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| About pmMaturity |
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| pmMaturity was started as a response many organizations had related to project performance. |
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That being...
...while project management was becoming "professionalized" through better training and "best practice" (i.e. bodies of knowledge) had been developed by several organizations, there hadn't been a consequent improvement in project performance. Many project resources weren't being used efficiently, money was being wasted, projects were completed late, and revenue was delayed or even lost entirely. |
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| There was a disconnect somewhere, and we wanted to know what was actually happening in those firms. The project manager knows what to do, were trained to do it, but still performance wasn't satisfactory and improvement wasn't occurring.
We have personally worked in many firms as both employees and consultants. We had been fortunate in our careers to learn from mistakes - We learned our lessons. On several occasions we were retained to bring runaway projects back into control which was accomplished using different techniques based on the specific project.
Yet some organizations do perform projects better than the norm and regularly report significant performance improvement. Success stories could be found in the business literature. We had managed successful projects. As we reviewed the results, it seemed successful organizations had a number of things in common:
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•They employed good people who truly cared about the projects they were involved in and generally wanted to do the best job possible.
•They adopted a process to define the appropriate best-practice. They didn't use an out-of-the-box methodology, nor did they build one from scratch, but customized one to fit their situation, philosophy, customs, environment, industry, etc. This typically included a project management methodology and a systems development life cycle (SDLC). It might also have included a maturity model. The result? They gained consistency of method across all projects, they gained consistency across all divisions, departments, and vendors, they allowed common status reporting and status-rollup across projects and organization, and they developed targeted training to support their customized process.
•They ensured the whole organization understood the roles and responsibilities of the project manager and, an importantly, the project team. They realized that everyone must know what they had to do if it was to get done. There was a high degree of cooperation across the departments that contributed project team members.
•They acquired appropriate tools to automate project management tasks - anything from templates and checklists to standard WBS's to scheduling and portfolio management software.
•They had an attitude of continuous improvement - everyone was responsible to critique and improve performance. There was an expectation, from top management on down the ranks, that mistakes wouldn't be repeated. The organization would learn from the experiences of all the teams. They didn't beat anyone over the head with their mistakes, but made it clear that appropriate action should be taken so they wouldn't be repeated. |
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| We found that in some organizations improvement initiatives are obvious. These are organizations that have consistent sub-par performance. Management expected poor performance and usually received it. Those organizations: |
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•Often couldn't measure so they don't know what their actual performance is. They don't set expectations (budgets, schedules, etc.), and they don't gather actual to measure against the expectation. Performance variances are usually "gut-feel".
•Didn't acknowledge poor performance.
•Hadn't defined best-practice for their projects teams to follow.
•Didn't support their project teams with the tools they need.
•Had low expectations - no one believed project performance could be improved.
•Never provided training about "their" process. Training might not have take place, it wasn't targeted; it might even have been contradictory - each attendee learning different methods by attending different courses taught by different vendor.
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In those organizations that had the basics in place, performance improvement initiatives needed to be more subtle. They were the organizations that practiced rigorous techniques of continuous improvement. They understood that, "continuously improving" defined the highest level of process maturity. They understood maturity model concepts as advanced by many of the common models including the SEI and the PMI.
We found that many, if not most organizations, that weren't heavily involved in continuous improvement weren't because they didn't have a suitable process and technique in place to support it. We spoke with many of our project management peers, senior managers with a lot of experience under their belts. What was needed? What were the requirements?
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•A method that could be used with all type of projects - construction, engineering, IT, etc.
•A way to define a unique "best-practice" process standard by using one of the published industry standards (PMI, ISO, etc.) or use the organization's own customized solution.
•A way to get objective results, not simply those that were subjective.
•A way to measure actual process performance against the process standard.
•A way to measure during project execution, when corrections can have the most benefit, along with at the end of the project.
•A way the whole project team, internal and external members, could easily participate.
•A way individuals could share their thoughts in a comfortable, non-threatening environment.
•A way to communicate the findings across the whole organization.
•A way to store the findings long-term so they don't get lost.
•A way to evaluate findings and prioritize them so the limited amount of resources devoted to improvement could be allocated to the highest ROI.
•A way to measure effectiveness in different parts of the organization, in different situations to determine what's working and what isn't.
•A way to measure the effectiveness of improvement initiatives.
•A way to evaluate individual performance of those on the project team in an effort to give help to those who most need it.
•A web based solution that is state-of-the-art technically.
•A way that didn't cost an excessive amount of resources to implement or maintain.
•A way that should pay for itself in the first year or two of its use.
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To address those needs, pmMaturity was started and projectAudIT was developed.
We enable organizations in any stage of maturity to establish an effective and cost efficient program of continuous improvement. A standardized and rigorous evaluation of the process used to perform a project is ensured.
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pmMaturity will
help you remedy your failures and reinforce your success. |
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| Please contact
us. We’d be happy to discuss your needs and our services
in detail. |
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