Maturity Assessments and P3M3

 Organisations striving for competitive advantage or performance enhancements need an effective way to measure their progress towards a goal and a way of establishing the best path to efficient governance. Maturity assessments benchmark an organisation's performance against external criteria developed from best practice.They also allow the development of improvement plans with measurable outcomes based on industry best practice.

The Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3) has become a key standard amongst maturity models and provides an objective assessment of strengths and weaknesses in different areas - Management Control (Planning, Vision, Outcomes etc), Benefits Management, Risk Management, Financial Management, Stakeholder Management (including Communications), Governance and Resource Management.

Maturity "level" usually follows a scale of 1 - 5 and organisations may rate differently on the diverse aspects.  For example:

In P3M3 the levels have the following broad meanings:

Level 1Recognition, Level 2 Repeatable, Level 3 Defined, Level 4 Managed, Level 5 Optimised

It is rare for an organisation to achieve Level 5 across the board and in most cases, there may not be a commensurate return on the effort required.

Assessments may be self administered or completed by a Registered Consultant, licensed to use the more spohisticated assessments and to design improvement paths for an organisation.  An external initial assessment is recommended.  Interim assessments may be self-administered.  Further external assessment should be sought to independently confirm that progress to a particular level has been achieved.

Advantages of Maturity Assessments

• There is an established correlation between project management maturity and success in project delivery. The same can be assumed for programmes and overall governance of the portfolio.
• Industry "benchmarks" are established independently.
• Ability for organisations to compare their Maturity Level with other organisations, or other parts of their own organisation.
• Ability to develop focused action plans and roadmaps for improvement
   

For organisations using PRINCE2 there is a specialist subset of the P3M3 Maturity Model.  This allows organisations that deliver projects to identity their strengths, areas for improvement and build an action plan to improve their effectiveness in the use of PRINCE2. This will lead to PRINCE2 being embedded within the organisation, helping to deliver the full benefits of using a structured project management method. For those organisations that provide a project management service, in addition to the above benefits, they will also be able to provide evidence to their clients and prospective clients of their level of maturity in the use of PRINCE2. This could provide a marketing advantage.

Adaptive Frameworks is an Accredited Consulting Organisation and can deliver a P3M3 and P2MM Maturity Level Assessment for your organisation.

For more information on the Maturity Models and Levels, download this article by Alan Harpham