Thought provoking survey just been released by Wellingtone: State of Project Management Survey 2018. These are my takeaways from the content:
Over half of respondents felt that Benefits Realisation was difficult to embed, and less than a third felt that these activities added value if done well, and less than a fifth said their PMOs were responsible for benefits activities.
I wonder if these terribly low figures would increase if those of us in the Change Management community engaged in a partnership with our Project Management colleagues. After all, it in only through managing those impacted by the projects through the transition to new ways of working that benefits can ever hope to be achieved. If a project delivers new capability but no-one changes how they work to make use of it then there will be no return on investment.
I had hundreds of people turn up to my webinar last week on whether Project Managers, Sponsors and PMO need to know about change management courses. When I asked at the start of the webinar if they thought this knowledge was important, I had a 100% positive reply. My audience was 50% project managers, 12% from the PMO, with the rest coming from the change management community. So there is definitely an appetite out there for change management understanding and knowledge.
Perhaps this desire for knowledge that is not being met in part explains why 56% of respondents are dissatisfied with the level of project management maturity in their organisation and only 36% reported that their projects had delivered their full value.
Listen to this webinar recording for the benefits of sharing understanding of change management with our project management colleagues, or read this whitepaper for a more detailed argument.
If you think this subject is important, join me for my next webinar where I review the impact of Agile project management approaches on change management.
