Project Management Institute (PMI) today released its Pulse of The Profession ® report which reveals that organizations wasted almost 12 percent of their investment in project spend last year due to poor performance—a number that’s barely budged over the past five years. As a solution, PMI is calling on project leaders worldwide to evaluate and bolster their Project Management Technology Quotient or PMTQ. PMI developed the tenets of PMTQ by drawing on insights from innovator companies that put a high priority on digital skills acquisition and knowledge coupled with a commitment to a strong project management culture.
PMTQ adds a layer of project management to the concept of technology quotient (TQ), which is defined as a person’s ability to adapt, manage and integrate content advances in technology for a project or organization."In jobs of the future, project teams will be more and more reliant on technology as either an enabler or sometimes as a team member," said Murat Bicak, Senior Vice President, Strategy of PMI. "Having a strong PMTQ, and being technologically fluent, will be essential for anyone charged with making strategy reality."
Data from the 2019 Pulse of the Profession, PMI’s annual global survey of project management professionals, were used to identify PMTQ Innovators – organizations that prioritize the development of digital skills for project management – vs. the Laggards.
KEY COMPONENTS OF PMTQ
- Always-on curiosity: Project managers with a high PMTQ are always looking for what’s next and trying out new project delivery approaches, ideas, perspectives and technology. Pulse data reveals that PMTQ Innovators demonstrate a strong ability to shift their way of getting work done. In fact, 60 percent of organizations indicate using hybrid project management practices, compared to 29 percent of PMTQ Laggards.
- All-inclusive leadership: Those with a high PMTQ not only effectively manage people, but also technology — as well as people who are managing technology. An impressive 78 percent of PMTQ Innovators prioritize developing project management business skills, including management of people, versus only 5 percent of PMTQ Laggards, according to Pulse data.
- A futureproof talent pool: PMTQ Innovators recruit and retain project talent with the skills needed for the digital workforce. They identify employees who can keep up with the trends and adapt their abilities accordingly. According to Pulse data, 82 percent of PMTQ Innovators (vs. 9 percent of PMTQ Laggards) prioritize developing project management technical skills and 81 percent provide ongoing project manager training (vs. 34 percent of PMTQ Laggards).
Gaining and maintaining a superior PMTQ requires support from all levels of an organization. While business leaders often express a desire to gain more and more workers with the know-how to utilize technology, there is still a disconnect on how they are willing to achieve it. In fact, Accenture found that while 60 percent of business leaders had increased their AI investments in 2017, only 3 percent said they would invest significantly in training and reskilling programs through 2020 (Reworking the Revolution, Accenture 2018). Organization leaders must recognize the importance of building digital fluency across their organization, so project managers can best deliver on the tasks asked of them.
When business leaders take note and support project managers on their PMTQ quest, our Pulse of the Profession data shows PMTQ Innovator organizations take the lead on project outcomes. Their projects are more likely to meet their original goals and be delivered on time and within budget, while reducing scope creep and outright failure.
This not only means PMTQ Innovators save money and improve stakeholder satisfaction rates, but when projects do fail, the portion of the budget lost is less than the PMTQ Laggards (8.5 percent versus 16.3 percent).
Read more about the PMTQ in the latest Pulse of the Profession Survey, The Future of Work: Leading the Way With PMTQ, at www.PMI.org/Pulse.