=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2565/paper5
|storemode=property
|title=Digital Transformation Time: Research Results for Ukrainian Community
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2565/paper5.pdf
|volume=Vol-2565
|authors=Carsten Wolff,Olena Verenych,Svitlana Kevorkova
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/itpm/WolffVK20
}}
==Digital Transformation Time: Research Results for Ukrainian Community==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2565/paper5.pdf
Digital Transformation Time: Research Results for
Ukrainian Community
Carsten Wolff1[0000-0003-3646-5240], Olena Verenych2[0000-0003-0972-6361] and
Svitlana Kevorkova3[0000-0001-9875-1838]
1 Dortmund University of Applied Science and Arts, Dortmund, Germany
2 Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture, Kyiv, Ukraine
3 Ltd. “Archimatika”, Turhenievska Str., Kyiv, Ukraine
verenych@ukr.net
Abstract. A new direction of the development of Ukraine is digitalization and
one of the baselines is the digitalization of the state functions, which is called
“The State in a Smartphone”. Project managers with IT specialization should be
at the top of the labor market in this case. However, implementation of the
“State in a Smartphone” should be realized by specialists who understand what
digitalization is. The authors of the paper are researching the main goal to un-
derstand how the Ukrainian people understand what is “digital transformation”
and “digitization”; which competencies project manager should have to be suc-
cessful in Digital Era. They created a questionnaire. Seventeen people from the
project management area took part. Using Google Forms for them were asked
26 questions. The authors received interesting and unexpected results. The re-
spondents indicated that digitalization is well-known area for the country, but
they defined it as informatization. They didn’t indicate project management
knowledge for implementation of it and didn’t choose values as one of the im-
portant for the digitalization. Personal communication (with approaches for ne-
gotiation and conflict resolution) was lost for the list of the important compe-
tencies for a project manager. Other interesting results are presented in the pa-
per.
Keywords: Digitalization, Digital Era, Project Management, Competencies,
IPMA.
1 Introduction
There are many factors, which influence a project’s success, for example, risks, budg-
et, schedule, new techniques, methods, etc. Successful business can’t be without using
digital approaches in its activities.
The new Ukrainian President on the IForum 2019 [1], one of the biggest forum of
the internet-workers, presented some ideas that should be drivers on the next years in
the frame of the digitalization in Ukraine. The digitalization of the state functions is
one of them. He called it “The State in a Smartphone”.
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
2020 ITPM Workshop.
On the other side, digitalization is concerning not only the State but also all State
elements. Digitalization can be presented as the move to the direction of the present-
ing activities in the digital world. In this context, the programmers and specialists in
the Informational technologies come forward. Any change is equal to a new project.
Project managers stay in the first positions in the labor market.
In Ukrainian Community terms “Digitalization” and “Digital Transformation” can
be heard often. However, as the practice indicated there are many people do not un-
derstand definitions of the terms correctly. The paper’s authors decided to go into the
matter of how Ukrainians understand these terms and what the important competen-
cies are needed. We have started our research from project managers in different are-
as. The first results of the research are presented below.
2 Digital Transformation
In the frame of the literature review, that was detailed presented in [2], we can find
the next. Nowadays an important element in each aspect of everyday life is “digital
transformation” or “digitization”, which are not just catchy marketing slogans. There
is no rule on how the economic sector will transform and digitize in the next few
years. But those who do not have experience in this area and have good luck will be
benefiting.
There are a lot of terms that can refer to digitization such as digital transformation,
digitalization, Industry 4.0. This definition has similar meanings but still does not
have an agreement on what all of them mean.
Digital transformation starts doing the first steps in the service sector, from the eas-
iest operational functions for solving complex problems. In worldwide for digital
transformation, IT is the provider and activator.
The connection between different organizational dimensions is another relevant
aspect in the nascence of the digital transformation. Influence on the digitalization
cycle appears by digital leadership, human resources management and application of
technology. For the formation of flexible and preparation of leadership for the dyna-
mism of the digital environment, they transform into resources [3].
The authors have found 28 sources offering 23 unique definitions of the term “Dig-
ital Transformation”. They establish some observations. One of them is availability
common phrases such as “digital technologies” in big amount of definition [4, 5],
other is relation to the organizations. The last one is depending on types of technolo-
gies big differences [6, 7] and nature transformation [8, 9].
3 Project Management Skills
The literature review of the Project Management Skill are detailed found in [2]. Brief-
ly, this information can be presented by the next information in the frame of the sec-
tion.
Effective managerial skills were explored by one of the first researcher Katz [10].
For effective work leaders showed their skills and the author proposed three skills are
3
that can be developed which human, technical and conceptual. “Specialized
knowledge, the analytical ability within that specialty, and facility in the use of the
tools and techniques of the specific discipline” he defined technical skill. Human skill
he determined “the ability to work effectively as a group member and to build coop-
erative effort within the team”, and conceptual skill assign “ability to see the enter-
prise as a whole including recognizing how the various functions depend on one an-
other and how changes in one part can affect all the others” [10].
15 management textbooks from the beginning of 2000 and 15 management princi-
ples books from the 1980s were investigated and they made a conclusion that “Katz’s
work was specifically referenced by almost all of the early works and by most of the
more recent books” [11].
To solve complex problems [12] defined ten skills for project managers: “Team
building, Leadership, Conflict resolution, Technical expertise, Planning, Organiza-
tion, Entrepreneurship, Administration, Management support, Allocation of re-
sources” [12].
The importance of interpersonal, technical and conceptual skills was mentioned in
the PMBOK guide [13].
For project managers, IPMA ICB 4 determine three groups of competencies [14].
Perspective is competencies that need in a peculiar environment and cooperate with
the environment. People is competencies that are connected with interpersonal and
personal, which related to thriving leading or participation in projects. Practice is
competencies that bring success throw techniques, tools or methods.
4 Digital Transformation and Competencies in Project
Management: Ukrainian Understanding
As we said before, Ukraine is staying on the way of the Digital Transformation. How-
ever, we can’t say that Digital Transformation is something new for Ukraine. The way
of the digitization has been starting some decades before.
As the indicate research in the mental spaces [15 - 19] without an integrated under-
standing of the main definitions we can’t do something good. Action results will have
a misunderstanding and have ambiguousness.
First, we wanted to get data about the understanding of a digital transformation as a
whole, its importance, and understanding of the main competencies in the digital era.
Authors have discovered a lack of practice information reflecting these aspects in the
frame of the studies. So it was created a list of 26 questions using Google Forms and
sent it to many people who work (-ed) in the project management area from different
filds. This research has been starting in July 2019 and continue up to now. In the pa-
per, we want to present the first results. Now, we have 17 responses. All respondents
are from Ukraine.
The first part of the questionnaire was consisted of general questions like area,
where respondent work or his/her age. The second and main parts refer to digital
transformation. What respondents understanding with this term, is this field new or
not and what challenges they meet on the road to digitalization. In the end, were done
a list of competencies and respondents should mention which of them are important
and which of them needed. The last task was chosen the first three most important
competencies to manage projects in the digital era. In the research, we were based on
the competencies list of the IPMA Global Standard [14].
Answers of the questionnaire are presented below.
1. Area of respondents work (Fig. 1). As we said before, respondents were from
different areas. A bar chart is showing that more respondents are work-
ing/worked in Education, IT is on the second place and other areas divide the
same position. Results show that most projects are implemented in the educa-
tion area.
2. Positions of respondents. Respondents are not only from different areas, they
also have different positions such as team leader, head of department, two as-
sistants professor, five project managers, research scientist, consultant, head of
department, performance manager/ fundraising, trainer, Vice-Rector, Xamarin
Developer, professor.
Fig. 1. Areas of working respondents (Source: own pie chart)
3. The age of respondents is presented in Fig. 2. A bar chart is showing that the
age of most respondents is between 31 to 40 years old. In the second place, the
respondents are 41-50 years old. In the third place, the respondents are 21-30
years old. That is indicated that the project management profession is popular
for people in active working-age.
4. The experience in the project management area is presented in Fig. 3. A bar
chart shows that most of respondents have experience less than 5 years. That is
indicated that organizations are taken their attention to project managers and
they understand that the project success is based on the professional approach.
Fig. 2. Age of respondents (Source: own Fig. 3. Experience in project manage-
5
pie chart) ment area (Source: own pie chart)
5. Definition of digital transformation. One of them told that is “A path from A
to B, where A is "now" of a company and "B" is wished by management level
of digital involvement”. Another “Automatization of manual daily routine,
faster access and exchange of information due to digitalization, better planning
and control” and most of the determination was concerning this “Translation
of information into digital (electronic) form”.
6. The term “digitalization”. What this term means and is this field new or not.
Most of them answered that this term is a synonym to the term “digital trans-
formation”, but it was also those who have his/her definition “Automation of
processes /activities, minimization of human participation, the introduction of
self-service channels, different web applications, mobile applications. Fore-
casting, analytics, Big Data”. One of the respondents said that it is “the lan-
guage of the future”.
7. Is the Digitalization a new for Ukraine area or not? Respondents divided into
two big groups in realizing new this area or not. “Yes” chose four respondents,
“no” choose eleven respondents. Some respondents offered the individual
point of view “Not. There are various stages” and “The term is new but the ar-
ea is not”.
These two last questions (items 6 and 7) gives an understanding of the real situa-
tion with knowledge of people that work in the project management area. We can see
that people don’t think that digitalization is something new in Ukraine. They said that
is a known area for Ukrainians. Authors can summarize that the digitalization trans-
formation will be implemented in the Ukrainian Community without any problems
because the Community is ready for it.
8. Barriers and challenges on the road to Digitalization. The major amount of
respondents mentioned people as the main problem to this road “Inert, bureau-
cratic, limited consciousness of people” and “Sometimes there is opposition to
change. We need good leaders, team management, motivation. Need iterative
development”. One of them described why people have a problem in detail
“People's capabilities and willingness to learn something new; Low under-
standing what digitalization is really and what it can bring benefits, hence the
fear of people on a personal level, hence rejection”. Also, they mentioned oth-
er factors “Most of the information is not digitized; if digitized, then in differ-
ent formats”, “Lack of a developed market for information services; Lack of
economic demand; Lack of competencies; Corruption”. To conclude this in-
formation should be specified that the biggest problem on the road to digitali-
zation is people because they do not ready for change, do not want to do some-
thing new and they also have fear of how their work will look like. There are
also other problems as not enough digitized documentation and corruption.
First of these two problems can be resolved if more people will digitize infor-
mation, but the second problem is a risk and hard to solve it, just try to avoid
it.
9. Experience in digitization. Six from seventeen respondents have written that
they had less than ten years of experience, two respondents have the experi-
ence between 19 to 20 years, one of them has the experience more than thirty
years, and eight don’t have experience.
10. What challenges can be met in digital projects? As was mentioned above
people “Strong resistance of "old school" employees”, “the low level of the
digital education in the community”, “Absent the competences”, “Lack like-
minded person”. Respondents were thought about the technical part of doing
digital projects “Lack of procedures, techniques, personnel, transformation
technologies” and “The scope does not include enough of change management
and no one understands what is value, or only monetary value is at focus”.
One of the respondents indicates that he/she implements projects in the IT area
and they don’t need in digitalization. To conclude all information about digital
projects one of them wrote “A large amount of development, insufficient un-
derstanding of how as is works, not enough analysts and architects to work out
the changes, lack of developers and their competencies, no competent plan-
ning”.
11. Knowledge of project management standards. Seven respondents from sev-
enteen knew about standards. They indicated ICB, PMBoK, NCB, P2M, ISO
21500, IPMA, PRINCE2, P2M, Scrum, Agile, Kanban, SWeCOM. Other re-
spondents know nothing. It indicated that one of the reasons for the low level
digitalization implementation is incomprehension of the main stones of the
project approach and, as a result, incomprehension of how to organize changes
on the base of new challenges and values.
12. Competencies that need in the Digital Era. One of them wrote than the coun-
try does not have Digital Era and the country has a lag in fifty years. Some
mentioned “traditional” competencies as “teamwork, readiness for change”, IT
skills, technical competencies, “soft skills, change management, sustainability
embedded into digital transformation projects”. Some of them indicated that
quickly decision-making and the ability to the formation, analysis, process and
transmit information are very important. To have success projects most re-
spondents referred to IT skills then indicated change management and team-
work, and at the end is indicated logical and abstract thinking. That is means
only with the good all-around educational base that is included both IT and
"soft-skills" competencies can be solved a problem, which called “projects on
Digital Era”.
13. Knowledge influence on digital projects. It was interesting to have infor-
mation about knowledge types that respondents held important for digital pro-
jects. In general, respondents are talking about knowledge in IT, system mod-
eling, technologies, approaches for the transformation of information. Apart
from that, soft skills are indicated too. There were team management, people
organization, critical thinking. Only two persons indicated project manage-
ment knowledge as important. And also, we received one very interesting
opinion “Neuro-linguistic programming and only it, inasmuch as, the top-
managements' skill level don't allow to improve their level of personal igno-
rance in another way”. As a result, authors can say that the respondents under-
stand that the project management approach is important for Digital Era and
7
Digital Transformation but for, another hand, they didn’t link knowledge in
project management with Digitalization and Digital Transformation imple-
mentation.
14. Importance of managerial approaches in the Digital Era. Some respondents
answered only that the managerial approaches are important. However, some
of them indicated approaches. They wrote about informational, interactive and
situational approaches. Some can’t say something. Only one person wrote that
“PM methodologies are universal” and three respondents had a problem with
answering.
15. Important and Needed competencies from different groups of ICB 4. Our
research is based on the ICB 4.0 [14]. According to the standard, all individual
competencies are divided into three groups: Perspective, People and Practice.
Authors wanted to get the respondents’ opinions about more important and
needed competencies. First, respondents should choose more important and
needed in each group. Then in each group, respondents should prioritize three
competencies that are more important. The results for each group are presented
below.
Fig. 4. Graph chart of range important and need competencies from the Perspective group
(Source: own graph chart)
Fig. 7. Third important compe-
Fig. 5. First important Fig. 6. Second important
competence in the Perspec- competence in the Perspec- tence in the Perspective group
tive group (Source: own tive group (Source: own (Source: own graph chart)
graph chart) graph chart)
From this graph (fig.4), the chart can be seen that “Governance, structures and pro-
cesses” and “Power and interest” are most Important and “Culture and values” is most
Needed.
Three pie charts (Fig.5-7) are showed an interesting result. Respondents paste on
the most important competencies “Governance, structures and processes” (35%) and
the same competence is presented in third place with 41%. It may be considered
“Governance, structures and processes” have the highest importance of the group. The
competence “Strategy” (47%) is placed in second place.
From the graph chart and tree pie charts of the Perspective group can be seen that
respondents have no so clear understanding of the competencies in the group. They
mentioned “Governance, structures and process” and “Power and interest” as high
importance from Perspective group, but didn’t pay attention to “Power and interest”
during prioritization of the competencies.
Fig. 8. Graph chart of range important and need competencies from the People group (Source:
own graph chart)
Fig. 11. Third important
Fig. 9. First important Fig. 10. Second important compe-
competence in the People tence in the People group (Source: competence in the People
group (Source: own own graph chart) group (Source: own graph
graph chart) chart)
From this graph chart (Fig.8) can be seen that “Relationships and engagement” and
“Result orientation” are most Important and “Conflict and crisis” is most Needed and
not so far from it “Self-reflection and self-management”, “Personal integrity and reli-
ability”, “Personal communication” and “Resourcefulness” were chosen.
Three pie charts (Fig.9-11) are showed, like the previous chart, an interesting situa-
tion. The competence “Teamwork” (41%) is located in the first place and in the third
9
place (29%) simultaneously. The competence “Result orientation” is in second place
(18%). We can see some mismatch between indicated Important and Needed and
indicated prioritization competencies.
From this graph (Fig.12), the chart can be seen that “Requirements and objectives”
and “Organization and information” are most Important and “Scope”, “Quality” and
“Change and transformation” are most Needed.
Three pie charts (Fig.13-15) are showed that the competence “Organization and in-
formation” (17%) is located in the first place; the competence “Requirements and
objectives” is in second place (29%) and the competence “Plan and Control” is in the
third place (38%).
Fig. 12. Graph chart of range important and need competencies from the Practice group
(Source: own graph chart)
Fig. 15. Third important
Fig. 13. First important Fig. 14. Second important com-
competence in the Practice petence in the Practice group competence in the Practice
group (Source: own graph (Source: own graph chart) group (Source: own graph
chart) chart)
In the frame of this group, we can’t see any mismatches. In general, all answers are
correlated with each other.
5 Conclusion
The questionnaire was done and seventeen people from the project management area
took part. Using Google Forms for them were asked 26 questions related to compe-
tencies in the Digital Era. As the base of this research was taken the Standard IPMA
ICB 4th.
Most of respondents were from the IT or Education area, in general, age falls in
two diapasons 31-40 and 41-50 years old. Experience in managing digital projects for
less than five years.
The next step was asked to write the definition of the term “digital transformation”
and the term “digitalization” and almost all has the same understanding of these
terms. They think that “Digitalization” is the same “Digital transformation” and it is
the same “Informatization”. Then paper’s authors asked about newness digitalization
for Ukraine. Only four respondents answered about novelty, eleven respondents indi-
cated that is not new for the country. We can say that digitalization is not something
new and people should understand what it is. However, the results of the integrated
understanding of the main terms are absent. That is one of the reasons why digitaliza-
tion is not popular in Ukraine because people don’t understand the difference exactly.
Talking about barriers and challenges on the road to digitalization the most re-
spondents voted for the bureaucratic, inertness and nonavailability to learn something
new.
When was talking about competencies needed in the Digital Era the most respond-
ents said about different skills, IT skills, soft skills, logical and creativity skills are
popular.
However, when respondents asked about knowledge influence on digital projects
nobody said about project management.
There were interesting results that can be observed in the answers about needed
and important competencies for the project manager in the Digital Era. Sometimes we
received results that indicated that people don’t correlate their answers. Respondents
can indicate certain competencies in the group, but completely different when rank-
ing.
In the group “Perspectives” the competencies “Governance, structures and pro-
cesses” and “Power and interest” were indicated as most Important and “Culture and
values” was most Needed. However, “Culture and values” wasn’t included in the
three most Important during prioritization. It demonstrates that respondents didn’t see
the values as important. Values aren’t connected with digitalization as a whole. It may
be the next reason for poor success digitalization in the country.
In the group “People” the results are more interesting. Respondents indicated “Re-
lationships and engagement” and “Result orientation” are most Important and “Con-
flict and crisis” is most Needed and not so far from it “Self-reflection and self-
management”, “Personal integrity and reliability”, “Personal communication” and
“Resourcefulness” were chosen. In the frame of the ranking, respondents chose
“Teamwork” and “Result orientation”. Respondents did not view any communication
approaches (for example, personal communication, and negotiation) as instruments
for teamwork and result orientation. The competence “Personal communication” is
absent absolutely. It indicates as new communication technologies influence. People
prefer to use technical communication technologies for communication but they can’t
use human approaches. Most project manager's working time is spent on communica-
tion and personal communication, negotiation, conflicts, and crisis are very important
11
for the success project results. Sometimes they can be more important than the best
technical approaches or the best project plan and scope.
In the group “Practice” the competencies “Requirements and objectives” and “Or-
ganization and information” are most Important and “Scope”, “Quality” and “Change
and transformation” are most Needed. Only this group is demonstrated a good corre-
lation between indicated Important and Needed competencies with the next their rank-
ing.
This paper shows a lack of “clear” and integrated understanding of how to manage
digital projects and which competencies have to project manager in “real” life. These
results are given by project managers. As we understand the worst result may be re-
ceived in the common community. It is only the first results. The authors are planning
to research in the future. They think about expanding the number of specified ques-
tions and amount of respondents and try to find more amount of research papers from
the last decade.
6 Acknowledgment
Authors express their thanks to the science and educational programs and grants in the
frame of the research was conducted:
1. the research stay at Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts in winter
semester 2019/2020 within the programme "Eastern Partnerships from 2017"
by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), financed from funds by
the Federal Foreign Office;
2. the research Erasmus + programme for the exchange of students and/or staff;
3. the Double Degree Agreement between Fachchochschule Dortmund – Universi-
ty of Applied Science and Arts (Dortmund, Federal Republic of Germany) and
Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture (Kyiv, Ukraine).
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