Project Management in Small to Medium-Sized Enterprises: Fitting the Practices to the Needs of the Firm to Deliver Benefit

Small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) undertake smaller projects than larger organizations and so need more informal people focused project management practices. We investigate the nature of SMEs that leads them to adopt practices of this nature and explore comparative benefits and costs. We interviewed 19 companies and conducted a web-based survey. SMEs adopt project management practices to fit the size of the firm and the nature of projects undertaken. The practices adopted are more customer-focused. SMEs perceive the benefit of project management outweighs the cost, but the perceived bureaucracy and overhead was the main barrier to its adoption.