Decisions
Questions Executives need to ask when assessing their organisations’ project health
A trillion-dollar problem
According to joint research by the project world’s peak body, the Project Management Institute (PMI) and consulting groups such as Gartner and BCG, about 40% of projects fail. About US$13 trillion or 25% of the world’s economy between 2013 and 2019 is spent on projects each year. US$ 5 trillion is wasted.
The leading factor for project failure is poor project sponsorship, with approximately 80% of organisations citing it in their top six reasons for project failure.
How is your organisation doing? Ask these questions to get a level of insight:
- How long do projects take to start and then deliver here?
- When the projects are delivered, do they represent value to our customers or our organisation?
- How do you rate our project delivery capability?
- Do our sponsors struggle in their roles?
- Are our sponsors and project professionals thanked or recognised for doing a good job?
- How are mistakes handled?
- What support is available?
If you don’t have ready answers that you are proud of, take some time out to see what could be improved. The majority of the struggling sponsors have stated that they did not clearly understand their role. Many had huge turnarounds once they got some guidance about when and where to pay attention.
What can you do to support your sponsor education and improve the impact of your projects?