An organisation's focus on agility and strategic alignment not only impacts the success of its highest priority initiatives, it also leads to better project performance overall; 89 percent of projects at high-performing organisations meet original goals and business intent, compared with just 36 percent at low-performing organisations. And high-performing organisations lose 12 times less money than low performers (US$20 million versus US$230 million for every US$1 billion spent on projects).

Understanding what practices—strategic and tactical—high performing organisations have in place is crucial to improving an organisation's success. Along with high alignment of their projects to organisational strategy and organisational agility, high-performing organisations succeed through a strategic focus on people, processes and outcomes.

People

Not only must organisations focus on the development of their talent and the practices by which they do that, they also need to focus on managing their people through rapid organisational changes that stem from new strategic initiatives. And further, organisations need to ensure executive sponsors are in place to help drive the organisational changes.

Talent Management: PMI research shows that organisations need to focus on the development and training of their talent in order to achieve superior project performance, successful strategic initiatives and become high performers. Organisations are currently facing unique challenges: few organisations are focusing on knowledge transfer and this might be hampered by the fact that nearly two-thirds of organisations report using outsourced or contract project managers. Furthermore, 26 percent of organisations plan to increase the percentage of project managers who are contracted or outsourced in 2014, compared with just 20 percent in 2013.

However, there is a direct correlation between effective talent management and better project performance. PMI's Pulse of the Profession In-Depth Report: The Competitive Advantage of Effective Talent Management showed that organisations that align their talent management to strategy have more successful projects and waste fewer project dollars. Our research revealed that high-performing organisations are more than twice as likely as their low-performing counterparts to align talent management to organisation strategy—a significant competitive advantage.