It’s About Time: A Systematic Review of the Study of Time in Project Management

Abstract

Time is one of the most important aspects of project management practice. Timely delivery of projects is one of the main success criteria for projects. Every year nearly half of all projects that start then fail to complete on time or miss their initial deadlines. Many project underperformances and failures are associated with time-related issues. Despite its acknowledged importance in project management practice, time-related phenomena are not often at the forefront of project management research. This paper takes stock of time-related research in project management discipline. We report how time is conceived and applied in project management research. First, we review time-related scholarship appearing in all issues of three leading project management journals. Then we review scholarship on time-related phenomena in project management published outside of three journals. Analysis of 165 articles reveals time-related research in project management is scarce and scattered, addressed in background or supporting positions rather than focal point of investigation. We identify gaps in seven themes of temporal research and present a research agenda for each to bring time-related phenomena to the forefront of project management research, which will prove beneficial in project management practice. We propose a shift in focus to studying time-related phenomena in project management to address some of the costly time-related issues.