Over the course of my project management career in various organizations, I have always tried to help the organization not only deliver the one project I was managing, but also develop better standards to ensure greater consistency of project execution. Many organizations struggle with this, and I have seen first hand how good standards can greatly enhance project delivery across an organization, where lack of standards leaves gaps, questions, and uncertainty. This uncertainty at best allows strong managers to deliver successfully, while weak managers struggle, and which at worst derails the efforts of strong project managers to delivery successfully.

This is not an argument of standards for standards sake, because in some cases bad standards are worse than no standards at all. That being said, more often than not, standards have been proven to help organizations deliver on time and on budget, regardless if they are considered “bad” or “good” by the team members that execute them (according to PMI market research 2008).

I have always tried to implement process standards whenever possible. The very act of drafting standards where none exist, or modifying outdated or inefficient standards, can be a very beneficial exercise in and of itself. While sometimes time consuming, and often and argument against doing it, working to gain consensus and the momentum to support those standards is actually a great way to get the team on the same page. Another great time to consider updating or drafting project standards is when an organization is considering deploying new Project Management software. I am a huge fan of some of the new breeds of PM software, and while the good old standby Microsoft Project is effective for managing a project or two, when it comes to team or organizational PM standards, the web-based PM software (usually offered as Project Management Software as a Service, or PM SaaS for short), is really superb. This new project management software can greatly enhance your teams productivity, reduce wasted time and effort, and increase management and client visibility into project status.

Regarding standards, here are some facts from PMI showing how Standardized PM Practices lead to better Project Results. A 2008 survey shows that those with no standards delivered projects on time only 40% of the time, while those with standards used throughout the organization delivered on time 65% of the time! That’s a whopping 61% increase in on-time project performance! Similar stats are for project budget (66% on budget compared to 49% on budget with no standards) and my personal least favorite and most common of project saboteurs, scope creep (impacted 41% of projects using standards versus 61% of projects with none).

The stats are pretty convincing, and based on results from over 350 project managers across the United States and the globe, project standards really do work! Hopefully this data can help you convince upper management that the time and effort it take to role out PM standards (and perhaps a web based collaboration tool as well) is well worth the effort, and can have a very high ROI.