Page 69 - Organizational Project Management

Appendix B

Evolution of the

Organizational Project

Management Maturity

Model

In 1998, the Project Management Institute (PMI) chartered the OPM3
project to develop an "organizational project management maturity model"
to be a global standard for organizational project management. Marge
Combe and Paul Dinsmore were appointed as co-project managers. This
Standard was intended to guide the development of capabilities necessary
to execute organizational strategy through successful projects-as distin-
guished from capabilities associated only with management of individual
projects. Furthermore, OPM3 was to be usable by organizations of all sizes
and types, in virtually any industry or culture.

B.1 DISCOVERY PHASE AND EXAMINATION OF EXISTING
MODELS
In January 1999, John Schlichter was asked to lead OPM3 and launched
a discovery phase by enrolling volunteers from a variety of countries.
Shortly after that, Stan Rifkin was appointed as Deputy Program Manager.
It was decided early on that this Model should represent innovation and
original thinking, and not be simply derived from other existing maturity
models. Consequently, primary and secondary research projects were incor-
porated into the OPM3 program to help lay the foundation for the Stan-
dard. This research was led by Terry Cooke-Davies and John Moran.
In the process, existing models had to be examined. The concept of orga-
nizational maturity had been popularized through the successful "Capability
Maturity Model" for software development that was created by the Soft-
ware Engineering Institute of Carnegie-Mellon University between 1986
and 1993. Integral to that particular model is the concept that organiza-

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