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The implementation of ISO 9001 quality management systems in 21 organizations was studied through semi-structured interviews with the respective quality managers. In general, the organizations seem to look at the implementation of a quality management system as a project and they employ standard project management tools, albeit to a different extent and in different ways. The commitment and direct participation of management was a key factor for a successful implementation, as well as direct participation of the employees, and good preparation and goal setting. It can be concluded that organizations that planned for their internal cost of implementation, that is the cost of direct participation of the employees, were likely to implement their quality management systems in the time they expected-and their time of implementation was shorter than for organizations that didn't look at this internal cost.

INTRODUCTION ■ W hat knowledge and skills are essential for a competent project manager in the present-day context? To address this question, one can start by looking at two well-recognized definitions of project management. On the one hand, the Project Management Institute (PMI) defines project management as "the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet project requirements" (PMI, 2004). On the other hand, the International Project Management Association (IPMA) states: "Project Management (PM) is the planning, organising, monitoring, and controlling of all aspects of a project and the management and leadership of all involved to achieve the project objectives safely and within agreed criteria for time, cost, scope, and performance/quality. It is the totality of coordination and leadership tasks, organisation, techniques, and measures for a project. It is crucial to optimise the parameters of time, cost and risk with other requirements and to organise the project accordingly" (IPMA, 2006). Although these are useful definitions, they are rather wide and therefore do not give a comprehensive answer to the question of what knowledge and skills must be mastered by the project manager in the future in order to excel-an issue that is of importance not only for project managers, project sponsors, clients, customers, contractors, and other project stakeholders, but especially for everyone who is training future project managers. The project management profession has in the past strongly emphasized technically supported methods of planning and execution as a core competence, and continues to do so today. However, while project management today remains firmly focused on this traditional "objective" or "hard" perspective, there seems now to be an increasing focus on the more "subjective" and "soft" factors-leadership, motivation, group dynamics, interpersonal communication, culture, and ethics-that could be regarded as essential to all professional endeavors. In light of this, we see that the PMI and IPMA definitions of project management do not provide a comprehensive or all-inclusive description of project management as such, and that they do not take into consideration the development that project management has undergone and the extent to which it has changed since it was first formally defined in the middle of the twentieth century. This development has, however, been discussed in a number of textbooks and papers. Kerzner (2006) gives an overview of project management from 1945 to 2006 and highlights the development, over three different periods, of non-projectdriven enterprises into hybrid enterprises that are primarily productiondriven but also include numerous projects. The present-day situation and the future will, according to Kerzner, focus on project-driven enterprises, where the project manager has profit-and-loss responsibilities and where

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