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than 1300 managers was conducted to explore (1) the current application and impact of project
management in Iceland, and (2) how the application and impact of project management is likely to
evolve in the near future (next 12 months).
The GVA (Gross Value Added) by Projects in Icelandic organizations/sectors
No direct financial figures are available on the economic impact of projects or the degree of
projectification within Icelandic industries. Ideally, measuring the share of project work in the larger
economy would build on established macroeconomic measures of added value, such as the gross
domestic product (GDP), the gross national product (GNP), or the gross value-added (GVA). The GDP is
the total monetary value of all goods and services produced over a specific time period and would be
difficult to apply as a metric for projects. The same applies for the GNP, which indicates the value of all
finished goods and services in a country in one year by its nationals. Both for the GDP and GNP it would
be difficult to isolate projects from the interactive stream of transactions within the economy. However,
the GVA is suitable for this study. The GVA represents the monetary value of the goods and services that
have been produced, after the cost of the inputs (i.e. raw materials) that can be attributed to the
production has been subtracted. The GVA is, in short, a productivity metric that measures the
contribution of work to society (or the producer, section region, etc.).
A measure of the output and the value-added of project work seems, therefore, to be the best approach
for measuring the share of project work, as it could be directly compared to the total GVA. However, this
approach also has its challenges, such as the variety of projects is inevitably reflected in the variety of
project outcomes. For example, the output of a project that delivers a product or service with a
dedicated market price has very different properties to that of a new product development project or an
organizational change project. In theory, all projects should have a value, direct or indirect, for the
organization. However, it might be difficult to define a specific (monetary) value to, for instance, an
internal change project. This allocation problem mainly results from an unclear time horizon in which a
change project delivers measurable monetary results, and from the questions, whether, to what extent
and with what degree of quality the change was achieved. In addition, the revenues directly attributable
to the projects must be recorded to obtain an output-oriented measure of project work. This data is only
available for projects which lead directly to revenues. Internal projects, such as change projects, would
be ignored as well as nearly all projects in the public sector. Therefore, any measurement based on the
project output seems to be difficult, especially across project types.
For these reasons, Wald et al. (2015) used the proportion of project work as a percentage of total work
(measured in working hours) in an organization as the key indicator of the level of projectification. This
input-oriented measurement can be applied to all types of projects, e.g. revenue generating external
projects, but also internal change projects. It can be applied to all kinds of industries, and it is
independent of organizational factors.
A project is an undertaking largely characterized by the uniqueness of the conditions in their entirety.
More specifically, an undertaking is defined as a project in the present study, if it fulfills the following
conditions:
• A specific target has been defined for the project.
• The project is limited in terms of time (start and end).
• The project requires specific resources (e. g. financial, staff, etc.).
• An independent process organization exists, which is defined as different from the standard
organization in the company.