The Project Book

CHAPTER 74 OUTCOMES DON’T ACHIEVE THEMSELVES

The Project Management Institute (PMI) found that only 9 per cent of organisations ‘do benefit identification extremely well’ and that ‘35 per cent of project benefits are often overly optimistic’. According to a KPMG study, ‘Only 21 per cent of organisations consistently deliver on their benefits’. A recent McKinsey report discovered that ‘17 per cent of IT projects go so badly that they threaten the very existence of a company’. More than a quarter of the organisations surveyed by KPMG New Zealand ‘do not undertake any form of strategic review to track the benefits realised by the business’.

I’m deliberately labouring this point — stay with me …

ABC News announced, ‘The government approved a $1.5 billion payment to the Victorian state government for the East–West Road Link project, without any form of cost–benefit analysis’. The Auditor General’s report into the road project commented, ‘The likely net benefits of the project were not sufficiently demonstrated’.

The PMI has calculated that ‘83 per cent of organisations lack maturity in benefit realisation and waste $122 million for every $1 billion spent’. Turning to the NZ Gateway Review paper into Government projects: ‘Concerns continue around the application of core project and programme management disciplines and processes, with a startling proportion of recommendations showing a lack of maturity in benefits realisation’.

It’s depressing, isn’t it? I’m almost in tears just writing ...