Page 62 - Organizational Project Management

Chapter 6—The OPM3 Cycle

They decide to pursue improvements by developing the Capabilities in ques-
tion.
.3 Plan for Improvements. Referring to Section 6.3.3 Step Three: Plan for
Improvements, the team plans how to proceed. They determine that seven
of their ten target Best Practices could best be developed by following the
sequence shown for the Capabilities associated with those Best Practices in
the Improvement Planning Directory. They determine that the remaining
three Best Practices need to be approached differently. Two of these three
contain some Capabilities involving significant cost to the organization and
other Capabilities requiring minimal costs. Consequently, they decide to
begin work on these two Best Practices by starting with the lower-cost Capa-
bilities, to build momentum for the initiative before asking for additional
resources. Finally, they believe that the one remaining Best Practice ties
closely to the organization’s overall strategic objectives. The team gives this
Best Practice priority treatment, and plans to develop the associated Capa-
bilities in a sequence that aligns with current strategy-driven initiatives.
.4 Implement Improvements. Based on their plan, the team works with com-
pany management, and with human resources, training, IT, and other
departments to put their plan into action. They create a budget and a
schedule for the development of each Capability, assigning roles and respon-
sibilities and instituting regular meetings and programs for internal and
external communications. In short, they treat each planned improvement
as a project, and follow all the processes normally associated with man-
®
aging a project, as outlined in the PMBOK Guide.
.5 Repeat the Process. Once improvement initiatives have been completed,
the organization wants to determine how successful they were at attaining
the Best Practices they set out to attain. Again, they use the Self-Assessment
tool to get a big-picture look at which of their target Best Practices were
improved and which remain to be further developed. They check the lists
generated by the Self-Assessment against their previous lists. They find that
six of the ten Best Practices have moved from the list of those not demon-
strated by the organization to the list of those that are demonstrated. The
other four are still indicated as areas needing development. To get to a level
of greater detail, they again conduct the Comprehensive Assessment step
on all ten Best Practices. This process confirms their successful attainment
of the six Best Practices, and shows which specific Capabilities require addi-
tional work before the other four Best Practices can be fully claimed. The
organization uses this information to create an updated improvement plan
designed to lead to the successful attainment of all the Best Practices on
their list.

46 ©2003 Project Management Institute, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA