Systemic Project Management and the Impact on Soft Factors in the Organisation

Traditional project management has long focussed on the three factors of time, cost and scope. Building on systems thinking, systemic project management offers a holistic framework that incorporates psychological and sociological aspects into project planning and implementation. It considers the dynamics and unpredictability of human factors and their interactions in project environments. The question is whether the problems that project managers are confronted with daily are consistent with systemic assumptions and can be solved using its methods. What framework conditions need to be considered to implement systemic methods in today’s modern project organisation? The novelty of this work is that the research was conducted within the complex project organisation of the automotive industry, which is characterised by complex communication structures and many parallel projects. The strong focus on the automotive sector in the context of the rapidly developing global market and increasing competitive pressure enables the study to deliver industry-specific findings with broader applicability. Based on qualitative focus group interviews with experienced project managers from the automotive industry, the analyses show improvements in communication and team dynamics as key benefits of systemic approaches. The study develops a conceptual framework model for the integration of soft factors with systemic tools and provides practical recommendations for implementation in complex project environments. The results contribute to the further development of project management and offer practitioners realisable strategies for increasing project effectiveness from a systemic perspective.