Page 104 - Organizational Project Management

Appendix E—Comprehensive Assessment Detailed Sub-Steps

a Capability exists, if one or more of the associated Outcomes has not
been observed, and may elect to proceed to evaluate subsequent Capa-
bilities that represent a greater level of maturity within the Best Practice
in question.
■ Once a user determines that a specific Capability does not fully exist, it
is likely that the number of Outcomes observed for subsequent Capa-
bilities on the path will also be less than complete. The organization can
continue to evaluate Capabilities farther along the path provided in the
Improvement Planning Directory until the higher-level Capability descrip-
tions suggest that no additional Capabilities exist in the organization on
the path to that Best Practice.
■ Continue this process up through the sequence of Capabilities, until
reaching a Capability for which no Outcomes currently exist in the orga-
nization. This will signal that the organization has adequately evaluated
its current state with regard to that Best Practice.
■ At this point, an organization may choose to continue evaluating Capa-
bilities higher in the path if there is reason to believe that some of these Best Practices Directory
may be present to some degree.
■ The checklists resulting from the foregoing process will represent an
evaluation of Capabilities that exist (all Outcomes observed), partially
exist (some Outcomes observed), or do not exist (no Outcomes
observed). The reasons why a Capability does not exist will become clear
based on which Outcomes were not observed.
■ The Capabilities that an organization does not demonstrate along the
path to a Best Practice constitute the most likely area of focus for future
improvements.
■ The Comprehensive Assessment may reveal situations where depen-
dencies may appear to be joint in nature. For example, process A gen-
erates an output that is an input to process B. Process B make updates
to that work product, which then becomes an input into process A. In
such cases, organizations may want to plan improvements related to
these Capabilities in parallel.

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