Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Project Success
Insight
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These are also interesting when one considers how little time is
spent on projects measuring benefits and ensuring the project
delivers objectives. Perhaps we should take a long hard look at
whether the objectives are ones stated in order to ensure the
funding for the project, or whether the objectives are actually
delivered. Almost 60% of respondents had benefits or objectives
in their number one definition of a successful project.
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
Percentage of respondents
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
Percentage of respondents
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10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
Percentage of respondents
Those who have been managing projects for a long time have
come to the realisation that benefits are rarely measured and
therefore have elected for a definition that they can measure in
preference to what they know is the better measure but too
infrequently applied.
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
Percentage of respondents
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Stakeholder management
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
Percentage of respondents
Technical Factors
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
Percentage of respondents
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Behavioural Factors
Support
Deliver
Manage
Pay for
Project Planning
Project Planning
Change Control
Project Planning
Business Case
Risk Management
Project Planning
Stakeholder Mngt
Risk Management
Scope Management
Stakeholder Mngt
Scope Management
Stakeholder Mngt
Stakeholder Mngt
Requirements Mngt
Definition
Requirements Mngt
Requirements Mngt
Scope Management
Benefits Management
Organisational structure
Organisational roles
Professionalism and ethics
Negotiation
Conflict management
Project governanace
Project sponsorship
Leadership
Teamwork
Communication
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Percentage of respondents
Whats missing?
Its interesting whats missing from any of these analyses. In
none of the top ten have we seen project methodology or
standardised tools and systems. A lot of organisations invest
heavily in these two areas but they are not seen in our survey as
important or contributing factors to a successful project. Why?
One hypothesis is that there is observational bias creeping in to
the results here. And we built additional questions in to the survey
to highlight obvious areas where we thought the bias may be.
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60%
50%
40%
Yes
30%
20%
No
10%
Percentage of respondents
90%
Percentage of respondents
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
No
30%
20%
10%
60%
50%
40%
30%
No
Yes
20%
10%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
New
Experienced
Professional
50%
40%
30%
Crucial and
very important
20%
10%
Crucial
0%
60%
0%
60%
0%
70%
Percentage of respondents
Parting Thoughts
Percentage of respondents
Yes
0%
70%
Percentage of respondents
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
60%
Percentage of respondents
50%
40%
Yes
30%
20%
No
10%
0%
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60%
Yes
40%
20%
No
0%
95%
To Summarise
Im not sure if the survey has produced more questions than
answers, but there are some interesting observations:
90%
85%
80%
75%
70%
New
Experienced
Professional
Industry
80%
Percentage of respondents
Percentage of respondents
100%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
s
ice
rv
Se
les
Sa
n
tio
uc
od
Pr
r
he
Ot
t
ofi
Pr
or
tf
No
Hierarchy
Respondents position in project hierarchy
Percentage of respondents
Appendix A
Respondent Demographics
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
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12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
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35%
30%
Percentage of respondents
Percentage of respondents
40%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
Support
Deliver
Manage
Pay for
Experience
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
rs
rs
rs
rs
rs
rs
ea
ea
ea
ea
ea
ea
3y
5y
5y
0y
0y
0y
an
d1
d1
d2
d3
nd
h
a
n
n
n
n
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5a
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ss
n3
n5
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ee
n1
n1
n2
ee
ee
ee
ee
tw
tw
tw
tw
tw
Be
Be
Be
Be
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rs
ea
0y
r3
e
Ov
45%
40%
35%
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
10%
5%
0%
0%
New
Experienced
Professional
Size
Size was defined as budget, team size and project duration
in recognition that a low budget project can have 1000s of
team members and therefore be bigger than the budget
itself shows. There is an expected tailing off of responses
as project sizes grow and an unexpected peak at the end.
The data has a large number of very large projects.
Typical size of project managed
Percentage of respondents
Percentage of respondents
25%
20%
Percentage of respondents
Small
Medium
Large
Appendix B
Statistical Significance Testing
30%
25%
20%
15%
10%
5%
0%
.
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