considered as a reflection of their beliefs and experiences and therefore the terms and their frequency construct an image of the assigned meanings. As discovered by the quantitative analysis, the total of the analyzed text contained 22,842 various words, and after eliminating the identified irrelevant words (e.g., is, was, pronouns, etc.). 6,353 words were taken into account in further research.

However, they were also different inflectional forms (declination and conjugation), but without taking into account the upper- and lower-case letters. As for clear reasons, the words: project, transformation, digital, organization, and management were dominant; the indicated words were removed from the set.

It seems that on the basis of Table 1, an interesting conclusion regarding the broad perception of the meaning of DT can be formulated: in the group of words, there are both those related to technology, for example, data or IT tools, and those related to the social issues, for example, customer or employee.

The next stage of the research was the analysis of respondents' perceptions of the most important aspects of the relationship between DT and project management. The respondents' narratives were coded first using open coding (about 40 codes) and then closed (19 codes). Table 2 presents the results of such an analysis by comparing the main aspects indicated in the texts when regarding them as entire and full-length, that is, with the abandonment of hierarchy, and the aspects indicated by the respondents in the first place, that is, as the most important.

According to the above demonstrated results, the most important aspects considered as the impact of DT on project management are as follows: 1)

Access to data on the course of the project possible for the entire team implementing the project, regardless of the place of working (... working groups involved in the project, having quick and easy access to the necessary data collected in the “cloud,” can carry out their tasks without having to delay them in time due to the lack of the necessary information, as it used to be when the workflow of data in a “paper” form was functioning

Texts in italics present the citations of respondents’ opinions.

It can be concluded that the impact of DT, according to the respondents, concerns both general issues, typical for a company undergoing DT (e.g., process optimization) and specific to projects and project management (e.g., management methodology).

Therefore, in the next stage of the research, the focus was put on the peculiarity of projects’ transformation. Consequently, the attention in the analyses was directed toward the perceived changes in relation to the most important characteristics of the project.

Considering the definition of the project: a complex, unique undertaking (an organized sequence of activities) aimed at a specific result, within a specified time, with a distinguished beginning and end, implemented as a team, using a limited amount of resources, associated with a high level of risk, and thus requiring the use of special preparation and implementation methods (Trocki, 2013, pp.19–20), the most important features of the project activity were identified.

As part of this research, closed coding was carried out based on the distinguished characteristics, such as a specific result, a specific time, team execution, limited resources, implementation risk, and special management methods. The results of this stage of the study have been presented in the form of a table (Table 3) containing noticed changes together with quotations of respondents' opinions, illustrating typical reflections appearing in the discussion.

When summing up the results demonstrated above, the significance of IT tools and the increasing popularity of agile project management are to be underlined. IT systems and applications for project management could impact significantly all above-mentioned characteristics, allowing project managers to focus on goals, not daily operations, shortening the time of planning and monitoring, decision-making (thanks to the available data), ensuring better access to resources (such as labor), and the ability to reduce costs, as well as enabling risk identification and faster responses.

The agility of the approaches (methodologies) results from the need to adapt to changes in the environment, as well as from the incremental creation of project products. Moreover, it is a consequence of the implementation of numerous IT projects, promoting and supporting the diffusion of knowledge and skills in the use of agile practices.

It can also be noticed that the word that appears very often in the context of time is shortening, and not meeting the deadline. Shortening the implementation is perceived as the effect of the use of IT tools, automation, cooperation, and solving problems in real time, working on shared data and files, as well as mobility and decision-making at any time or anywhere.

A similarity can be discovered when analyzing opinions about the project's resources, also here the respondents paid attention not so much to limited resources as to the lack of limitations in obtaining human resources.

The traditional approach to project management, based on the use of methods of optimizing the course of the project over time, meeting deadlines as a key success factor or minimizing resources to ensure profitability, has been replaced by an approach based on incremental product development, by a mobile, collaborative online team using modern IT tools, and dealing with data and experience as an important project resource.

The next part of the research was directed toward the recognition of the respondents’ perception of positive and negative sides of DT. Most of the respondents positively assessed the impact of DT, as evidenced by the general tone of many statements and a relatively large lexical group containing words such as improvement, development, speed, and efficiency.

Based on the analysis of the coded fragments, the positive and negative sides of the transformation were distinguished and divided into these that were clearly assigned to the project (they appeared in the context of project management terminology) and general comments, assessing the impact not only on the project, but on the entire organization.

The most important advantages and drawbacks of DT, assigned to the domain of project management, are demonstrated in Table 4.

Summing up, it is possible to point to the predominance of positive opinions and the perception of rather positive sides of the changes caused by DT, superior functioning of the organization, and the improved delivery of projects in the new conditions of the digital economy.

DT is one of the important phenomena considered as a crucial factor shaping contemporary project management, not only as to processes or methods, but also in the broad economic and social context.

Summarizing the results of the empirical research presented above, one can refer to the question regarding the impact of DT in two perspectives: transformation, that is, change and its implementation in the organization (including: business design), as well as the results of changes related to the digitization of products and processes, in the form of automation, new remote collaboration technologies, data access or access to work resources.

Undoubtedly, this opens up a wide field for discussion about the outcomes of such changes in relation to project management, both from the “hard” perspective of tools or process optimization, and from the “soft” perspective of team collaboration, new roles and management practices.

In consequence, the changes lead to both the expected positive effects (shortening the time, effectiveness of project delivery) and negative ones, for example, related to the emergence of new risks.

The results of the empirical research demonstrated above can be presented synthetically by referring to the Vial (2019) model presented earlier in this paper.

A simplified model of adaptive changes in project management induced by DT is demonstrated in Fig. 2.

Figure 2

The last decade has witnessed an increase in interests in digital economy and induced challenges. The impact of DT on project management constitutes a very broad and complex research field. It is also, undoubtedly, a trendy and cognitively relevant topic. In this work, on the basis of qualitative empirical research, the most important specific issues of the influence of DT on projects were identified, and the manifestation of change was designed in the form of a model depicting the context, areas of change, as well as the most important positive and negative aspects.

The topicality of the issues presented in the paper means that it is possible to identify further avenues of research. There is a bundle of possible research topics concerning specific issues, such as new risk sources or changes in project management practices resulting from process automation. Moreover, the matter presented here requires also investigations conducted within other research approaches and strategies, including quantitative surveys or comprehensive and detailed case studies.

The development of digital technologies, the growing range of applications of solutions based on artificial intelligence and automation will not be without impact on the management of organizations. Project management in such new, changing conditions will remain at the center of attention for the coming years.