Page 11 - Organizational Project Management

Preface

The Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) falls nat-
urally within the sequence of Standards published by the Project Manage-
ment Institute (PMI). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
®
(PMBOK Guide) has become the de facto Standard for managing individual
projects and is the reference of choice for the project management profes-
sion. The Project Management Competency Development Framework, pub-
lished in 2002, sets a Standard for effectively training and developing
project managers or those aspiring to be project managers.
A logical next step was to develop a standard applying project manage-
ment principles at the organizational level. OPM3 seeks to create a frame-
work within which organizations can reexamine their pursuit of strategic
objectives via Best Practices in organizational project management. This
Standard is an initial statement on this subject—identifying and organizing
a substantial number of generally accepted and proven project manage-
ment practices, and providing a means to assess an organization’s maturity
against the Best Practices identified in this Standard. Finally, with the results
of such an assessment, an organization can decide whether to plan for
improvements—and how to approach these improvements—to increase its
maturity by developing more of the Capabilities identified by the Standard.
As just described, OPM3 is comprised of three general elements: Knowl-
edge, presenting the contents of the Standard; Assessment, providing a
method for comparison with the Standard; and Improvement, setting the
stage for possible organizational changes. As with other PMI Standards,
OPM3’s intent is not to be prescriptive by telling the user what improve-
ments to make or how to make them. Rather, the intent is simply to offer
the Standard as a basis for study and self-examination, and to enable an
organization to make its own informed decisions regarding potential ini-
tiatives for change. Practitioners and consultants using OPM3 may have an
interest in exploring further possibilities for assessment and for managing
organizational changes that are implied by the assessment. Their work will
contribute to the growing understanding of how project management can
support effective achievement of organizational strategy.
OPM3 is designed to provide a wide range of benefits to organizations,
senior management, and those engaged in project management activities.
Here is a partial list:
OPM3 . . .
■ Strengthens the link between strategic planning and execution, so
project outcomes are predictable, reliable, and consistent, and correlate
with organizational success

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