Project Management Statistics

15 Fascinating Project Management Statistics

While the art of project management has existed for a long time, the modern concept of project management did not exist until the early 20th century. Especially as we’ve moved into a largely digital area — where we’re constantly surrounded by new apps and tools — project management has become a largely digital experience. With that, we’ve seen an increase in project management tools, which make implementing best project management practices easy for businesses of all sizes. However, it is not easy to master as seen by these 15 fascinating project management statistics. These surprising findings cover why projects fail, the current and future state of project management, and how to achieve greater performance through good project management practices.

Did you know?

According to a research by KPMG, an incredible 70% of organizations have suffered at least one project failure in the prior 12 months and 50% of respondents indicated that their project failed to consistently achieve what they set out to achieve. Additionally, only 58% of organizations understand the value of project management. This is a staggering number, as it has proven to be helpful to so many.

For organizations that don’t see the value of project management, this means wasted resources, time, and efforts. To put a value to projects failure, for every $1B invested in the US, $122M was wasted due to lacking project performance.

As part of Hive’s mission to provide quality customer service, we do regular check-ins with our customers. Often, we find that the lack of clear goals and vision is the main reason as to their project is not successful. And this fact is echoed by PMI Pulse of the Profession 2017, “A lack of clear goals is the most common factor (37%) behind project failure, according to executive leaders.”

Clearly, if organizations fail to plan, then they plan to fail. Planning is an essential part of project management. From a Gantt chart to a Kanban board to a traditional spreadsheet, business leaders should find a style that works for them. With a clear overview of your project and deliverables, business leaders will have a higher rate of success.

The Importance of Good Project Management Practices

Good project management directly translates to less money wasted. Organizations that invest in proven Project Management practices waste 28x less money because more of their strategic initiatives are completed successfully. Even more, Capterra’s  recent market research report found the #1 benefit of using a project management tool is being able to accurately estimate a project timeline. And the better you can estimate a timeline, the less money you will waste.

The project management industry is bright and burning, and it is set to grow by $6.6 trillion by 2020. Yet, the same research identifies that the US $208 billion GDP will be at risk because of the project management talent shortage. It is important for organizations to improve their business leaders knowledge of project management.

Interestingly, traditional project management practices are being forgone for newer and more efficient practices, such as the Agile project management approach. It is found that 71% of the organizations are now using agile approaches to their projects more frequently than in the past.

The use of Digital Software in Project Management 

According to PWC, digital project management software increases performance and found that 77% of high performing projects use project management software, yet it was discovered that 44% of project managers do not believe the use of software to manage projects. The Access Group found that 66% of project managers highlighted that the key decision factor to invest in a new software is the level of support given by the organization. This is further shown as a report by Geneca highlighted that 75% of business executives anticipate that their PM software will fail.

Why though? 

73% of business leaders today, believe that reliability, ease of use, and an ease of integration are the top three requirements to look for when investing in digital PM software, yet they believe that the solutions out there today do not have these 3 factors.

Not True

Ten years ago, legacy project management software could get very complicated and confusing. Today, we are seeing an influx of project management tools that are easy to use, capable, and with integrated features.

Capterra found that two-thirds of companies are communicating with clients using project management software. Some popular features include external or guest users, form capabilities, sharing optimized content, and native chat messenger.

Project management has come a long way, and we hope that these statistics provide you better insight into on the current state of project management.

Project Management Statistics Infographic

Project Management Statistics