New focus on project management capability

Digital learning provider ILX Group has launched a suite of assessment tools to measure project management capability. According to chief operating officer Eddie Kilkelly, ILX Group developed the tools to address poor project performance.

He cited PricewaterhouseCoopers research, where a review of 10,640 projects from 200 companies in 30 countries across various industries found that only 2.5% successfully completed 100% of their projects, and figures put forth by experts Gene Kim and Mike Orzen, who estimated the annual loss on IT project failures at $3 trillion.

“The research findings reflect the stark actuality that performance in project management has not improved,” said Kilkelly, following with the notion that there is a “misunderstood reality” about effective project management requiring skill and competence in the discipline and robust processes in the organisation.

“If the organisation could improve one skill or competence for each project team member, which one would make the most significant improvement in capability? Second, when reflecting on the organisation’s process model: What is already effective? What could be improved? What should the organisation be doing that it’s currently not? Inevitably the responses to these questions will be clouded,” he noted.

“This is where the ILX assessment suite comes to the fore because of its potential to assist organisations improve each of the identified capability gaps.”

ILX’s personal competency assessment tool assists organisations to identify individual’s strengths and highlights areas that require further learning and professional development across project teams.

The second assessment covers organisational maturity and supports organisations to determine where their processes could be enhanced to increase the likelihood of project success. Together, the tools provide a way to develop a capability plan to address the gaps.

Deployed online, the suite is designed for large organisations that need fast, accessible data on their capability capital, based on an industry standard framework.

“The suite of tools is suitable for organisations of any size. However its benefits are maximised when the organisation is large and has hundreds of people involved in projects dispersed across a number of locations and with the need for the capacity to reach them quickly,” said Kilkelly.