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economy is largely based on fisheries, aluminum production and tourism. Iceland is rich in resources
with healthy fish stocks, hydro- and geothermal energy, huge water reservoirs and unique landscapes
which attract many tourists. In 2013, 59% of import value and 78% of export value came from countries
within the European Union (Hagstofan, 2016). Iceland scores highly on indexes indicating equality and
human rights. Iceland is in 2nd place on the Gini index of income equality and in 16th place on the
Human Development Index (Hagstofan, 2016). The total Gross Value Added in Iceland in the year 2014
was 12.000 million USD (1,530,775 millions ISK, using the exchange rate on Dec 31, 2014).
Importance of projects in the Icelandic economy
The initial study of Andreas Wald and colleagues (2015) provided a platform for studying Icelandic
projectification and the economic impact of projects in Iceland. The Icelandic study was carried out in
2016 and is well described in our second paper (Fridgeirsson and Ingason, 2017) in this series.

142 companies from all economic sectors participated in the study, and the share of project work in
terms of total working hours in Iceland in 2014 was shown to be 27.7%. The comparable figure for the
year 2009 was 25%, and the ratio is estimated to rise to 31.5% by 2019. Another interesting finding from
this research is that the share of commissioned external projects is only 13% of the total. In other words,
the majority of all projects being executed in Icelandic organizations are internal projects; organizational
and HR projects, IT projects, R&D and new product development projects, marketing/sales projects and
infrastructure projects.

In addition to applying the original tool by Wald, a simple benchmark study with a much larger sample
was also carried out to verify the outcome of the original study. In this benchmark study, a random
sample of 768 managers in high management positions in Icelandic organizations assessed the status of
project management within their companies. The majority, or 60% of participants believed that the
impact of project management will increase, and hardly any of them think that project management will
decrease in importance in the immediate future. In addition, it was clear that the size of organisation—
in terms of the number of employees and/or turnover—was positively correlated with the application of
project management.

Method
Delphi survey on most important trends in Iceland
The aim of the study was to examine how project management practitioners in Iceland foresee the
future of project management and the project management profession in Iceland. As a frame of
reference, the study of Gemünden and Schoper (2014) was applied, where twelve future streams in
project management were presented.

A Delphi method was used for data gathering. The Delphi method (or Estimate-Talk-Estimate (ETE)) is a
structured communication technique or method, developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting
method relying on a panel of experts. The method (Hsu and Sanford, 2007) is used as to collect data
from individuals with similar knowledge and experience within the same field of expertise as to reach a