Speech delivered to Karachi Chapter of Project Management Institute on November 26, 2016
Honorable President of the Project
Management Institute and distinguished guests,
I am honored to have been invited to this session on project
management culture as the Chief Guest. I have listened with
great interest to the proceedings this morning, to the
welcome speech, the speech on being an influencer, the
speech on embracing leadership and to the panel discussion
on changing the world as a project manager.
For my part, I should tell you that I am not an expert on
project management. My own field of expertise is economics.
However, I served for 32 years in an international
organization, the World Bank, whose mandate was to design
and finance development projects around the world. So, even
though I was working as an economist and mostly dealing with
Central Banks and Ministries of Planning and Finance, I
gathered a lot of information about project management
cultures around the world simply by working with people who
designed and managed projects in many different sectors in
many different countries.
There is as much diversity in project management cultures
around the world as there are cultures. But some patterns do
emerge. My first experience at the World Bank was in the
Republic of Korea in the latter half of the 1980s. I was
greatly impressed by the fact that my project colleagues
could rely completely on Korean government officials to
carry out projects financed by the World Bank on time and
under cost. They were so reliable that project negotiations
with Korean counterparts were often conducted by phone and
fax. There was not much need to visit Korea to supervise
projects or deal with implementation problems. World Bank
project staff loved to work on Korea because their projects
succeeded very frequently in meeting cost and impact
objectives.
Many years later I had the chance to work on China and
Vietnam. These two countries were also characterized, at
least in the last two decades, by a disciplined project
management culture reminiscent of Korea.
I have also had experience with weak project management
cultures. One example is the Philippines where I worked in
the early nineties and Egypt where I worked ten years later.
The project management cultures here were very different
from Korea. World Bank projects took longer to design and
negotiate and implementation frequently took longer than
anticipated in the project documents. World Bank staff had
to visit much more often to deal with project implementation
problems. They still enjoyed working on these countries
though but this was because of the food and the people and
tourism options.
One broad conclusion that I reached was that the countries
with better project management cultures were also the ones
with faster economic growth and development. I don't know
which caused which but the correlation seemed quite obvious.
The Korea and Philippines examples illustrate this.
Let me now turn to the case of Pakistan. Once again, I am
not an expert and have not been following project management
issues in Pakistan very closely. But I did read up on some
research while preparing for this meeting. In particular, I
have consulted some research on project management maturity
in Pakistan, conducted by faculty members of the IBA, the
institute that I now head.
This research, based on an empirical study of 123 Pakistani
organizations, revealed some very interesting findings.
First, it found that the average level of project management
maturity among Pakistani firms is low. Second, it found that
only 24% of projects carried out could be termed successful
in the sense of delivering within budget and schedule.
Third, it showed that project performance, or the
probability of success, was strongly correlated with the
level of project management maturity.
I am not surprised by these results. I have worked in many
countries with poor management cultures and Pakistan strikes
me as being in this category. And what I observed as a broad
correlation among country level economic performance and
project management culture is replicated by my colleagues at
the firm level as a correlation between firm level success
and project management culture.
The research done by my colleagues at the IBA contains some
useful tips to improve project management in Pakistan. The
research suggests that three aspects are positively
correlated with good project performance: certification and
training in project management; use of project management
software; and use of formal project management units to run
the projects.
At present, only 22% of project management staff in
Pakistani are formally trained or certified in project
management. This proportion needs to rise. The global
average is 80%.
About 60% of firms use some sort of project management
software. This proportion needs to rise a bit as the global
average is 77%.
Only 24% of firms have established a formal PMO. This too
needs to rise towards the global average of 80%.
These findings are of special importance in the context of
CPEC. Pakistan is about to embark on a major investment
program in energy and infrastructure projects with China.
How much we benefit from this program will depend at least
in part on whether our firms can win project management
contracts. And whether they can execute the projects
successfully. To do this they must invest in training and
software and carry out management innovations.
Let me stop here. If you have any questions on the research
conducted by IBA faculty, please feel free to ask as my
colleagues are attending today's meeting. I would also be
happy to take any questions on the global comparisons I had
made.