Project of The Year 2025

About competition

The international annual contest, Project of the Year, was launched by the professional IT community Global CIO. Its mission is to identify, highlight, and promote the best IT practices implemented by CIOs across different countries.

What sets the contest apart is its unique evaluation methodology, which was developed by the Global CIO experts. It includes both online voting by professional community members and a comprehensive assessment of the project's scope and impact. With no jury involved and a balanced evaluation process, the selection of winners remains as objective as possible. Feedback from professional community members adds particular value, offering practical insights and detailed analysis of each project.

The Project of the Year contest provides a great opportunity for CIOs to share their experiences and gain international recognition from peers.

Participation is free. The projects can be submitted either by the customer’s IT manager or by the IT supplier. Multiple submissions are allowed, but each project can only be entered in one nomination category.

The organizing committee reserves the right to make minor edits to project descriptions, as well as to adjust the number of final nominations after the closure of submissions to ensure fair competition.

The organizing committee may also decline comments on projects if they are irrelevant or duplicated. Such comments will be deleted at the end of the voting process with automatic recalculation of the project’s rating.

In addition, the organizing committee may disregard undervalued votes (one or two points) for projects if the accompanying comments are not sufficiently substantiated. These ratings are reviewed after the voting period, and unreasonably low scores are removed.

The purpose of Project of the Year is to identify and share the best practices used by IT leaders around the world, building a knowledge base that helps IOS discover new effective approaches to solving their professional challenges.

CONTACT THE ORGANIZERS: project@globalcio.com

Competition rules

The project for the competition may be nominated by:

CIO or other leaders of digital transformation within the company.
IT service providers, provided the project is confirmed by the customer. For example: If a solution is implemented in company BBB, the IT manager at BBB must approve the submission. An email will be sent requesting confirmation; without it, the application will not be accepted.
Projects involving software products or solutions that have not been implemented by a customer are not eligible for the competition.
Multiple projects can be submitted across different categories; however, each project may only be submitted to a single category.

Project Selection Criteria:

a project or a part of a project must have specific goals and objectives;
the stated goals of a project or a part of a larger project must be achieved between October 1^st, 2024 and November 1^st, 2025 (Note: the overall the project duration is not limited to this period);
a project must have a tangible implementation results. Projects that have not been implemented at the customer organization will not be admitted to the competition (e.g., non-implemented software products);
the competition editorial committee reserves the right to move projects between categories before the end of the voting to ensure they are presented in the most relevant context.

Competition deadlines

Application submission: September 15^th – October 31^st, 2025

Project verification: November 1^st – 9^th, 2025

Voting period: November 10^th, 2025 – January 11^th, 2026

Results Announcement and Awarding of Winners (tentative): January 30^th, 2026.
Due to popular demand, the Award Ceremony will be held online, with the winners connected live and the event broadcast on LinkedIn.

Project Evaluation Criteria

1. Scope of the project.

2. Project importance for the company.

3. Project complexity – Assessed by the IT community. Each voter awards 0-5 points.

4. Optimization in solving project tasks – Assessed by the IT community. Each voter awards 0-5 points.

5. Additional points:

Comments on projects: Each thematic comment (200+ characters) adds 0.2 points. Only comments from IT professionals are taken into consideration (comments from IT service providers and IT journalists are excluded). Responses from the project author (200+ characters) also add 0.2 points per comment.
Contribution in IT Leaders Club "CIO Compass" as active community member: If the submitting CIO or IT vendor representative has a CIO Compass subscription, the project receives an additional 1 point.
Membership in the Global CIO directory: If the IT vendor or IT solution used in the project is listed in the corresponding directory, the project receives 0.5 points per entry.

Voting methodology

The voting framework was developed by the Global CIO professional community expert council. It follows a structured methodology, which can be found here.

FAQ

Can a project participate in the competition, if it has not been implemented yet?

No, it can’t.

Will a project submitted by an IT service provider be admitted to the competition without written approval (per e-mail) from the customer CIO?

No, it won’t.

Can I make changes to the project after it has been submitted for the competition?

All changes to the project must be sent to the moderator of the competition committee. They will be considered after additional verification.

Can a project participate in the competition, if its specifications cannot be disclosed?

No, it can’t

Why is there no fixed number of categories?

The final number of categories will be revealed after all projects are submitted to the competition. One category should include at least three projects, so if this number is smaller for any category, it will be removed. The projects from this category will be transferred to other categories. At the same time, if there are too many projects in the category, it may be broken into two separate categories.

Who are the IT Decision Makers eligible to vote?

You are a IT Decision Maker if you are a CIO/IT responsible at the organization which is not an IT service provider. Your registration on the Global CIO Portal is confirmed through a valid corporate email.

What can IT Decision Maker vote on?

Project complexity – by giving -0-5 points.
Project optimization - by giving 0-5 points.
Comment of a Professional* (200+ characters).
Projects’ authors responses to comments (200+ characters).