A Sneak Preview of The Adaptive Organization

August 14, 2018 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

We've just finish crunching the numbers from our newest research study, The Adaptive Organization: A Benchmark of the Changing Approaches to Project Management and while it will be a few more weeks before the final report is released, I thought I'd share a few statistics that I find particularly compelling.

First, a caveat: as our colleague Jim Pennypacker points out in an interview with Deborah Crawford on the PM College blog, any group of respondents to a survey call for participation is going to be a self-selected group of those who are particularly interested in that topic. So, when the study tells us that 84% of companies are using adaptive or hybrid approaches, we know the figure for the general population is somewhat less than that However, there's still alot to be learned from this subset of organizations. For example:

Companies are still not very mature at using adaptive approaches, and fare better when utilizing hybrid approach that combines traditional or predictive project management with more agile methods. But, in the high-performing organizations in the study, it's the role of the PMO to nurture and develop adaptive capabilities. Here are the PMO Best Practices we identified:

The PMO ...

• Strives to deliver what’s needed and keeps a finger on the pulse of the customers
• Provides adaptive/hybrid tools and templates
• Operates as if it were a consulting business, tailoring its efforts to meet specific needs
• Develops and implements standards for using adaptive approaches
• Coordinating adaptive training courses, coaches or mentors

We can see from this list that a great deal of the success of adaptive projects still lies in the tried and true resource and stakeholder management.

We'll have more details to share over the next few weeks. STay tuned for the release of the summary report!

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