Page 61 - Organizational Project Management

Chapter 6—The OPM3 Cycle

The key to reading Figures 6-3 and 6-4 is the amount of white space,
which is an indication of where improvements can be made. In most cases,
the level of standardization is not where the organization would desire,
in one or more of the domains. Hence, Standardize would normally be
where to begin a comprehensive assessment.
Deciding where to focus. The graphs reveal that the organization, overall,
falls below the 50% mark on the continuum of organizational project man-
agement maturity, and has areas needing improvement in all three domains
and all four stages of process improvement. The team decides to examine
the list of the Best Practices they do not have. They look these up in the Best
Practices Directory. Here, they are able to view the name and description of
each Best Practice, and the domain(s) and process improvement stage(s)
to which each one maps. They decide to sort the list, based on the mapping,
to see how many of these Best Practices fall in the fundamental domain
of Project Management. They find that more than half map to Project Man-
agement. Using this sub-list, they sort again to see how many of these also
fall into the Standardize stage of process improvement. They discover that
ten Best Practices fall into Project Management Standardization. The team
decides this list would be manageable and a good place to start.
Comprehensive Assessment. The team looks up their ten target Best Prac-
tices in the Improvement Planning Directory. This reveals for each Best Prac-
tice a list of its constituent Capabilities (some of which may be shared by
other Best Practices) in order of increasing dependency. They print out the
Directory pages for each Best Practice to use as a checklist when they eval-
uate the existence of each Capability in the organization. Next to each Capa-
bility on each worksheet is an Outcome box to be checked if and when they
are able to observe the Outcome(s) associated with that Capability.
One of the Best Practices on their list is number 5240: “Establish Internal
Project Management Communities.” The team is particularly interested in
one of the Capabilities listed as being associated with this Best Practice—
“Develop Awareness of Project Management Activities.” The full descrip-
tion of the Capability is “The organization gathers information about
internal project management communities. The communities may be
assigned tasks such as project management improvement initiatives.”
The team locates this Capability by serial number in the Capabilities
Directory and finds that two Outcomes are required: “Organization supports
and utilizes local initiatives,” and “The organization has intelligence on
important issues and activities in the project management community.”
Team members agree that their company does not do the first of these, but
does demonstrate the second one. They note this on their worksheet for
this Best Practice.
Using the Capabilities Directory in this way, the team evaluates which of
the Capabilities leading to each Best Practice on their target list currently
exist in the organization, by deciding whether or not the listed Outcomes
exist. When they agree that the Outcomes for a given Capability have been
observed, they place a check in the Outcome box next to the Capability on
the worksheet they printed.
When they have gone through this process for all the Capabilities for
each Best Practice on their target list, they have a list of which Capabilities
they have not yet demonstrated—those still needed to claim the Best Prac-
tices on their list—and what sequence might be best for developing them.

©2003 Project Management Institute, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA 45