Arlington, VA – January 3, 2013 - ESI International, the world's leading project management training company, today announced the release of its top 10 trends in project management for 2013. The 2013 trends reveal that expert leadership is lacking in all areas of project management, portfolio management and program management.

“This year’s trends bring a murky problem into specific light,” said J. LeRoy Ward, Executive Vice President, ESI International. “Leadership skills are lacking within the project community, and until project managers learn how to properly lead teams and their projects, project execution will continue to be a problem.”

ESI’s top 10 trends for project management include:

1. Organizations will continue to call for strong project leaders but will focus on investments in hard skills
2. Agile implementation will be viewed in some organizations as a failure, but for the wrong reasons
3. Project management is not just for project managers anymore
4. Large projects pose unique challenges that are increasingly tough to overcome
5. PMOs will focus on proving their worth and driving innovation
6. The U.S. government will upgrade its PM certification in the face of rising criticism
7. Improving vendor management practices will top the list of skills for project managers
8. Continued poor project performance in many organizations will result in more PMOs being terminated
9. Portfolio management will take on a greater role as funding continues to tighten and the number of projects grows
10. Organizations will adopt Agile to accelerate time to market but what they ultimately achieve may be a different story

“Many of this year’s trends focus on the need to improve project skills, process and the overall management of our initiatives,” said Ward. “It is clear that it is no longer possible to hire project managers and expect results. We need our PMs to be experts, and take control of our projects to get maximum results.”

ESI’s top 10 trends in project management is put together annually by ESI senior executives and subject matter experts.

In conjunction with the release of the trends, ESI has released a top 10 trends in project management video, recorded by Mark Bashrum, ESI Vice President, Corporate Marketing & Strategic Intelligence. This video offers a discussion of the trends, including original insight and information about the trends and their impact on projects.

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About ESI International
ESI, a subsidiary of Informa plc (LSE:INF), is a global project-focused training company, helping people around the world improve the way they manage projects, contracts, requirements and vendors through innovative training in project management, business analysis and contract management. In addition to ESI’s more than 100 courses delivered in more than a dozen languages at hundreds of locations worldwide, ESI offers several certificate programs through our educational partner, The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1981, ESI’s worldwide headquarters are in Arlington, Va., USA. To date, ESI’s programs have benefited more than 1.35 million professionals worldwide. For more information visit www.esi-intl.com.