Essential Skills for Data-driven Project Management: A classroom teaching experiment

Abstract

We investigate the performance of students in a Data-driven Project Management course module that consists of several realistic case studies derived from the book “The data-driven project manager: A statistical battle against project obstacles” (Vanhoucke 2018). Based on case study evaluations, we monitor the students’ level for various technical and non-technical skills. We identify and classify seven project management skills in management literature and, subsequently, we statistically investigate the link between these skills and the student performance during the course module. Also, a model to incorporate these skills in the Dynamic Scheduling framework is proposed and validated using Structural Equation Modeling. The results indicate that planning is key for good risk analysis and project control, and show that both types of skills are important for successful project management.