Digital Assets for Project-Based Studies and Project Management

Abstract

This research provides a literature survey of digital assets available through a project; specifically, it identifies sources of data that can be used for practicing data-driven, context-specific project management, or for project-based academic research. Projects are key vehicles for economic and social action, and they are also a primary source of innovation, research, and organizational change. The project boundaries of time, tasks, and people define a rich environment for collecting behavioral and attitudinal data for learning opportunities and academic research. Based on a systematic literature review of the top four project management journals, this research identifies four categories of data sources – communications, reports/records, model representations, and computer systems – and 52 digital assets. The list of digital assets can be inputs for the creation of project artifacts as well as sources for monitoring and controlling project activities and for sense-making in retrospectives or lessons learned. In an illustrative case, this research uses three of the digital assets, social network analysis, and topic modeling to analyze the verbal and written communications between project participants. The classification model and categorization are useful for decision support and artificial intelligence systems model development that requires real-world data.