Happy Holidays!
From the Editor:
Whatever celebration
you find yourself commemorating this month, we at Arras People would like to
take the time to wish you and yours the very best of times this holiday season.
We here at the office are in grand holiday spirits ourselves, having
participated in our Christmas party already, and welcome with
anticipation the arrival of a new year that is rife with optimism. For more
about the 2009 outlook in project management, you can sign up for Tipoffs and
immediately receive the December edition - "With Special
Guests: Looking Ahead, Looking Behind."
For those of you who
have already taken a look at it this month, I remain happy as ever, in spite of
my colleagues getting another break from writing. As you'll remember, I can't
help but look on the bright side of life (no, I can't
whistle!). I'm continuing my quest to get the word 'happifying' to be
recognised as an official word. Progress is minimal at best. I'm not bothered:
people at Oxford will need a word like this someday when an event or similar
occurrence provides unprecedented joy to the masses. And when Oxford Dictionary
folks become frantic in their hopes to find such a word to describe such a
moment, they'll come crawling back to me. They'll have to!
In the meantime, both I and the rest of us at Arras People will spend most of our time heavily preoccupied in the month ahead, and we have the Granddaddy of them all to thank for that. Yes, it's the 2009 Arras People Project Management Survey to which I refer - our ongoing poll for project management professionals, by project management
professionals, and about project management professionals. The fourth annual
edition of this renowned study is now available to PM pros to do online, as we
are hoping to provide revealing answers about the project management industry
as it stands today.
After looking at the survey results thus far,
you'd be amazed by what we've found. I hand over to Arras People Managing Director/Founder John Thorpe for a briefing of Survey 2009's early returns.
Arras People Survey 2009 - Snippet #1
Presented by John Thorpe
*Please note this report is a short extract based on the current respondents to the Arras
People 2009 Survey. The
Arras People Project Management Survey 2009 is now closed. Download your own copy here.
The extract looks at the
information provided about remuneration expectations in the 2008 survey
compared with what respondents are telling us actually happened during 2008. We
then take a look at the outlook as Project Management Professionals head into
2009.
2008 Movements in Salaries and
rates for
those who have responded so far to the survey show the following trends;
-
50% of contractors remain fixed as against just 28% of the
employees. Employees appear to have fared much better in the
increases, with 62% of them having achieved a raise between 1 to 10% (31%
between 1 to 5%) compared with just 31% of the contractors.
- At the top end the number achieving a greater than 10%
increase sees 14% of employees compared with 10% of contractors.
 2008 Projections from our previous
survey
when compared to actual movements show a remarkably stable picture where actual
changes appear to have been significantly in line with our respondents' expectations.
Contractors amazingly, as in last years survey, have a 100% match on actual
outcome versus what they projected at the beginning of the year 2008. Employees,
on the other hand, seemed to enter the year a little more bullish and did not
quite achieve what the levels they had expected.
 2009 Projections from our current
survey would
appear to show that the market as a whole is expecting 2009 to be a tighter
year again in terms of increases, though once again the employees see stronger
opportunity for increases;
• 65% of our contractors see a tight market where rates will
once again remain fixed compared to 53% at this time last year. 12% of our contractors are anticipating that  they will
achieve rate increases, compared to 38% at this time last year. 23% of our contractors are anticipating rate drops,
compared to just 9% last year.43% of our employees see a situation where salaries will
remain fixed compared to just 30% at this time last year.44% of our employees are anticipating that they will still
achieve rate increases in 2009, compared to 65% at this time last year.
• 13% of our employees are anticipating rate drops, compared
to just 5% last year.
Please
note that the Arras People Survey is now closed. The
full report from Arras People is available online at this address. John Thorpe is Managing Director of Arras People. You can can read more of his writing online at How to Manage a Camel.
Hey, I'm back again. I have just one more tidbit before I pack the 2008 Tipoffs campaign into a cardboard box and put it in the attic.
I encourage you all to drop me a line at dan.strayer@arraspeople.co.uk.
And remember: We're only open for a few more days, but after that, it's a whole new set of things you'll be thinking about opening!
Dan Strayer, Editor |
