A Trend Analysis of Project Management Epistemology in Information Technology Research

Project Management finds its origins back as far as the building of the Egyptian Pyramids and the Great Wall of China. Many disciplines including construction, engineering, and operations management have found the use of Project Management as an integral part to their success. This same importance is resonating throughout the Information Technology (IT) community. IT projects often go over budget, past deadlines and often enough, the projects are dropped at the loss of millions largely due to poor project management skills. Project Management consists of many knowledge areas. However, the identification of the areas of Project Management emphasized in the literature over history is underrepresented. The purpose of this paper is to identify, classify and track IT project management research as well as investigate whether there indeed is a researcher-practitioner discrepancy, and if so, on which topics it is especially noticeable.