Title:                            PM Maturity Model Assessment Tool

Interview with:            Nick Cox  

Job Title:                    Program Director

LinkedIn:                    LinkedIn Profile

Interview by:                Frank Turley 

Date:                           January 2020

Introduction

This interview if focused on using a maturity model to improve the way you are doing project management in your organisation. This is an interview with Nick Cox who has done a lot of work on this topic.

 1)  What are the main advantages of using a maturity model with PRINCE2?

The main advantages of using a maturity model is to increase your success of project delivery across your portfolio. The more mature you are at managing projects, the more successful you will be. A model will provide guidance for developing and improving your project processes and approach. It’s well understood that using a trusted methodology to deliver your projects increases the success and lowers the risk of failure. Being able to understand how well you are applying that methodology or framework gives you the ability to take corrective action before things start going wrong. Often when reviewing failed projects you find it’s the lack of approach that failed, for example you didn’t have a project board to make swift decisions, you didn’t describe and agree the scope, you didn’t manage the risks. The maturity model lets you understand if you are applying the methodology correctly, having this knowledge you can take positive actions to fix any deficiencies.  You can of course choose to ignore the guidance, but you do this with ‘eyes wide open’ and the knowledge of accepting the risk.

2)  What are the important roles who would adopt the maturity model?

There are many roles within a project, and most would want to adopt and review the maturity of project delivery. The obvious roles are within the Project Board (senior user, executive and senior supplier) who should always be asking if the project delivery approach is being applied correctly. At each key gate or stage this should be assessed, the PRINCE2 Maturity model is broken down into the key processes to help review projects no matter what stage they are at, you don’t have to wait until the end of the project to understand your maturity of adopting PRINCE2, below is an example of an assessment for each process.

We also include PL – Planning process, which is used across multiple stages.         

If we look further into what the maturity model provides other stakeholders’ benefit, this includes

• • CEO/CFO/CTO – Assessing the level of maturity across the organisation, striving to improve quality, baselining current quality and setting new strategic targets.
  • PMO – Independently assessing and reporting on quality of project within the organisation.
  • Project Manager – Self assessing a project and ensuring they are not missing any vital components of PRINCE2
  • Programme Manager – Self assessing and assessing their project managers’ delivery quality.

3)  Who would drive the assessments for PRINCE2 Maturity?

Any stakeholder can drive the assessment, it’s free, so no purchase order or funds required, the only investment is time and assessing your project with an honest and open mind. If you want an unbiased measure we provide resources to undertake the review, this keeps the review as realistic as possible. We’ve seen heads of departments, CEO, CTO’s, project managers and apprentices use the model. It’s informative to the apprentice PM to understand the items that drive good project management through to the CEO wanting to ensure quality project management is in place. Why wouldn’t you want to know the quality of project management in your organisation, and improve it? 

4)  What are the levels of Maturity?

There are five levels,’ Level 1’ demonstrating that PRINCE2 is not being adopted or applied, through to ‘Level 5’ demonstrating that the methodology is being fully applied and adopted within that project. The Levels are described below. 

5)  Is the business case to assess the Maturity easy to justify?

Yes, as the tool is free to use the benefits can be enormous, we’ve seen projects turn around and become successful due to the recognition of lacking key project management concepts, essentially saving projects from failure.

6)  How can a company see where it is today?

The Maturity Model tools allows you to assess a single project or combine all projects and provide a portfolio or company maturity. There are three approaches we adopt:

• • Self-assessment – The Project Manager assesses their own project, this helps the project manager understand what is required, this is quick and easy, but if they are not experienced enough, they can incorrectly assess their level of maturity.
  • Project Management Office Assessment – The company can assign the PMO the task of reviewing projects, this provides a more independent review, but is still dependant on the skill, experience and knowledge of the PMO
  • Total Programme Control Assessment – We can undertake the assessment and give a truly unbiased approach to your maturity, this gives you the best outcome as we will also recommend corrective action and help you undertake the changes to increase your maturity

Whichever approach you take, all three will certainly inform you of your maturity and demonstrate where improvements can be made.

No matter what you do, you should always be assessing your project delivery capability and striving to improve it. The Maturity Model will give you a baseline which you can improve upon, setting you and your company up for more success in the future.

To start using the model select the link here : https://www.totalprogrammecontrol.com/su.php

Other tools are available to help assess your delivery maturity

Scrum – https://www.totalprogrammecontrol.com/scrum.php

Disciplined Agile Delivery- https://www.totalprogrammecontrol.com/dad.php

GDPR - https://www.totalprogrammecontrol.com/gdpr.php