Driving Success in Challenging Times

Slow economic growth, shifting global market priorities and a push for innovation all make for a very complex and risky business environment and put additional emphasis on the need for excellence in project, program and portfolio management. This study found that organizations are increasingly using a wide variety of means to drive their projects and programs. The percent of organizations that have a project management office (PMO) stood just above the two-thirds mark (67 percent) and nearly that many (63 percent) have standardized their project management practices across all or most of their enterprise.

Other findings include:

• Frequent use of change and risk management techniques remains high, as does the use of formal program management.
• The use of portfolio management is increasing, with 55 percent saying they use it frequently.
• Use of agile project management methods (such as Scrum) is also on the increase.
• Formal “talent management” processes to develop project managers is decreasing, potentially a result of the challenging economy and popular austerity measures.

Twenty percent describe their organizations as having “high” overall project management maturity, up from 11 percent in an earlier survey.