M.O.R.E., four habits for complex projects and a figure worth reading slowly

I am a little wary of figures that leap from 27 to 94. PMI repeated this one on 22 October 2026, in the press release presenting the M.O.R.E. at Scale course, and it is worth reading slowly before quoting it, because behind it there is a useful idea and also a course to promote.

Both things can be true at once. Let’s see what that number measures, what the four habits mean and what you can do with them, whether you are about to sit the PMP or already have a project on your shoulders.

What the press release says

According to that text, in PMI’s research project success scores rise from 27 to 94 when professionals adopt the complete mindset. The same release adds that 81 per cent of professionals say projects have become more complex in recent years, and that 80 per cent of complex projects suffer some negative fallout from that complexity. Other figures from that same research on complexity we already covered in the post on external changes.

M.O.R.E. stands for the initials of four habits. Manage Perceptions, Own Success, Relentlessly Reassess and Expand Perspective. They come from the research PMI published in 2024 under the title Maximizing Project Success, and the 27 and the 94 come from a later report, Step Up, from December 2025, based on more than 5,800 project professionals, key stakeholders and knowledge workers.

How you get to 94

The first thing to say is that 94 is not a percentage of successful projects. It is a Net Project Success Score, a subtraction. PMI asks respondents to rate a recent project from 0 to 10 according to whether it delivered value worth the effort and expense. Scores of 9 and 10 count as successes, 0 to 6 count as failures, 7 and 8 are left out, and the score is the percentage of successes minus the percentage of failures.

By that yardstick, the global average was 36 in 2024 and 37 in 2025. The 27 corresponds to projects where none of the four habits is present, and the 94 to those where all four are regularly practised. And here comes the figure that seems to me the most honest of all, which PMI publishes without hiding it. Only 7 per cent of professionals say they do this with all four.

Now the caveats, which are mine. I was able to read the public summary of the report and two posts on the PMI blog signed by Deborah Walker, but not the full report, so I do not know how it controls for other variables or how the data are crossed. What can be said is that success is measured by perception, and that comparing those who practise everything with those who practise nothing shows an association, not a recipe. It is possible that good professionals have the four habits because they are good. Keep the direction of the figure, not its size.

The master builder and the four gazes

What interests me most about M.O.R.E. is not the number but the figure it draws. Imagine the master builder of a cathedral. The stonecutter answers for the stone and is right to do so. The master has to look in four other directions, and none of them appears on the plan of a single course of stone.

The four habits are PMI’s. What each one watches is our own synthesis of the definitions published in Maximizing Project Success (2024).

First the master looks from the square. Manage Perceptions starts from a hard PMI definition, a successful project is one that delivers value worth the effort and expense, and for that the key stakeholders have to perceive it so. A solid building the town does not understand has a problem, even if the loads are well calculated. PMI presents this as influence, active listening and communication, not as makeup.

Then the master looks at the whole work. Own Success asks the professional to take ownership of the project in its full breadth, to go beyond the literal mandate and answer for tangible and perceived value, while reducing waste. It is the difference between saying your wall meets the specification and asking whether the building serves its purpose.

The master also looks at the plumb line. Relentlessly Reassess starts from the fact that the world does not stand still during the project, so you must reassess, together with stakeholders, the perception of value and adjust the plans. The plumb line is not dropped once. It is dropped on every course, because the ground settles without warning.

And the master looks over the scaffolding. Expand Perspective recalls that every project has effects beyond its scope, and that you must consider how it fits into the enterprise and, ultimately, the world. The cathedral is also the city that will grow around it.

If you are about to sit the PMP

Don’t look for M.O.R.E. in the outline, because it does not appear under that name. What does appear is its root. The July 2026 outline states that it is aligned with the Maximizing Project Success report and with its definition of success. That is why it pays to understand the habits as a way of reading situational questions, and not as one more list to memorise. This is our own reading, but when two alternatives seem right, the one that reviews value again with the stakeholders tends to weigh more than the one that merely protects the plan. We work on that way of reasoning in the post on the exam mindset.

If you already lead

Here the new course says something I find more interesting than its figure. The press release holds that project success is not created by teams alone, and that is why M.O.R.E. at Scale is aimed at executive sponsors, people leaders, and PMO and governance stakeholders. Signals, structures and incentives help or get in the way. A project manager can have all four habits and still collide with an organization that rewards something else, which is part of what we saw in the post on strategy losing coherence.

So don’t set out to adopt four habits on Monday. Pick the one you most lack in the project in front of you and start with a question. Who is looking at this from the square, and what do they see?

The stone and the gaze

No cathedral was raised with a figure, and none was raised without a plumb line. Take the 94 for what it is, a signal from PMI pointing somewhere. The stone is still yours, and the gaze is carved slowly, one course after another.

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