The Influence of Experience and Education of Project Managers on Project Success

Identification of Critical Success Factors (CSF) of Project Management belongs among the most explored topics in the area of project methodology. Although the research related to project CSF is quite comprehensive, there is so far no integrating paradigm that would be accepted by both academics and practitioners. Despite the lack of uniformity in conducted studies, the authors usually agree on some basic factors that are common for all types of projects. Apart from the iron triangle (times, costs, quality), people and organizational support represent the two other most frequently mentioned variables. In this respect, the authors often stress the need for good leadership from the part of the project managers and emphasize the importance of having managers with a high level of hard and soft skills. However, a frequently discussed issue is whether these skills must be acquired through specialized education programs or whether it is possible to replace this education by experience. In this paper we examine the relationships between the following variables - project oriented education, experience and project success. The main objective of our analysis lies in determining the approximated ratio of influence of each of these elements on the whole project performance. As a test sample we use the data collected during national survey including all regions of the Czech Republic that was carried out in the period from January to June 2015. Presented results are obtained by data processing via ANOVA and correlation analysis.