We all know that knowledge is power and it’s precisely this reality that has driven us to run our Transformation and PMO Executive Survey. Through it, we are undertaking to help those working in and around the project management industry understand what forces are driving which trends and behaviours.
So here we share the interim results with our perspective – thank you to everyone so far who has responded. We welcome additional participants and your feedback on these results.
We have surveyed a range of roles, from PMO Managers to Head of Innovation and CIOs at organisations in the public and private sector to find out the drivers of change that are currently challenging them. We’ve typically conducted surveys with project management practitioners, but this time we’ve also included executives to ensure we’re getting a 360 view of project and change & transformation management challenges. We want to help align practitioners and executives, and encourage a deeper understanding on both sides ultimately to drive better outcomes and value.
It’s probably no surprise to hear that Digital Disruption tops the poll – there’s no industry that’s not being impacted by digital. What we are seeing however, are the winners and losers in each industry based on who took action to prepare their operations for digital even five years ago. Those who did are now able to drive change quicker, while those who didn’t are facing competition, and the challenge of adapting their internal systems and processes quickly.
Deploying Agility at Scale was placed comparatively lower than other challenges. We believe this is because the majority of organisations have or are implementing agile in pockets of their business, but possibly not right across the board. Our view here is that organisations now need to aim for business agility vs pure agile, to focus even more strategically on what matters, such as a better return on investment and people.
More than one third of organisations placed competitors on their list of challenges and it’s surprising that’s not higher given that competitors can arise almost out of nowhere, and scale fast. This means you need to have readied your systems, processes, and critically – your people – in order to adapt to known and unknown competitive threats.
Cost pressures rate similarly highly with 35% of respondents citing them as a priority. Everyone is under pressure to focus on delivering the biggest return and yield possible with no capacity in the system to carry underperformance. Even the public sector is thinking like this – technology has driven transparency throughout.
Strategy rated lower than we may have expected, at 12 percent, perhaps people feel they have a strategy in place. We urge you to revisit that strategy and compare with the execution plan to ensure the two align, and it’s worth remembering that good execution of an average strategy will always trump poor execution of great strategy.
Finally, we heard that one third of you are struggling with the Pace of Change – everyone is struggling to keep up, to prioritise and to execute repeatedly. This is where the Project Management community really is the vehicle to support you during this time as an experienced partner so do get in touch if we can help: 1300 70 13 14.
We’ll be announcing the full results later in the year at our Transformation Forum. Again, we urge you to participate and help shape our industry because knowledge is power after all.
Career Focus: how to put your best foot forward