Project Management Institute (PMI) regularly conducts industry-wide surveys on topics related to project management. While some of these survey findings might surprise you, some will validate what you already knew deep within.
Look at the findings from one such Pulse report titled “The High Cost of Low Performance”, which establishes a qualified project manager’s need in today’s business environment –
“PMI’s 2013 Pulse of the Profession finds that organizations risk, on average, $135 million for every billion dollars spent. Low-performing organizations, however, risk 14 times more money than their high-performing counterparts.”
“How does this help me?”
Read on.
“With billions of dollars dependent upon the success and failure of projects, it is no wonder organizations are striving to manage projects more efficiently. Not only is it crucial for organizations to manage their projects, programs and portfolios effectively and strategically, but poor execution can lead organizations down a path to peril.”
Who has knowledge and skills to run project effectively in an organization?
Its you, with your PMP credential and the knowledge, skill and respect that comes with it.
Further,
“this Pulse report shows that training and development in project management has declined since 2010! As of today, less than half have a process to develop project management competency (45 percent, down from 52 percent in 2010) or have a process to mature existing project management practices (44 percent, down from 51 percent in 2010).”
What does this mean to you?
This means that with your newly acquired project management skill, knowledge, and PMP credential you have an edge over other project managers in your organization to get ahead in your career path. The investment you are making in your professional education now has best chances of paying off in today’s environment than it ever had earlier!
“Only 8% of organizations are considered high performers, while nearly three times as many organizations (22%) are low performers. Being a low performer severely impacts the success of an organization – low performers risk wasting 14 times more money on projects than high performers.”
How can you utilize this information?
This is where you can take that career enhancing action.
These research findings are industry-wide figures. Which means that these are very likely figures of your own organization. And this keeps you in an exclusive club! All you have to do is find relevant information in your organization that establishes this fact!
Identify situations and collect data and figures in your organization that helps you establish the fact that your organization is losing money on incorrect project management practices and can save x hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue due to avoiding project failure, by establishing good project management practices.
CEOs and upper management love figures, they also love people who care about their companies and possess skills to help them.
When you present these figures and project yourself (and show in your actions) as the right person to bring about the change, guess what, you stand to get that position, very naturally, where you can put your project management skills to use.
What kind of exact opportunities this will open up for you depends on pains of your organization that you have unearthed and the quality of your suggestions to solve this problem.
What you are essentially doing is identifying the problem and presenting a solution and the willingness to implement it! This is exactly the profile of a dream-employee.
Now the challenge is getting the data.
How easy or hard it is depends on the policy transparency of your organization and the relationship you maintain with people.
For a starter here’s what you can do –
- Talk to your Training department to identify PM trainings conducted, budget allocated/spent, training feedback, effectiveness reports of these trainings
- Talk to Human Resource department to understand general PM skillset levels in the organization, and collect reasons for people leaving the organization (from exit interviews)
- Talk to PMO/Finance department to get number of projects failed versus succeeded, reasons for failures, losses due to failure
- Go through your Organizational process assets (OPA) and understand lessons learnt from failed/prematurely closed projects.
Feed these figures into spreadsheet and draw trends (project success over past year), histograms (reasons for failure), cause-effect diagrams (effects on morale). Remember, management also loves facts presented with numbers and graphs making it easy to understand.
For they know that what you measure, you can improve!
Good luck!
How far you can grow depends only on how far you allow yourself to grow!
PS: Here is the link to the Pulse report if you need detailed information.
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