PMPartners Group has claimed that 60 percent of Australian organisations have no project governance, greatly increasing the risk of project failure and time or budget overruns.

Philip Belcher, chief executive officer of PMPartners Group, a project management training and consulting firm, said organisations that complain about skills shortages inhibiting their change initiatives and associated projects are often making excuses for a lack of organisational maturity.

"People often say that it's hard to acquire skilled people to enable their projects because they are relatively rare or that if we look internally we have difficulty finding people with the right experience or qualifications,” he said.

Belcher claimed organisations invest millions in strategy development and rely on change initiatives to drive value and results. However, major delays and even complete failures from poorly executed projects all too often prevent them from achieving their desired results.

"The number one reason is because they don't have mature project management processes," he said.

In surveys conducted between October 2007 and January 2008, PMPartners Group asked what level of project management governance was maintained in Australian organisations. According to Belcher the company found that 62 percent had no governance, with each project manager operating as they see fit. In addition, only 15 percent had a project management office conducting regular audits or health checks. Alarmingly, only 6 percent had regular external audits or health checks.

Underlining the lack of mature project management processes, the surveys also found that 70 percent of Australian organisations have no project management office (PMO), and that where organisations do have a PMO, 80 percent of PMOs have little authority to make project related decisions.

PMPartners Group was recently launched into the market through a merger between PMPartners and ITPM, an IT project delivery organisation.