As a follow-up to the news reported in The importance of project management, (which was also picked up by CIO, Silicon.com, ZDNet.co.uk, and Ron Rosenhead, among others) it turns out the UK government’s Department of Transport are not the only branch of government failing at project management.

The UK’s National Audit Office has looked at 20 of the largest projects in the Ministry of Defence. They found the projects were on £205 million over budget and 96 months later than initial estimates! Tim Burr, who is the head of the National Audit Office, said:

“Performance remains variable and, until the MoD and the defence industry improve their decision-making processes and show sustained learning from previous projects, value for money will not be consistently delivered.”

To be fair to the MoD, many of these projects are procuring cutting edge technology, and you would expect some problems. However, as the Financial Times reports, the NAO “identified key failings, including shortcomings on project management and the department’s failure to act as an intelligent customer.” That, combined with an apparent ‘lack of realism’ suggests the MoD needs to look again at its project management.

Just in case you were in any doubt about how important good project management is, take a look at the lamentable mess a department of the UK government made of a recent project.

It was an IT project, merging a variety of separate systems into one. With an original budget of £55m, it was supposed to save the department £112m when complete. In fact, it is likely to cost £121m, and save £40m – a nice £81m cost to the taxpayers of the UK!

More information is available from articles in two UK newspapers, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.

The Telegraph article has a quote from a British politician who looked at the project:

“The Department must also overhaul its project management capabilities, closely examining the expertise of its project managers, setting up systems for subjecting future plans to rigorous challenge and, crucially, establishing incentives to officials for success and penalties for failure.”

While most errors in projects aren’t as high-profile as this, they could all cause serious problems to your organisation. With a strong project management team, methodology, and skills, along with an organisation truly bought into project management, perhaps this project could have been given a chance of success. That’s why it is important you develop your project management skills, and keep them up to scratch, with project management resources such as this project management guide!