PROJECT SUCCESS RATES AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS: COMPARISON OF CURRENT PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRACTICE IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND GERMANY

In recent decades project management has become a very popular and widely applied management discipline. The excessively rapid expansion of projects and the growing number of project-based companies have resulted in frequent and also repetitive issues closely connected to the usage of basic project management tools and techniques. This paper presents the outputs of quantitative research held in the Czech Republic (106 respondents) focused on the success rate and most common problems of projects, and compares the outcomes with the key results of similar quantitative research carried out in Germany (151 respondents). Four types of project success rates which differ in various criteria were compared. Projects realized in Germany showed a better success rate based on quality criterion than projects held in the Czech Republic (3.9 vs. 3.7) while projects in the Czech Republic were more successful in terms of meeting the overall cost of the project (3.8 vs. 3.2). The most common problem for companies from both Germany and Czech Republic is change in the project scope initiated by the customer during the project. Other frequent issues of projects realized in these countries are distinct.