Project Management: Not Just for Big Corporations

The history of project management is relatively well-established. According to Mantel and Meredith (2002), project management has existed since the days of ancient Egypt, and it started gaining its current level of popularity in the 1960s. In order to deepen the understanding of how project management can contribute to organizations, many studies have been conducted in a variety of industries. Different aspects of the subject—from the relation between the project owner’s experience and project cost to how cultural barriers influence project management—have been examined. There are hundreds of thousands of papers in the literature on the topic, but few touch on whether the size of an organization or project affects project management effectiveness.

As the variety of products and services that organizations offer becomes more diverse and complex, many businesses are trying to find a way to become more effective and to keep their competitive edge. Today’s executives consider project management to be one of the potential solutions to managing organizational activities and solving corporate problems (Kerzner, 2002). In fact, more and more large organizations are adopting project management these days (Milliken, 2005).

So, are small and medium businesses being left behind? Is project management simply not relevant to these  …