Need advice? Call: +353 1 6614677 or Contact Us

The Pandemic Survey

Participate
04 Nov 2020
The Pandemic Survey

Going into lockdown again across much of Europe poses huge challenges for project managers both personally and in their role(s) at work.

The Institute of Project Management (through Director General Ed Naughton & Emeritus Professor Sebastian Green) is researching this topic and would like to hear your thoughts.

Research Context

The trade-off between personal and business priorities is again to the fore as we grapple with the competing claims of keeping safe and well through a social distance while meeting the business requirements of networking, team building and collaborative work.

Drilling down to the field of Project Management raises interesting questions. How can Project Managers reconcile their learned wisdom, experience and professionalism with the alteration that the Pandemic has wrought in the manner in which we communicate, interact, work and live our lives and the deep sense of personal and collective anxiety that pervades social and business life at this challenging time?

Arguably, Project Management has typically drawn more on the disciplines of information technology and engineering. In contrast, now it needs to focus more on the ‘softer’ social sciences, which address, albeit falteringly, the challenges of relationship management towards what works best in an uncertain future. So how are project managers coping with this re-orientation of their profession - do they ignore it, embrace it or consider some mixture of the two?

There are no simple answers to what works best in addressing these core questions. But as a first step to charting the response of Project Management, to meet the new challenges of lockdown, social distance and uncertainty, we are inviting project managers to let us know how their work is being affected and how they are coping with and addressing the challenges posed above. We hope that we will be better positioned to chart a more effective way forward by developing such knowledge.

It would be very helpful if you would support this endeavour on International Project Management Day by answering this short survey.