There continues to be a high rate of failure for IT projects and lack of resources for project management, according to a new survey by Innotas. The survey also revealed the lack of a methodology to score and prioritize projects, showing that many organizations still do not have an approach that enables project success. These five key findings from the survey illustrate the trends—and the challenges—facing organizations’ project portfolios and project management strategies:
Stat #1: More than 50 percent of organizations say their projects and resources are not well aligned with business goals.
In project management, there’s one truism that can’t be overstated: The purpose and goal of projects should not be focused on the output, but the outcome. The successful execution or completion of projects and initiatives is no longer enough; the focus must be on the project outcome. Initiatives must create value for the organization, which means projects must be aligned with business goals. Given the importance of alignment, it’s surprising that so many organizations continue to struggle in this area.
Stat #2: Resourcing is the top challenge for most organizations.
While resourcing is less of a challenge than in 2014, it remains the top challenge for organizations heading into 2015. It represents an age-old struggle that every PMO is familiar with: Every organization has more project demand than it can handle. This usually comes down to limited resource availability or capacity—or limited hiring budgets. Interestingly, prioritization has become a greater challenge, year over year, now becoming the #2 challenge facing organizations. Rounding out the top three is alignment (as described above), which shows that project and portfolio management teams are placing an increased emphasis on improving up-front planning to create more value for their key stakeholders (yet not always achieving the alignment they seek).
Stat #3: More than 60 percent of organizations do not have enough resources to manage project demand.
With resourcing being organizations’ top pain point for the past two years, it’s no surprise that two-thirds of organizations still struggle with finding enough resources to meet organizational needs. This points to the necessity of focusing on optimizing available resources to ensure the ability to deliver maximum value back to the organization. This forces PMOs to ask a tough question: “Are our resources working on the right projects at the right time?” If the answer isn’t a resounding “yes”, then there’s likely room for improvement with project prioritization and resource scheduling. New technologies that integrate predictive analytics technology can help ensure your resources are optimized, both on current projects and looking into the future or potential “what if” scenarios.
Stat #4: Nearly 50 percent of organizations utilize scoring based on business objectives to align and prioritize projects.
In a trend that is largely unchanged from 2014, scoring remains the most popular method for prioritizing and aligning projects among organizations that have a formal methodology. There’s a reason it’s so popular: Scoring is an efficient way to start using a simple prioritization method, and it works in almost any organization. That’s because scoring can be customized to fit your specific organizational needs and culture; criteria can be as simple or complex as desired. For example, organizations can start with a simple 0 to 10 score for incoming project demand. As acceptance and adoption increases, scoring criteria can become more complex to include weighting or aggregating a pool of scores across team members and key stakeholders. The key is to build consensus on the criteria and build from there.
Stat #5: 45 percent of organizations are investing in a project portfolio management (PPM (News - Alert)) solution.
With many of the project management challenges being similar across the board: Alignment, resourcing, forecasting and prioritization—it’s easy to see why so many organizations are turning to new tools to manage the increasingly complex demands of project management. These new solutions speed the process of project portfolio measurement, management, reporting and progress communication. Project portfolio management (PPM) software is designed to streamline project management and strategically define a system for resource optimization. With a portfolio management solution in place, organizations are better equipped to execute on their initiatives, achieve desired results and ultimately drive more value.
About the Author: Tushar Patel is Sr. VP Marketing, Innotas.