Verktækni - 2019, Síða 71

71

Management and Leadership” was offered for the first time in Iceland ("Saga námsins |
Verkefnastjórnun og Leiðtogafærni", 2016). This program focused equally on the intra- and
interpersonal aspects of project leadership and on the more technical aspects of project management.
The program has been one of the most popular continuing education programs in Iceland ever since.

In 2005, a Master of Project Management (MPM) program was offered for the first time in Iceland as a
graduate level executive management program. The courses focusing on the management of projects
with a very strong focus on the psychological aspects of project leadership. The MPM program has been
offered ever since and is now hosted at Reykjavik University. The establishing of the MPM program was
arguably an important milestone in the development of project management as an academic field in
Iceland. It has always focused on up-to-date aspects of PPP (project, program and portfolio)
management and put heavy emphasis on behavioral, organizational, and cultural aspects of responsible
management. MPM graduates are more than 300, and many of these have leading roles in organizations
in various business sectors in Iceland. In 2007, the MPM program organized its first annual graduation
conference, where 30 students presented their final theses on project management and related fields.
The MPM program has also had a strong focus on research and graduates are write a thesis in the fourth
and final semester and present their work at the annual conference on what is now called “The Project
Management Day” held in cooperation with the VSF. In 2008, the first international publication by an
MPM graduate was published when Hildur Helgadottir, published her MPM thesis in the International
Journal of Project Management (Helgadottir, 2008) on the ethical dimension of project management.
Since then many other MPM graduated have been published either in the proceedings in project
management conferences or in international peer-review journals. Project management programs on
graduate level are now offered in three Universities in Iceland.

In 2003 Thordur Vikingur Fridgeirsson published his first textbook on project management titled
Verkefnastjórnun á tímum breytinga ("Management in Times of Changes and Agility" (Fridgeirsson,
2003). This was the first book on project management published in Icelandic and in 2008, the same
author published his second book on project management Áhætta, ákvarðanir og Óvissa ("Risk,
Decisions and Uncertainty" (Fridgeirsson, 2008). In 2011 and 2012, a new series of project management
textbooks in Icelandic was published. The four books were titled Stefnumótunarfærni (Strategic
Competences) (Ingason H. & Jonasson H., 2011), Leiðtogafærni (Leadership Competences) (Jonasson H.
& Ingason H., 2012), Skipulagsfærni (Project Management Competences) (Ingason H. & Jonasson H.,
2011) and Samskiptafærni (Communication Skills) (Jonasson H. & Ingason H., 2012). These books were
later translated and rewritten in English and in 2019 the international publisher Rutledge/Taylor and
Francis the series for the global market. The books are Project: Leadership (Ingason & Jonasson, 2019),
Project: Communication (Ingason & Jonasson, 2019), Project: Strategy (Ingason & Jonasson, 2019), and
Project: Execution (Ingason & Jonasson, 2019). In 2011, the diploma program “Transparent leadership
and sustainable project management” was registered by the Danish project management association on
behalf of IPMA. The registration, that is only granted after a thorough scrutiny of the program, further
strengthened project management education in Iceland.

In 2015, the MPM program was accredited by APM, the British project management association, and in
the same year the first PhD thesis on project management was defended at an Icelandic university
(Fridgeirsson, 2015). This research project revealed that cost overruns are the rule rather than the