Frida Enkvist and Marielle Lindkvist: Winners of the Swedish Project Academy´s Student Thesis of the Year award 2025

“It Is way harder make sure that all of your team members are OK”

Mats Ragnarsson Wenell Management interviews Frida and Marielle,  winners of the award for their thesis Digitalization of Project Management- a phenemenographic study or project managers perceptions regarding challenges and actions to handle them.

Read the article by clicking here.

The Swedish Project Academy’s motivation for the win.

At a time when digitalization is reshaping every aspect of our society, project managers are facing entirely new challenges and opportunities. The winning essay stands out by exploring in an in-depth and methodical way how project managers themselves experience and handle digitalization of project management work.

The authors Frida Engkvist and Marielle Lindkvist from the Umeå School of Business, Economics and Law have used a phenomenographic research approach in their study – a method that focuses on mapping different ways of experiencing a phenomenon rather than unambiguously defining the phenomenon itself. This approach allows us to see digitalization through the project managers’ own eyes and captures the rich variety of their experiences and interpretations. Unlike many other methods that search for a common denominator, the phenomenographic approach highlights the diversity of perspectives, which in this case provides a more nuanced and realistic picture of the complex reality project managers face.

The study not only identifies challenges on multiple levels – technological, human factors and leadership – but also offers concrete insights into how these can be addressed. Particularly impressive is the essay’s ability to highlight the interaction between different types of challenges and measures. This holistic perspective provides an understanding of digitalization as a complex process that requires efforts at several levels simultaneously – from organizational measures to individual adaptation and skills development.

The Swedish Project Academy would like to emphasize the broad relevance and usefulness of the essay across industry boundaries. The insights presented are relevant for project managers in all sectors navigating an increasingly digital reality. This makes the study a particularly valuable contribution to the project management field as a whole.