Failures in project management are seeing UK businesses fall behind their counterparts in the USA and Europe in terms of productivity, a new report has found.
The study, conducted by TRBI and Microsoft, found that British firms were wasting nearly a quarter of their workers’ time by failing to manage projects properly.
Poor project management was estimated to cost some businesses up to £600,000 a year.
The research found that less than a third of project managers found it easy to get information on resource availability to create a new team or identify spare capacity.
The ability of firms to meet tasks to deadline appeared to depend on how up to date their management reports were. While 80 per cent of projects managed using real-time reporting tools were completed on schedule, this figure fell to 60 per cent when reports were more than two weeks old.
Microsoft claimed these failings were less common in the USA and major European countries, meaning that UK firms were lagging behind in terms of productivity.
The study also found that many firms were finding it hard to collect up-to-date information on their projects.
Although managers spent an average of 16 hours per month chasing progress information and staff spend 12 hours a month reporting on their tasks, 60 per cent of firms said that management reports were out of date.
Neil Laver, of Microsoft, said that project managers can no longer afford to hire 10 new people to resource a project.
“They need to know what their existing staff are working on and know the priorities and budgets of each project straight away.
“In the 300 organisations surveyed, too many are trying to get by with spreadsheets, white boards and information stored on pieces of paper.
“Clearly this putting product managers under pressure and is wasting valuable resources,” he said.