5-levels-for-assessing-pmo-maturity

"What you measure, you can improve" - Peter Drucker

5 Levels for Assessing PMO Maturity in your Organization.

Typically, in larger organizations the evolution of project management lags behind development of other capabilities such finance, operations, HR, etc. Only when the need for project management becomes critical do companies pay attention to improving their project management capabilities.

This lack of foresight frequently creates an environment where PM capabilities are not in place to support the need of the project management community and other business stakeholders.

Eventually, we need to take a proactive look at the infrastructure necessary to progress in project management capability. Often, this happens when executive management takes proactive action to make change, but the question is “what sort of action and what’s the desired outcome?”

The “PM Maturity and PMO Methodology”

StrategicFront follows a proven approach towards PMO Maturity Assessment and considers critical success factors such as:

Looks at the “whole system” of a PMO organization and provides a yardstick to measure across multiple LOB PMOs and role up to Enterprise PMO.
Designed to be independent. Agnostic to any particular body of knowledge or project delivery approach.
Provides a roadmap to improve PMO maturity based on organizational strategies and goals, and works with you to make the improvements.

Follow the 5 level model for assessment of PMO Maturity in your organization:

LEVEL 1 - Awareness/Ad hoc: Does the organization recognize programs and projects and run an informal list of investments in programs and projects? (There may be no formal tracking and documenting process).

LEVEL 2 – Repeatable: Does the organization ensure that each program and/or project in its various portfolios is run with its own processes and procedures to a minimum specified standard? (There may be limited consistency or coordination between portfolios).

LEVEL 3 – Defined: Does the organization have its own centrally controlled portfolio processes and can individual initiatives flex within these?

LEVEL 4 – Managed: Does the organization obtain and retain specific management metrics on its whole portfolio of programs and projects as a means of predicting future performance. Does the organization assess its capacity to manage programs and projects, and prioritize them accordingly?

LEVEL 5 – Optimized: Does the organization run continual process improvement with proactive problem and technology management for portfolio in order to improve its ability to predict performance over time and optimize processes?

Ask yourself the above questions as you’re conducting a maturity assessment for your organization to ensure you have the desired outcome.

The overall PMO Maturity is broken down into Perspectives based on organizational practices that are more meaningful to a PMO. Stay tuned for the next article as we dive deeper into assessing each operational unit and determining its impact on the PMO Maturity Assessment.

How can we help?

StrategicFront offers a unique approach by integrating Project, Process and Change Management to deliver on client’s business goals. Our team of highly skilled and experienced practitioners have led successful project across all areas including; banking, technology, retail and professional services.

Need help to evaluate your organizations PM maturity needs – we’d be happy to speak with you. Email us at [email protected] or call 416-915-4141. We look forward to hearing from you.

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