A New Report on the State of Project Management
A recent and significant report on the current state of project management around the world has recently been released by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in Belgium.[1] With all the talk these days about project portfolio management and project management maturity levels, the report's authors, Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez and Daniel Evrard, set out to determine whether a higher maturity level would go hand in hand with a higher project performance level. According to PwC, the successful organization is one that employs project management as a strategic tool to respond to a changing environment of competitive, economic, technological, political, legal and cultural challenges. Or do they? The report is based on data gathered via a web-based quantitative survey consisting of fifty closed questions to which 200 companies from around the world responded. These companies represented a total of 3,488 project or program managers or directors handling around 10,600 projects worth an estimated $4.5 US billion per year. The companies represented five continents but the majority was from Europe (44%) and the Americas (35%).
However, the survey did not include any face-to-face interviews nor, it seems, were the responses followed up to verify the quality of the data received. So the subjective self-assessment of "success" may be somewhat suspect. Still, in the absence of data to the contrary, some of the findings are quite remarkable.
1. Boosting Business Performance through Programme
and Project Management, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), June 2004
|
