Identifying the state of the project management profession

Abstract Project management has struggled with delivering low performing construction and information technology (IT or ICT) projects. Approximately 60% of construction projects are over budget, over schedule and have low customer satisfaction. The IT industry reports even worse performance for their projects. IT projects seem to be far less defined, leading to increased complexity. Documentation shows that companies do not have a successful methodology to track their performance and thus there is a lack of documented performance information to identify if their project management methodologies are delivering high quality and efficient projects. A literature research was performed on the most used Project Management (PM) methodologies worldwide. These PM methodologies were then compared based upon their characteristics and performance information to identify the most successful methodologies. The analysis of the results revealed that only one methodology had proven performance metrics on over 90% of its projects.