Relation of project managers' personality and project performance: an approach based on value stream mapping

Abstract

Purpose: This work investigates the influence of project managers’ personality on the success of a project in a Multinational Corporation. The methodology proposed for analyzing the project managers’ personality is based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

Design/methodology/approach: Forty projects carried out in 2012 by multinational corporation, concerning new product development (NPD), have been analyzed, comparing the profile of project managers with results obtained in terms of traditional performance indexes (time delay and over-budget of projects) and performance indexes usually used in “Lean Production” sector (waste time and type of “wastes”). A detailed analysis of the most important “wastes” during the project development is carried out using the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) technique.

Findings and Originality/value: Relying on the Myers–Briggs personality instrument, results show that extroverted managers (as opposed to introverted managers) carry out projects that show lower delay and lower waste time. Introverted managers often make “Over-processing” and “Defect” types of waste. Moreover, lower delay and over-budget have been shown by perceiving managers.

Research limitations: Regarding the limitations of this work it is necessary to highlight that we collected data from project managers in a retrospective way. While we believe that several aspects of our data collection effort helped enhance the accuracy of the results, future research could conduct real-time case study research to get more detailed insights into the proposed relationships and avoid retrospective bias. Moreover we focused on a single respondent, the project manager. This helped us ensure that their interpretations played an important role in product development. But, we cannot examined the opinion of team members that could be different from project managers opinion regarding some questions.

Originality/value: This research provides insight useful to develop proactive approaches to prevent project failures, including the creation of more effective messages and methods to help companies to make the best choices during managers´ hiring. Moreover this research would allow organizations to better match the short-term organizational needs with appropriate personality types.