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14 Surprising Project
Management Statistics
Published July 7th, 2014 by Rachel Burger in Project Management

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The project management landscape is changing.

With an increased emphasis on efficiency, reporting,
and a newfound stress on the information technology
industry, being a project manager today is radically
different than being a project manager in 2004.

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With the changes in the industry, its easy to lose track

of how often projects fail, what that can cost
companies, and how the PM role has changed. Below
are 14 surprising statistics that reveal how project
management is performing across industries.
1. One in six IT projects have an average cost
overrun of 200% and a schedule overrun of 70%.
(Source: Harvard Business Review)<<Tweet this stat
2. The United States economy loses $50-$150
billion per year due to failed IT projects. (Source:
Gallup Business Review)<<Tweet this stat
3. 75% of business and IT executives anticipate
their software projects will fail. (Source:
Geneca)<<Tweet this stat

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4. 50% of all Project Management Offices (PMOs)

close within just three years. (Source:

Winners in 2015

close within just three years. (Source:

KeyedIN)<<Tweet this stat
5. Fewer than a third of all projects were
successfully completed on time and on budget
over the past year. (Source: Standish
Group)<<Tweet this stat
6. Barely over half (56%) of project managers are
certified. (Source: Wrike)<<Tweet this stat

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Source: Wrike

7. An astounding 97% of organizations believe

project management is critical to business
performance and organizational success. (Source:
PricewaterhouseCoopers)<<Tweet this stat
8. The median salary for project managers is
$87,500 in the U.S. (Source: Glassdoor)<<Tweet
this stat
9. There are projected to be 15 million new project
management jobs within the decade. (Source:
Project Management Institute)<<Tweet this stat
10. 33% of projects fail because of a lack of
involvement from senior management.
(Source:University of Ottawa)<<Tweet this stat
11. Businesses identified capturing time/costs
against projects as their biggest project
management challenge. (Source: The Access

management challenge. (Source: The Access

Group)<<Tweet this stat

Source: TheAccessGroup

12. Reliability, ease of use, and ease of integration

are the top three requirements project managers
look for when shopping for software. (Source: The
Access Group)<<Tweet this stat
13. 66% of project managers identified level of
support as the key decider in investing in a new
software. (Source:The Access Group)<<Tweet this
stat
14. 44% of project managers use no software,
even though PWC found that the use of
commercially available PM software increases
performance and satisfaction. (Source:
Pricewaterhouse Coopers)<<Tweet this stat
What other statistics do you think are relevant to the
PM industry is it continues to evolve? Add them in the
comments below!
Dont want to become a statistic? Capterra offers a
directory of over 350 different kinds of project
management software products to help project
managers find their software solutions.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel Burger

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Rachel is a Content Marketing Analyst for Capterra, a free

online resource that quickly matches businesses to their
software needs. She specializes in construction, project
management and school administration . On the rare
occasion Rachel isn't writing, she's reading, hiking,
jogging, or spending time with her friends and family.

COMMENTS
Comment by Scot Hanley on July 7, 2014 at 7:53 pm

The 1st stat you share is misleading. One in six

projects does not have cost overruns of 200% and a
schedule overrun of 70%. But one in six of the 1,471
projects studied by the authors did. You should
make the clarification or removed the stat in good
conscience.
Source: http://hbr.org/2011/09/why-your-it-project-

Source: http://hbr.org/2011/09/why-your-it-projectmay-be-riskier-than-you-think/ar/1
We examined 1,471 projects
Fully one in six of the projects we studied was a
black swan

Comment by Rachel Burger on July 8, 2014 at 10:44 am

Thanks for your comment, Scot! A sample size of

over 1,000 is a good representation of IT projects.

Comment by Praveen Malik on July 17, 2014 at 2:33 pm

Hi Rachel, A nice compilation of stats. There have

been some misgivings about the CHAOS reports but
we have to go with stats.
BR,
Praveen Malik
http://www.pmbypm.com

Pingback by 7 Benefits of Earned Value Management (EVM) The Tempo Blog on March 2, 2015 at 10:28 am

[] arent using suitableproject management

techniques. In fact, according to Standish Group,
less than a third of all projects were successfully
completed on time and on budget in the last []

Comment by Donald Shannon on August 15, 2015 at 3:50 pm

One significant contributor to numbers 1 and 5 on

your list is optimism bias on the part of individuals
who create schedule or budget estimates. The
second factor contributing to late completions and
over-budget completions is a failure to include the
effects of risk in the project schedule and budget.

For example, if one simply uses a three-point

estimate (as in PERT) to specify task duration the

tendency is for the estimator to select the Most
Likely value based on a degree of optimism which
is also echoed in the Best Case estimate.
Consequently if one computes the critical path
using the best case values one will inevitably come
up with an optimistic estimate of duration. Since
many project costs are labor driven, the
underestimated duration translates into an
underestimated cost. When reality sets in these
costs are often overrun.
The better approach is to compute an unweighted
mean of the triangular formed by the three
estimates (Best Case + Most Likely + Worst Case)
divided by 3. This is the value that should be used in
computing schedule and cost. My research shows
that using the most likely value creates an estimate
that is less than 50% likely to be achieved whereas
the mean value tends to be closer to 50 percent
likely.
There are techniques to reduce optimism bias such
as ensuring you always ask for the most likely value
first than ask for the other two values and the Delphi
approach.
Look for my upcoming article on this estimating
technique to create better estimates in the
upcoming edition (Fall 2015) of the Journal of
Contract Management.

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