ProjectManagementOER

Project Maturity

Projects at close can be considered:

• Successful: delivered on time, on budget, with required features and functions
• Challenged: late, over budget, and/or with less than the required features and functions
• Failed: canceled prior to completion or delivered and never used

The Standish Group’s CHAOS Report which reviewed IT project success identified that 31.1% of projects failed, with only 16.2% being successful. Top 10 reasons for project failure include:

• Inadequately trained or inexperienced project managers
• Failure to set and manage expectations
• Poor leadership at any and all levels
• Failure to adequately identify, document and track requirements
• Poor plans and planning processes
• Poor effort estimation
• Cultural and ethical misalignment
• Misalignment between the project team and the business or other organization it serves
• Inadequate or misused methods
• Inadequate communication, including progress tracking and reporting

This strongly aligns with how mature the organization’s project management is. Project Management maturity describes the effectiveness of project management in an organization measured by two separate but related maturity variables:

• Process maturity level : The assessment of this maturity is based on an evaluation of the standardized and documented methodology for managing projects in place in the organization. The assessed maturity level will be a point estimate.
• Practice maturity level : The second variable is the maturity level of the practice of the process as evidenced by ongoing projects. This assessment will be done on projects recently completed and will be repeated at set intervals.

Possible scenarios based on this model include:

• Process Maturity Exceeds Practice Maturity: This situation will occur when the organization has a process in place that has not yet been fully integrated into practice. The process may not have been successfully deployed into the organization, may not be sufficiently documented, or may not be appropriately defined and has therefore been dismissed as not useful or misused by project teams. In such a situation, process training may not be effective.
• Process Maturity Equals Practice Maturity: This suggests a healthy alignment between the process and how it is being practiced. Not all projects will have verified a practice equal to the process maturity level. Rather, some will be above and some will be below that level. In the aggregate, however, a reasonable person would conclude that the practice maturity mirrors the process maturity.
• Process Maturity Less Than Practice Maturity: This would seem to be an anomaly but it really is not. It can happen if the process has not been documented and several project managers have taken it upon themselves to practice at a maturity level that is called for. Or one or more members of project teams have brought practices with them from other organizations that exceed the process maturity level on one or more processes.

The Project Management Maturity Model defined 5 levels of project management maturity:

• Level 1: Initial Process - Common Language
  • There is no defined and documented process in place.
  • Project managers and teams act in an ad hoc manner when process activities are needed.
  • Processes and practices may be taken from prior experiences or knowledge possessed by one of the team members.
• Level 2: Structured Process - Common Processes
  • There are defined and documented processes in place for team use.
  • Project managers and teams use the defined processes at their discretion.
  • Critical mission projects are often required to use the documented processes.
• Level 3: Institutionalized Process - Singular Methodology
  • There is a comprehensive defined and documented process in place that is used by all projects.
  • There is support available to teams needing help with the standard processes.
  • There is a monitoring and control function in place to assure compliance with standard processes.
• Level 4: Managed Process - Benchmarking
  • The process is integrated into other business processes and practices.
  • Management decisions on individual projects have an organizational perspective.
  • Lessons learned and best practices are captured and made available to other projects
• Level 5: Optimizing Process - Continuous Improvement
  • Project performance is collected and used to identify areas for improvement initiatives.
  • There is a program in place to continuously collect and analyze process performance data and use it to improve the process.
  • Lessons learned and best practices are used to improve the process.

A project management maturity assessment can help us gauge what level of maturity we have with respect to specific processes in the organization.

PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) is focused on improving project management maturity through a process improvement cycle of: standardize, measure, control, continuously improve. To this end, organizations perform an assessment to understand their degree of maturity in project management. This assessment focuses on:

• Best Practices in organizational project management
• the constituent Capabilities that are necessary for the existence or attainment of Best Practices
• observable Outcomes signifying the existence or attainment of each relevant Capability
• Key Performance Indicators, which are the means of measuring each Outcome
• model context, including the Organizational Project Management Process and the stages of process improvement
• the pathways that identify the Capabilities aggregating to Best Practices being reviewed including both intra-relationships or capability dependencies within one Best Practice and inter-relationships or capability dependencies across Best Practices. From this assessment, areas of improvement in best practices and capabilities are identified and implemented.

The Portfolio, Program and Project Management Maturity Model (PM3M) includes 3 sub-models (portfolio management, program management, and project management) and covers 7 processes for each sub-model: organizational governance, management control, benefits management, risk management, stakeholder management, finance management, and resource management. Maturity-levels are then defined as:

• Level 1 – Awareness of process
• Level 2 – Repeatable process
• Level 3 – Defined process
• Level 4 – Managed process
• Level 5 – Optimized process

Another model for assessing project management success is the International Project Management Association (IPMA) Project Excellence Baseline (PEB). This approach assesses projects based in three areas:

• People and Purpose (Foundation for Excellence)
  • Leadership & Values
  • Objectives & Strategy
  • Project Team, Partners & Suppliers
• Processes and Resources (Reinforcement of Excellence)
  • Project Management Processes & Resources
  • Management of Other Key Processes & Resources
• Project Results (Proof of Excellence)
  • Customer Satisfaction
  • Project Team Satisfaction
  • Other Stakeholder Satisfaction
  • Project Results and Impact on the Environment

A new model is Management Maturity Model (MMM) which is based on 6 KPIs of successful project delivery (value, efficiency, speed, innovation, complication, and impact) as well as 4 success factors (scope, cost, time, and risk). The model involves the use of the PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle for continuous improvement.

Bibliography

• The Standish Group’s CHAOS Report
• Project management maturity: an industry-wide assessment
• The IPMA Project Excellence Model
• OPM3’s knowledge foundation and implementation of OPM3
• Project Management Maturity Models: A Basis for Reaching Your Organization’s Business Success * A Management Maturity Model (MMM) for project-based organisational performance assessment * Build organizational capability to improve strategy implementation: enterprise change management (ECM) and organizational project management (OPM)
• Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3)
• Improvement of project quality through Project Excellence Preparation (PEP)