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Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK ). Because this Standard will
®
form the basis of an organization’s maturity assessment, familiarity with
the contents of the Standard is essential.
Assessment. In Assessment, the organization uses an assessment tool to
determine areas of strength and weakness in relation to the body of Best
Practices. The OPM3 Self-Assessment—an interactive tool provided on the
OPM3 CD-ROM—is an example of such a tool. This assessment process will
help the organization decide which Best Practices or groups of Best Prac-
tices to investigate further, either to confirm competency in an area or to
identify constituent Capabilities of one or more Best Practices that need
attention. OPM3 outlines how to conduct this detailed investigation in the
most helpful way for the organization, through the use of the Directories.
Depending on the outcome of the Assessment, an organization may choose
to continue with a more in-depth investigation, proceed to plan for improve-
ments, or exit the process. If it exits the process, the organization should
consider revisiting the Assessment step at some point in the future.
Improvement. For many users, the results of the Assessment will include a
list of Capabilities not yet fully developed in the organization. OPM3 pro-
vides guidance in placing these in order of importance, and this sequence
forms the basis for any subsequent plans for improvement. The actual
process of implementing improvements in an organization, which may
involve organizational development, change management, restructuring,
retraining, and other initiatives, is beyond the scope of this Standard.
Figure ES-2: Knowledge drives Assessment, which, in turn, drives Improvement
Once improvements have been made, an organization may return to the
Assessment step to measure the effects of the improvements, or undertake
improvement in other areas of practice highlighted by the earlier Assess-
ment.
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