PROJECT MANAGEMENT IN AUSTRALIA IN 2020

IN THIS YEAR’S PROJECT MANAGEMENT SURVEY REPORT IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT (AIPM), KPMG SURVEYED 464 INDUSTRY LEADERS TO GAUGE THE CURRENT PICTURE. THE RESULTS DELIVERED SOME POSITIVE FINDINGS, AS WELL AS HIGHLIGHTING KEY AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT.

The 2020 Project Management Survey examines how effective the profession has been through this year of pandemic driven turmoil and uncertainty. The report highlights positive confidence figures while revealing some significant opportunities for development of the profession in Australia to adapt to increasing complexity in the project delivery landscape.

ADAPTING TO INCREASING PROJECT COMPLEXITY

A key theme of the survey responses is that project delivery is getting more complex with 64% of survey respondents suggesting that complexity of projects has increased over the past decade. Further, 64% of survey respondents feel that project management skills and capabilities will be more important in the future. These results suggest there is a need for continued investment in developing capabilities to support technologies and arming the next generation of project managers with skills to not only adapt to delivering increasingly complex projects and business demands, but to develop EQ skills alongside this. It is, therefore, a little alarming to note that 53% of respondents felt their organisations are not doing enough to improve project management skills and capability.

ASSESSING PROJECT DELIVERY IN AUSTRALIA

The survey has traditionally sought to determine how well organisations are doing in the delivery of projects. This year we looked beyond just time, budget and scope measures and considered project delivery process maturity elements.

Overall, the picture is positive, and we observed areas of gradual improvement over the three years in which this survey has been undertaken.

In particular, the headline number has been the number of organisations reporting the delivery of projects on time, on budget, meeting goals and meeting stakeholder expectations has improved to 25% in this year’s survey (as compared to 23% two years ago). In the survey analysis, we sought to dig a little deeper into this group of “successful organisation” responses to see if there are any distinct areas which might point to what those organisations do differently. This analysis found organisations delivering successful projects are more likely to have:

• Actively engaged sponsors

• Effective Governance practices

• Formal benefits management practices in place

• Established independent project performance reviews

Source KPMG

USE OF CENTRALISED PROGRAM OR PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT OFFICES (PMOS)

Comparing the results with the 2018 survey (which was focused on Australia), we see increased use of centralised PMOs – lifting from 49% to 57% and increased confidence in their value increasing from 33% to 37%.

(Source: KPMG)

Equally, the number of respondents reporting their organisation has disestablished their centralised PMO has reduced from 30% to 19%.

While performance reporting remains the most common key function performed by a centralised PMO, it is apparent the PMO is also often playing a key role in resource management and directly supporting execution of the portfolio of projects and programs.

USE OF AGILE PROJECT DELIVERY APPROACHES

While the use of Agile approaches to deliver projects is now common (with 73% of respondents indicating Agile approaches are used in their organisation) the jury is still out on effectiveness (with only 28.2% of survey respondents believing use of the agile framework improved success rates).

COVID-19

Like in all sectors, the pandemic and the lockdown dramatically altered the project and program management delivery landscape. 58% of respondents indicated the impact was either moderate or significant and caused a delay in projects and programs of work.

Author: Peter Sexton is a Partner at KPMG and an experienced and qualified business transformation/reform program leader with over 20 years’ experience in Australia and Asia in the aerospace, Defence, government and private sectors.