.png){kind=logo}
This is the first in our seven part series on PMO Maturity.
If you are in a leadership position, chances are at some point, more likely quite often, you have the thought “We can do this better.” It doesn’t matter what “this” is, there is always something we know we could do better. In our project focused world, the leaders we work with are always talking about how they want to improve their project outcomes.
There are so many ways to improve your project world, and so many options that knowing where to start (and where to stop) can be a paralyzing problem. Do you tackle your intake process, how your teams manage projects, how you manage your organizational capacity, how you hire, how you train, what you train, along with dozens of potential areas you could target.
Using a Maturity Model as your guide is one way to help hone your focus. Our Maturity Model is based on our experiences working with organizations of varied sizes, from the ones just building their first PMOs to professional services arms with 30+ project managers.
Our Maturity Model breaks an organization down into five different dimensions:
Leadership – Roles and Support provided by PMO and organization leaders
Organization – PMO Structure and role in the Organization.
People – Project Manager roles and capabilities
Tools – Systems and Templates utilized by the PMO.
Processes – The PMO methods and how they are utilized
Using a Maturity Model is as simple as evaluating where you are today with each dimension (current state), where you want to be (future state) and what the difference is (gap analysis). The gap analysis becomes the basis of your improvement plan.
The beauty of a model like this is that you can be very selective around what you want to improve and when.
Let’s take a look at a common thing we see in 1-2 project manager organizations.
Leadership – You have project managers but not a formal PMO (Level 1)
Organization – Your project managers answer to your CIO (Level 1)
People – Your project managers have 2-3 years of PM experience (Level 2)
Tools – You use a system like MS Project, Monday, or Smartsheet (Level 3)
Processes – Your PMs use the same basic process to manage projects (Level 2)
In this case you can take a look at the next steps across these dimensions and determine which one offers the best ROI for your organization.
Do you create a formal PMO?
Do you hire a PMO manager?
Do you invest in training your PMs?
Do you expand on your tools?
Do you focus on building a fully standardized project approach?
The answer to this question will vary from team to team; the key is that you have been able to break the overall problem down into actionable steps in a matter of minutes. From here you can start to create a plan to tackle your priority improvements.
Over the course of the next several articles we will dive into what each maturity level means across each dimension, how to choose an end state (spoiler, you really do not need to be Level 5 across the board to have a great PMO), and some suggestions for how to move your organization from one level to another.
Comments