What Makes Project Teams Succeed? Students' Post-Covid Perceptions on IT Project Management Education Fostering Professional Skills

The goal of this research-to-practice full paper is to present current findings of the evaluation of a learner-centered course on IT project management aiming to foster digital skills along with professional competencies and share derived good practices. The 21st century and the ongoing digitization pose new challenges to the workforce and, in particular, young professionals in the IT sector. Digital skills, personal skills, and interpersonal skills have never been more relevant, which especially applies to project teams of the IT sector. This paper uses a qualitative content analysis of students' teamwork reflection forms to identify success factors and barriers of teamwork in the 21st century from the perspective of 42 students of a learner-centered course on IT project management as part of the computer science bachelor degree program of a large mid-European university. Within this context, the present study carried out in the summer term 2022 utilized four research instruments: a pre-course questionnaire, a teamwork reflection form, a standardized course evaluation survey, and an analysis of the teams' performance. The results show that students predominantly relied on online collaboration during self-regulated working phases, whereby “interpersonal skills” and “communication” were the most frequently mentioned success factors. The standardized course feedback revealed that students were satisfied with the course, scoring a mean rating of 1.5 on a scale from 1 (very good) to 5 (very bad). Positive feedback revolved around the attitude of the lecturer, the provided freedom, and teamwork. Based on the course experience, the paper proposes six recommendations for modern student-centered project management courses. We conclude that developing interpersonal skills should go hand in hand with a high quality of interacting with digital tools and be emphasized in managing students' IT-projects for which the described course is intended to serve as a source of inspiration for instructors, study directors, and curriculum designers.