11 Shocking Project Management Statistics That Cost Business Owners Millions Each Year

Project managers deal with a variety of moving parts and challenges during their work with a client. This is especially obvious when you take a look at some of the shocking statistics surrounding project management. This blog introduces 21 statistics that sum up the most common challenges associated with project management.

At Kantata, we are honored to work with clients who already deliver great work. Kantata users deploy best practices to see that every project more than succeeds. They make every project thrive. To thrive, you have to reduce project failures. This post shares some shocking statistics as to why projects fail; and how to avoid failure and achieve high performance.

Stunning Project Management Statistics on Failure:

1. 71% failed to meet these three criteria: on time, on budget, and with satisfactory results. [source: LinkedIn]

2. The failure of IT costs the U.S. economy about $50-$150 billion annually. [source: Harvard Business Review]

3. Just 40 percent of projects at IBM meet the company’s three key goals (schedule, budget, and quality). [source: IBM]

4. 80 percent of “high-performing” projects are led by a certified project manager. [source: Wrike]

5. The failure rate of projects with budgets over $1M is 50 percent higher than the failure rate of projects with budgets below $350,000. [source: Gartner]

6. 73 percent of respondents admit that their projects are either always or usually “doomed right from the start,” including 27 percent who always feel this way. [source: Geneca]

7. Project success rates are rising. Organizations today are wasting an average of US$97 million for every US$1 billion invested. That’s a significant 20 percent decline from last year’s findings. [source: PMI]

8. 49 percent of organizations have a project management training program in place. [source: PM Solutions]

9. A majority (56 percent) of organizations have only used one project management system. [source: Capterra]

10. Just 42 percent of organizations report having high alignment of projects to organizational strategy. This lack of alignment of projects most likely contributes to the surpriseing result that nearly one half of all strategic initiativrd (44 percent) are reported as unsuccessful. [source: PMI]

11. The average overrun was 27 percent, but one in six projects had a cost overrun of 200% on average ad a schedule overrun of almost 70 percent. [source: Harvard Business Review]

Do you want to learn more?

Purpose-built software for services does so much more than just optimize project management. That’s where the Kantata Professional Services Cloud comes in. Discover how Kantata can take your project, resource, and financial management (and so much more) to the next level.

Editors Note: The original version of this post was published in January, 2016 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness in October 2022.