Project Manager Assignment: A Strategic Perspective

As projects are important to business success and the success or failure of a project partly depends on who manages it, assigning a project to a project manager is therefore among the strategic decisions in project management. Despite its importance, literature on project manager assignment is rather limited. In practice, with the resource constraints faced by a typical organization, making appropriate assignment decisions can be challenging. This challenge is even more paramount in a setting where project managers lead multiple, concurrent projects. Strategically speaking, management should assign projects to project managers in such a way that the assignments enhance the accomplishment of the organization’s strategic objectives. This paper introduces a strategic aspect of project manager assignment. It starts with the discussion on the significance and challenges of making assignment decisions. Based on extensive research, a process including the criteria for project manager assignment is discussed. The paper also provides an overview of an optimization-based methodology for project manager assignment. Future research is suggested.