An integrative literature review of project management in technical and professional communication

Purpose: This article presents the results of an integrative literature review on project management in technical and professional communication. The goal of the article is to demonstrate how project management has been discussed and studied by the field. By analyzing the field’s approach to project management, the article sets groundwork for research, pedagogies, and best practices that prepare technical and professional communicators to shape effective project management practices. Method: To achieve this goal, we assembled a sample of 326 sources across academic and practitioner publishing venues from the years 2005–2016. To comprise the sample, we used targeted keyword searches to identify published work that addressed project management in technical and professional communication. Results: Project management in technical and professional communication is often presented as an adjacent practice to other concepts or practices, such as leadership or documentation management. Additionally, project management is described or discussed primarily in terms of skills and relationships established through concepts such as teaming, collaboration, professional communication, communication theory, and education. Conclusion: The limited characterization of project management in the existing research creates the opportunity for technical and professional communicators (TPCs) to explicitly acknowledge the complexity of project management from a rhetorical perspective. The outcome of this rhetorical approach would position TPCs to develop and shape ethical and audience-focused PM practices through their communication expertise.