Team characteristics, organizational culture and project success: A neural network approach

Artificial neural networks are used for determining the influence of organizational culture on the success of defense projects. The results show that neural networks are better adjusted to the patterns in the data when compared with regression. Their ability to adjust to non-linear patterns helped in identifying variables having significant impact on defense development projects success. The following variables were identified as critical to the success of defense development projects: Out of work activities for improving the cohesion of the development team. The importance of the work as perceived by the development team members. Readiness to accept new ideas even after design freeze. Creating an atmosphere of partnership, involvement and identification by the development team. The existence of a mechanism for distribution of lessons learnt in previous development projects. Creating an organizational culture that encourages cooperation and a sense of identification with the project goals. Significance: A first attempt to use neural networks for the investigation of managerial processes in project management Such techniques are capable of exploring relationships among the data difficult to arrive at by traditional statistical methods. The study identifies some new variables that were not considered as key factors for project success.