Humanizing User Influence Tactics in the Quest to Reduce Resistance against IT Project Management Methodology Use

Despite the benefits of using an IT project management methodology, only a handful of organizations are actually able to make their staff use such methodologies. Hence, organizational managers must identify and apply user influence tactics (UIT), to ensure adequate and appropriate use of these methodologies within their organizations. In order to understand the complex nature of UITs and their effects on employees, we use needs theory and develop and test a conceptual model based on a pre-test sample of 65 participants to address the following issues: 1) the need for an abstract taxonomy of UITs to group together similar tactics so as to reduce complexity as well as increase generalizability and results comparability, and 2) the need to examine innate desires of the employee, since the likelihood that a specific UIT will be effective in motivating an individual to use a methodology depends upon the characteristics of the potential adopter as well as that of the methodology.