The impact of human resource (HR) performance management on project outcome

To ensure successful accomplishment of projects, quality performance of the project team is required to be maintained. The existing literature declares scope, time, cost and quality as quadruple constraints for project's success while management of human resource (HR) communication, procurement and risk are declared support functions. Literature further acknowledges that HR management functions are dealt with low precedence in actual practices of project management as they are rendered secondary or support functions. In real practices the project manager is delegated certain HR functions like team formation, training and HR performance management. However, these HR functions are not considered the primary tasks of the project manager during the project's life cycle as these are practiced for specific time period without regular iteration. From July 2007 to April 2009, this study discovered that in the Information Technology (IT) industry working in Islamabad, Pakistan, project managers were required to manage performance of their teams at least by monitoring their performance. It discovered that compromise in the quality of HR performance management affected the results of heterogeneous IT projects. The study therefore focused on HR performance management to identify its actual significance and precedence for the projects. It hypothesized that the outcome of project is associated with the quality of performance management of project team and is affected by it. Employing stratified sampling technique, 70 heterogeneous IT projects in 24 different software houses were identified and selected that were reported to have been affected by the quality of HR performance management. Using a reliable and valid instrument, data were collected in a cross sectional manner. Analyses of results were made using frequency distribution, Pearson correlation, and Partial Least Square (PLS) regression. The findings confirmed a correlation and dependency of project outcome on HR performance management by the project manager through quality of performance monitoring. The study concluded to consider HR management function performance management as one of the tools for ensuring project success giving its significant precedence. The study has contributed guidelines and templates to help project managers exercise 360 degree performance management where applicable.