BIGGEST CHALLENGE:
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

While financial management was not a common response for portfolio leaders, it doesn’t discount the importance of project financial management. When asked more specifically about the elements of project financial management that is the most challenging, we saw effectively forecasting portfolio and project costs (50%), gathering accurate financial data (25%), integrating with an existing financial system (17%), and tracking budgets vs. actuals (8%) as the top answers.

Financial management is a core component of project management and while it is encouraging to see most seem to have gotten it right, it is concerning to see 23% use financials as a measurement of project success/failure.