Selling Project Management to Senior Executives: Framing the Moves That Matter

The perception that senior executives are not fully on board with project management in their organizations naturally leads to the question "How do you get them on board?" In this pertinent book by Janice Thomas et al., the authors report the results of their research on this topic. In phase I of the study, they address the question "Why is it difficult to sell Project Management to senior executives?" and in phase II they address the "How to sell?" question.Based on a perspective that senior executives focus at a strategic level, and view project management as tactical, phase I deals with the misalignment of perceived value between the "seller" and the senior executive. Phase II is addressed in the context of eight models, where the success factors are compared and contrasted. The eight models the authors describe
-- General selling base model
-- Very successful selling base model
-- Project personnel selling model
-- Very Successful project personnel selling model
-- Consultant selling model
-- Very successful consultant selling model
-- Very unsuccessful selling model
-- Senior executive model

In each case, parameters that were explored are reported and those that exhibit a statistically significant explanation are highlighted.