PMI’s Survey Report On Project Managers’ Demand & Salary 2014: PMP Salary Up!

pmp salary surveyLatest Salary Survey: PMP Salary Is Going Up!

Project Managers in Demand, Salaries Increase – reports Newsle.com based on PMI (Project Management Institute)’s latest Project Management Salary Survey. Released in early 2014, this survey findings represented facts for 2013. The survey was conducted across 33 countries including United States, Canada, United Kingdom, India, Germany, and information collected from more than 36,000 project management practitioners.

What does this report contain?

  • Salary increases reported over the past year
  • Salary increases expected for the next year
  • Info on benefit packages, project management career paths and work environments

Attributes collected were position description, years of work experience in project management, highest formal education level, degree in project management, PMP credential status, training per year, industry, type of project, avg project team size and typical project budget.

The important point is that irrespective of the economical conditions in 2013, findings of both Salary Survey and Project Management Talent Gap Report corroborates the fact the compensation of project management professionals are moving upwards. This must be expected, given the demand generated by projected creation of $15.7 million new project management positions around the world between 2010 and 2020.

Mark A Langley, President and CEO of Project Management Institute stated these figures, and says 71% of survey participants report that their total compensation has increased over last year.

Here are some of the findings of this 2013 Salary survey –

  • Project Management Professional (PMP) credential holders earn upward of US$15,000 more in certain countries than non-credential holders
  • Median annualized salary across all countries is US$88,399

Langley says, “these numbers are great news for project managers who are looking to expand their careers with new skills, individuals who may be interested in a career change and those who are coming out of school or military service and considering what job would best suit their future goals.”

You can get this report for free if you are a member of PMI (Project Management Institute), or purchase from pmi.org marketplace.

Moreover he says, “there is a very real benefit for those who have experience and training to pursue certification. Organizations are willing to pay for top project management talent as they recognize the competitive advantages delivered by project management”.

This is a great news for all aspiring PMP students, because now not only addition of skill to their repertoire is beneficial, the compensation potential also is encouraging according to the trend in the industry.

Now that you have seen what happened in 2013, let us see what was predicted for 2013.

Findings of PMI’s Pulse report for 2013

PMI.org’s report Pulse report released in March 2013 did not predict anything about salaries, but published some of the findings of project management for 2013. As things stood worldwide in terms of project management practices,

  •  Organizations risk losing an average of $135 million for every $1 billion invested in a project

    • That is a 13.5% of invested at risk. Needless to say this put more stress on operational efficiency. What does this translates into? Directly the quality of project managers (amongst other things) – this increases the demand of knowledgeable project managers. People who have done PMP would stand a good chance of better career opportunities.
  • Only a fraction of organizations had high maturity levels

    • This put a huge demand on training and development. But Pulse survey also found that internal training and related processes were on the decline! Needless to say if you had PMP you’d already establish your credential to certain extent (of course past experience counted to a good extent as well)

The report recommended a 3-point approach for organizations to perform well they need to

  • Focus on Talent management
  • Support standardized Project management practices
  • Thereby achieving organizational maturity in project, program and portfolio management

Fast forward to the Present,

Findings of Pulse Research Report for 2014

PMI’s Pulse report for 2014 bring out some very interesting findings –

  • Organizations lose an average of $109 million for every $1 billion invested in projects

    • This 10.9% is significantly lower than last year’s figures of 13.5%. This indicates that organizations (at least some of them) have begun to put some focus on processes, practices and outcomes.
  • Organizations with high alignment of projects to organizational strategy are more agile

    • Pulse report puts this to 23%, as compared to 5% of organizations that do not have projects in alignment with organizational strategy. Agility of an organization is the measure of its capability to maintain a competitive edge by responding faster to changing market conditions while improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.
  • Modest economic growth forecast

    • Some growth is better than no, or negative growth. While global GDP growth had declined from 5% in 2010 to 2.9% in 2012, it stayed at this in 2013 as well. Good news is the prediction for next 4-5 years is a steady increase – in 2014 itself it is expected to reach 3.9%.
    • This indicates that organizations are restarted stalled projects, and investing in new projects. Now with more than ever focus on performance and quality, who would benefit with this change in trend? The answer is – qualified project managers. Now is the best time in recent past for project managers to get qualifications such as PMP!

Finally, Pulse 2014 report advises a 3-point formula for organizations to increase organizational agility and become high-performing organizations –

  • People – acquire and retain best talent

    • Increase ongoing project manager training,
    • Provide defined career path to people,
    • Have effective knowledge transfer process in place
    • Manage change smoothly in the organization
  • Processes – include and mature project management processes

    • Pulse research report finds that nearly 46% of organizations do not fully understand the value of project management. This is unfortunate, and sometimes influenced by customer behavior. Organizations increase their success percentage to 43% by understanding and implementing good processes, versus 47% of success probability by shooting in the dark.
    • Pulse’s findings of last year that project, program and portfolio management practices in many organizations are not yet mature, remains true even now – with less than 20% of organizations reporting high maturity in these processes. This puts a high onus (also increased opportunity for growth) on project managers to identify, implement and strengthen project management processes in their organization.
  • Outcomes – have better focus on projects’ outcome based on set project management processes

    • Benefit realization is about ensuring that project outcome produces projected benefits claimed in the business case. About 17% of organizations currently report high benefits realization maturity. A high performing organization is nearly 8 times more likely to be mature in their benefits realization processes.

“What does all this mean to me as a Project Manager?”

Great question. Well, the writing is clearly on the wall. The future is bullish – GDP slated to grow, more projects are being invested in, organizations are focusing on high-performance – which directly mean that efficient, qualified and result-producing project managers are going to have higher opportunities for career growth as well as earn better compensation.

PMP Salary is only heading northwards!

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