Here are the benefits of project management that you can really quantify, and use to do an ROI for improving project management practices, or putting a PMO in place.

Projects that are challenged – and the Standish Chaos Report said that over half of IT projects are – are challenged in all three areas of Scope, Time, and Cost. Challenged projects cost over twice their original estimate, or take over twice the time planned, or accomplish less than 2/3 of the scope planned.

So one really quick way to measure this in your organisation currently, is to survey your experienced project managers. You can ask  – anonymously – for their estimate of what their stakeholders’ satisfaction has been, how much functionality has been dropped, how much rework has been required, and what the deadline slippage has been like.

You can compare this against industry averages, and decide upon a goal for yourselves.

With a few assumptions about headcount cost and project size, you can then cost out the impact of moving from the current situation to the goal.

Here’s a worksheet to get you going! – a template in Excel

(This one is for a sales support organization.)