Project-related work dominates many areas of our society. In many sectors of the economy more than one third of the time is already spent in projects, with an increasing tendency. Projects are not only performed for external customers, but increasingly for internal purposes (e.g. R&D, Investment or Change).

Projects, however, have always been under great pressure. A wide range of constraints for projects such as tight deadlines, scarce resources and challenging quality requirements trigger continuous improvements of project management. New technologies, concepts and services such as Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Virtual Reality, Smart Cities or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) may be solutions to the challenges of project-related work. However, challenges must be known, suitable solutions must be found and they have to be coordinated by means of modern design approaches.

This is where a new study comes into place. It is carried out by master student Yannick Zewe from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (especially the Institute for Information Systems and Service Design) together with Tiba Managementberatung GmbH, GPM Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement e.V. and IPMA International Project Management Association.

The results of the study are intended to provide insights into the current challenges faced by the respondents (experts and companies) in project work. In addition, it is also interesting to see which innovative approaches, technologies and services exist and how they can contribute to overcoming the above-mentioned challenges by using modern design processes.

In the first step, detailed interviews were conducted with 20 selected experts to identify the main challenges of the project work from a practical perspective. These challenges will now be further examined in a large-scaled survey. It deals with their importance for project work and the satisfaction of the respondents with the identified factors. In addition, approaches to solutions will be explored and in a special part of the survey, innovative design approaches will be investigated to see to what extent they can help overcome the challenges and thus improve project work.

The survey addresses the following target groups in particular: Project member, Project manager, PMO-Member, PMO-Leader, Business Unit Leader in organization with projects, Project sponsor, Project consultant, Project expert without a specific role in a company (e.g. professor), Designer

Call for action: Help us to analyze current trends and developments in project work and find innovative approaches to overcome the various challenges. In this manner we all contribute to the evolution of project management. Every participant who answers all questions will of course receive a summary of the research results as a small token of appreciation.

The survey will start on 12 March 2018 and will remain open until 13 April 2018. Please forward the link also to interested colleagues. We expect the results to be published by May 31, 2018.

Link to survey: https://qeurope.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_01bGdBK6AgqESH3