COPING WITH CLIENT-BASED “PEOPLEPROBLEMS”: How experienced IS project managers say they do it

Through interviews with experienced IS and software project managers, we identify the strategies that these project managers would recommend to others for addressing a range of serious client-based “people-problems.” The problems we focus on include: unrealistic customer expectations; lack of real ownership of the project; disagreement on project goals; personal deficiencies on the part of the customer's project manager; reluctant users; the presence of hidden agendas or “nasty” politics on the customer's side. Many of the strategies identified are based on the same underlying principle: “Protect yourself through explicitness, clarity and formality.” We show that a number of the strategies are rational when judged in the light of agency theory and the literature on inter-organizational trust.