A quantitative study of perceptions about leadership competencies of IT project managers

The project-based organization is an accepted organizational form across many industries in the United States. The introduction of new technologies, applications and capabilities is most often led by IT project managers as the implementation and execution leader for new capabilities. While there has been much research and scholarly articles around the tools and techniques used to guide projects of all types, research on the project manager as a leader is relatively new. The knowledge, skills and abilities of the IT project manager can be categorized as a set of leadership competencies that make up the behaviors successful project managers exhibit. For this research a central question was raised to understand which leadership competencies senior IT managers and IT project managers perceive as being important for leading IT projects. A total of six hypotheses were tested in this study. Starting with the overall perceptions of leadership competencies for senior IT managers and IT project managers a one-way MANOVA was used to examine the results of the survey participant responses. Five additional hypotheses were tested between each of the five leadership competency domains for each of the roles using an independent samples t-test. The results from this research study suggest that senior IT managers and IT project manager's perceptions are similar in how they perceive leadership competencies of IT project managers. The research conducted in this study and resulting analysis identified leadership competencies that are perceived by both senior IT managers and IT project managers as being important leadership capabilities of an IT project manager. This research discusses the leadership competencies and how senior IT managers and IT project managers perceive their relative importance in describing high-performing IT project managers.