Project Management Practices and the impact on SME competitiveness on IT Project

With the technologically advance and the fact that organizations live in a dynamic environment with lots of uncertain scenarios, companies need to act fast and efficiently on managing their IT Projects in order to be aligned with the changes and for increasing businesses values and organizational competitiveness. The purpose of this study is to identify the Project Management Practices and the impact on SME competitiveness on IT Projects. This study identified the crucial project management practices and the project management methodology that can be adopted from SMEs in order to run a project and delivery it successfully for increasing competitiveness. In order to accomplish the purpose of this statement, previous studies have been read and connected with this thesis. Research showed that by ignoring Project Management Practices there are high possibilities that the projects will be failed and as a result, will harm businesses to achieve their business goal and increase their competitiveness.
The Methodology part of this study was developed to gather the opinion of participants who work in organizations that handle IT projects either to deliver an end product to customers or for increasing their performance. The research study was designed based on a descriptive approach which falls in the deductive approach which aims to test a theory. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fact that this topic needs participants from different industries related to projects, a quantitative method has been used.
Based on the information gathered from the literature review, an online questionnaire created and distributed to employees who are related to Information Technology field and their involvement in projects.
The primary data were collected using the Likert scale, matrix, demographic and open questions. On the other hand, the secondary data were collected from relevant topics.
Results show that 5 Project Management Practices play a crucial role when SMEs manage projects related to technology and it’s important to apply Project management methodology when an organization wants to be ahead and increase its competitiveness. The 5 practices that have been raised through this study are, Project Planning, Flexibility of Project Management Practices, Team Collaboration and Communication, the existence of the Project Manager, and the organizational culture and structure.
However, at the end of this study recommendations are presented on how SMEs can approach an IT Project and which methodology will help them to include the Project Management Practices.