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Project Organization And Quality - as Seen by Various Expert Studies
Sebastian Dworatschek, Tina Nehlsen, Ina Gatzmaga
Institute for Project Management and Innovation IPMI, University of Bremen 
Germany
e-mail: dworatschek@ipmi.de 
Abstract
The handling of projects using professional project management instruments has been institutionalised more and more in 
the past years. This found expression in a growing number of successfully closed projects. Aspects of project organization and 
quality management are essential success factors. This article will examine these elements integrating the results of various 
studies.
Key words: project, project organization, quality management
1. Introduction
This paper will discuss project organization and quality management as success factors in project management. Therefore, results of an analysis 
of written contributions to project management expert 
conferences are presented. Next, these aspects will be 
further examined using the results of expert interviews 
with an emphasis on R&D projects. This paper closes 
with an integrated discussion of selected thesis of the 
question.
2. Professional Project Management 
Progress
As the Standish Group1 found out, the growth of project 
management during the past decade contributed markedly 
to project success rates: While in 1994 31 % of the focused 
projects failed, this rate decreased to 15 % in 2002. The 
percentage of successful projects rose from 16 % to 34 
% in the same period. Figure 1 shows some remarkable 
results of the same study concerning project finance.
3. The Impact of Project Management 
on Organizations
In 2002 a project management baseline study2 that 
surveyed 300 professionals in 67 global organizations. 
One of the various results was, that over 90 % of the 
projects had a significant impact on the organization (18 
% can bee seen as extremely high value projects, which 
are essential to organization’s success; 51 % are high value 
projects with an significant impact on the organization; 23 
% are categorized as project of medium value, which have 
some impact on the organization.).
To get a deeper insight in the question of organization 
in projects and its changing importance in the course of 
time, IPMI-Study I worked out some remarkable results.
4. IPMI-Study I+II: Contributions 
to PM Conferences of the Last Three 
Decades
The IPMI-Study dissects into two parts: First period was 
from 1967 to 1987 and the second period into 1988 to 
2000. The first part3 of the analysis has been oriented on the 
IPMI-Thesaurus, the first classification system for project 
management. Subject of the study were contributions to 
PM conferences on one hand, and articles in PM journals 
on the other.
The second part4 of the study has been done in 
2000. Subject of this study were exclusively conference 
contributions. During this study the IPMI-Thesaurus has 
been extended for some necessary subtopics. Also, this 
study characterized the papers with reference to the GPM-
Kanon, which is mostly equivalent to the International 
Competence Baseline (ICB) of the IPMA.
For the study 4485 contributions to international 
conferences (and articles) were analysed to find out their 
main topics. Therefore the social empirical instrument of a 
content analysis was applied. Each article was classified by 
Figure 1: Total cost in projects 1994 and 2002
The Standish Group worked out, that the total cost of 
financial waste and budget overruns from challenged and 
failed projects decreased about 2.5 times. The money, 
spent in projects increased in eight years by 5 billion US$ 
to 255 billion US$. This leads to the conclusion that in the 
course of time money has been invested in much more 
efficient projects. Now the question raises, what factors 
do improve projects and drive them to success? The 
Interthink Consulting realized a study, which indicates 
an important impact of organizational aspects on project 
success.
                      Projektna mreža Slovenije            junij  10
means of up to three descriptors of the IPMI-Thesaurus, 
each representing a project management topic. Choosing 
the design of a longitudinal analysis enables an empirical 
study, which gives an overview over three decades of 
project management discussion.
descriptors. For others even two or three descriptors were 
not be enough for an exact classification. In that case one 
of the global overall group descriptors 100 to 700 was 
used.
Figure 4 shows the areas 1. Basic Competence and 4. 
Organizational Competence of the GPM-Kanon. The 
categories 2. Social Competence and 3. Methodological 
Competence are further areas, which are not be discussed 
here.
Figure 2: Distribution of papers by source over time
The contributions to PMI-Conferences have a share of 
48.1%. Which is almost equal to contributions to IPMA 
(former INTERNET) 45.6 %. Only few articles from 
journals have been taken into account. The second part of 
the study did not focus any PM-articles.
5. Classification System IPMI-
Thesaurus and GPM-Kanon
In order to be able to carry out a further classification and 
grouping of the 2011 contributions, it was necessary to 
find or develop a catalogue of descriptors (Thesaurus) 
concerning the topic ‘Project Management’. IPMI-Study 
I applied two classification structures, which are shown 
in Figure 3 and Figure 4. The use and evaluation revealed 
deficiencies and inaccuracies, as it is the case with all 
descriptor catalogues. The catalogue may be extended. 
Figure 3 shows two categories in detail - out of the 
IPMI-Thesaurus: 1. Project Management in general and 
3. Organization. Categories, which are not picked out as 
a special theme in this paper shall just be mentioned as 
area to give a review: 2. Planning & Control, 4. Project 
Information Systems, 5. Project Environment, 6. Project 
Personnel, 7: Branches/ Sectors for Project Management.
Figure 3: IPMI Thesaurus on Project Management (excerpt)
The descriptor groups 1 to 6 in IPMI-Thesaurus carry 
out a classification according to technical topics in 
project management. List 7 gives some supplementary 
information on different branches and sectors in which 
projects are carried out. Such a descriptor is applied to 
a contribution if the relation to a branch is obvious and 
important. The technical contents of several contributions 
could be perfectly characterized with one or two of the 
Figure 4: GPM-Kanon on Project Management (excerpt)
One central result of the IPMI-Study I was to work out 
the importance of the topic of organization. The number 
of conferences, that discussed organizational aspects 
(Thesaurus: area 3) rose over the last three decades. 
Figure 5: Proportional share of contributions on PMA and 
PMI conferences dealing with the topic “Organization”
Figure 5 gives an overview over the proportional share of 
papers on conferences of IPMA and PMI between 1967 
and 1999. The descriptor contains all elements, listed in 
area 3 “Organization” of the IPMI-Thesaurus. Overall, 
over time the need for discussion about organizational 
topics rose to almost 25 percent in the last period of the 
analysed time.
As a further factor for project success IPMI-Study 
I identified the topic of quality, which bears some close 
relations to the question of project organization. Only in 
a reliable and well-structured organizational environment 
enables the implementation of an effective quality 
system.
Figure 6: Course of the topic “Quality” over Time
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A very important topic can be seen in the descriptor 
“quality”, shown in Figure 6. Over time, the proportional 
share of all contributions on the conference was between 
1.8 and 3.1 percent. The period between 1991 and 1994 can 
be seen as an exception. On the 1991 conference the topic 
of quality marked an relative share of nearly 6,0 % of all 
contributions, which were 18 papers absolute. One reason 
for that might be the introduction of quality assurance 
systems worldwide, e.g. ISO norms.
It can be seen that in none of the given topics in Figure 8 
were rated with a high priority (“A”) and only few were 
judged to be low (“C”) priority. They either had no content 
of the specific topic (“D”) or the topic was covered with a 
medium (“B”) priority.
7. IPMI-Study III: Project Management 
Expert Survey “Project Organization”
The topic “Project Organization” has been analysed 
in 19926 in a survey asking 167 project management 
experts. It focused on experience based use of different 
organizational models. Constitutive questions were: 
1.“How have projects been organized when project 
management was introduced?“
2.“How are projects organized at present and after 
experience with PM exists?”
When introducing project management, most companies 
were organized by the operating department (38.9 %). 
With growing experience in PM, matrix organizations 
became the most preferred model (36.5 %), followed up by 
“Pure PO”. The Project Staff Organization lost influence 
with growing experience in project management.
8. IPMI-Study IV: Project Management 
in SME in Europe
In 1994 Huber-Jahn7 accomplished a survey with 46 
interviews in small and medium sized enterprises (SME) 
with up to 500 employees from various branches who 
participated in international cooperation projects. The 
companies were located throughout Europe8. The central 
questions were about their understanding of project 
management, project organizational forms or models and 
common problems in project management. 
When asked about their “understanding of project 
management”, 41 percent considered PM as a management 
concept. About one third of the questioned answered 
that project management is network plan technique. 
Another 22 percent said that they understand project 
management as planning and controlling projects and 7 
percent compared it to investment planning. None of the 
interviewed managers perceived “project organization” as 
a synonym for the PM discipline!
When explicitly asked about their organizational 
forms of the projects, 46 percent answered that they were 
using a matrix organization, 41 percent used their existing 
line organization and only 13 percent of the interviewees 
Figure 7: Overview of the most often discussed pm topics at 
IPMA and PMI conferences (absolute numbers of the period 
1988-99)
Altogether the topic 4.1 Employers’ and Project 
Organization was conferred in 487 papers and thereby 
is the second-most referred area under discussion. 4.11 
Personnel Management was discussed in 315 articles and 
marked the 6th rank. Risk Management as descriptor 
4.7 was topic of 158 contributions and marked the 
14th rank. All the mentioned descriptors were part of 
category: Organizational Competence. This may lead to 
the conclusion, that aspects of organizations are a very 
current topic and are very important for effective project 
management.
6. IPMI-Study II: PM Training Offers 
in Germany
In 1999 the IPMI launched a representative study on 
major project management topics in courses and seminars 
for project personnel, offered on the German market5. 
The study analysed the focused content, the training 
methods, the target group alignment, and other relevant 
attributes of 370 project management seminars offered 
by 270 suppliers of further education measurements. The 
following scale assessed the seminars:
[D] No content of the specific PM topic [C] Low
[B] Medium [A] High
Following are selected results related to the title of the 
Conference »The power of project organisation - quality 
breakthrough«.
Figure 8: Content of PM courses and seminars for project personnel
Figure 9: Project Organization: at PM implementation and 
after PM experience
                      Projektna mreža Slovenije            junij  12
used a separate project organization.
Another question was about common problems in 
project management. Of given answers, 72 percent of the 
46 interviewees considered the project leadership and 
coordination a problem, followed by methods of planning 
and controlling (67 %), project personnel (57 %), and 
offerings and contracts (52 %). Almost half of those 
interviewed saw problems in the project organization (46 
%). Other problematic areas in project management were 
PM-software (28 %) and intercultural problems (24 %).
9. IPMI-Study IV+V: R&D Pilot Study 
2000 and VW/IPMI-study 2002
The IPMI R&D Pilot Study9 examined the organization of 
31 large and ten small to medium sized R&D companies 
and research facilities. The majority of companies (39 
%) were structured using matrix organization for their 
projects. The use of a line organization is larger in SME 
and research facilities, but noticeably, in 24 % of the large 
companies this sort of organization is used. SME and R&D 
mainly used a pure project organization; larger companies 
rarely use this sort of project organization.
10. IPMI-Study VI: Theses on Project 
Management Organization
On eleven IPMA- and PMI-Congresses between 1986 and 
1988 up to 649 project managers had been asked to assess 
45 theses on PM-topics.11
Thesis 31 dealt with suitable organizational forms: 
“Although much has been said and written about project 
organization, the most suitable organizational form for a 
certain (specific) project is still not certainly known.” 
306 project management experts have been asked in 
how far they either approve or reject this thesis (see Figure 
12). With an average score of +0.9 this thesis is supposable 
true.
Figure 10: R&D companies and research facilities: Large and 
SME 
As a follow-up of the pilot study, a questionnaire was 
developed and in 2002 interviews with 250 project man-
agement experts10 were realized - 40 % of the expert with 
IPMA-Certificate, from 60 R&D enterprises and 190 other 
companies, The study found out that most companies or-
ganized project actions depending on a particular project 
basis (and 77.5 % R&D, 83.3 % other companies).
About half of those surveyed organize PM within a 
line organization while only a third (R&D: 35 %, other: 
57,1) of the experts consider this form of organization as 
relevant. Interestingly, half of those surveyed appear to get 
project management support via a centre of competence, 
sometimes called Project Office (47.5 % / 51.4 %). This 
seems to underline the demand and importance of in-
house services on PM. Only in a third of cases the project 
management function is centralized (32.5 % / 37.6 %).
Another question complex dealt with the interfaces of 
PM and quality management systems. In general: R&D 
companies are equipped with more advanced systems 
than other enterprises, as it can be seen clearly in Fig. 11. 
Figure 11: Interfaces of project management and quality 
management systems in R&D and other companies
Figure 12: Thesis suitable organizational form
Thesis 36 stated: “The effectiveness of project management 
in practice is limited by an insufficient knowledge of 
alternative forms of project organizations”. exp85 percent 
of 306 answers agreed to this statement while only seven 
percent disagreed (see Figure 13). With an average score 
of +1.3 this thesis can thus be considered definitely 
approved.
Figure 13: Thesis Knowledge of alternative project 
organizations
336 project management experts assessed Thesis 22: 
“Coping with arising problems in matrix organization is 
a serious problem for project staff and project managers.” 
Even though the average score is only +0.5, this Thesis is 
considered as supposable approved.
Figure 14: Thesis Problems with Matrix Organization
11. Conclusions
After evaluating various studies, the elements “organization” 
and “quality” can be identified as important factors for the 
succeeding of project. Essential for the positive influence 
seems to be an established project culture and the choice 
of the suitable project organizational form that have to be 
oriented on the special needs and circumstances of the 
company. 
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12. References
Dworatschek, S., Kruse, A. Asum, Baumann, 
Schmidt, Poli, Preuschoff (2002): Project management in 
Germany - State and Trends. A joint study carried out by 
Volkswagen Coaching GmbH ProjektManagement and 
IPMI University of Bremen, Wolfsburg, (deliverable in 
German and English).
Dworatschek, S., Hayek, A., Krause, D. (1992): Studie 
zu Projektmanagement/-software in der Praxis, IPMI 
Universität Bremen. In: Hayek, Asad: Projektmanagement-
Software, PhD/Diss., Anhang, IPMI Universität Bremen.
Dworatschek, S., Gutsch, R. W. (1988): Theses on 
Situation and Tendencies in Project Management. In: 
Proceedings of the 9th INTERNET World Congress, 
Glasgow.
Dworatschek, S., Gutsch, R. W. (1987): Evolution of 
Topics in Papers of INTERNET and PMI. In: Proceedings 
of the PMI Seminar/Symposium Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Huber-Jahn, I. (1994): Projektmanagement für kleine 
und mittlere Unternehmen im europäischen Binnenmarkt 
- Fallstudien, Situationsanalysen und Arbeitshilfen, PhD/
Diss., IPMI, Universität Bremen.
Kruse, A. (2003): Management von komplexen FuE-
Projekten. Szenarien, Modelle und Instrumente zur 
Erfolgsbewertung in einer Multi-Projektumgebung. PhD/
Diss. IPMI Univ. Bremen.
Nehlsen, T., Gatzmaga, I. (2005): Prospektive Trends 
in der Disziplin Projektmanagement – eine Analyse zum 
Anpassungsbedarf. In: Griesche/ Meyer/ Dörrenberg 
(Hrsg.): Innovative Managementaufgaben in der 
nationalen und internationalen Praxis (Festschrift für 
Prof. Dworatschek), DUV, Wiesbaden 2001.
Pannenbäcker, O. Dworatschek, S. (1999): Qualification 
of Successful Project Managers. Do Qualification and 
Certification Programmes match the Requirements? In: 
Artto, Kähkönen, Koskinen (eds.): Managing Business 
by Projects. Proceedings IPMA-Conf., PMA Finland, 
Helsinki 1999, Vol. 2.
Notes
1 The Standish Group’s 2003 CHAOS Chronicles, CHAOS 2001 & 1994. In: 
PM Network, July 2003, p.16.
2 Organizational Project Manag. Baseline Study, Interthink Consulting, 
Sept. 2002. In: PM Network, July 2003.
3 Dworatschek/Gutsch 1987.
4 Nehlsen/Gatzmaga 2001.
5 Pannenbäcker/Dworatschek 1999.
6 Dworatschek/Hayek/Krause 1992.
7 Huber-Jahn 1994.
8 Germany, Spain, Turkey, Denmark, The Netherlands and Portugal.
9 Kruse 2003.
10 Dworatschek/Kruse et al. 2002.
11 Dworatschek/Gutsch 1988.