Engineering a Better IT Program Manager: A Comparative Study of IT PM Education and Training

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between Department of Defense information technology (IT) program managers (PMs), their technical education, commercial project management certification, and project management success—also known as project efficiency—for IT PMs. The researcher asked, “To what extent does project management success in scope, schedule, and cost compare among PMs, specifically their technical education, commercial project management certification, and interaction effects between education type and commercial PM certification?” A gap in research exists on whether IT PMs with a technical education positively or negatively impact project outcomes. The IT PM community needs more studies on the extent to which commercial PM certifications affect project efficiency. The researcher used factorial multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to compare education and PM certification to project efficiency. MANOVA provided for the examination of the interactive effects. A Mann-Whitney post hoc test confirmed the MANOVA results. Both tests concluded that no relationship exists between undergraduate technical degree, commercial PM certification, and project management success.