Abstract
OPM3® is an effective framework for implementing repeating cycles in improving the organizational project management maturity, and is a general and flexible tool for an organization. The authors found that translations from the general standard to a specific industry understandable expression and additional tools are very important in applying OPM3® Cycle to organizations being assessed. OPM3® has been applied to three organizations by the authors to evaluate its applicability. The study has been conducted under the concept that finding a “focusing point” is a key factor in making progress through OPM3® Cycle.
At Step One, a survey on the organization being assessed is conducted to recognize actual aspects and degree of its maturity. This survey is very important because the result of the survey governs decisions at the following OPM3® steps. At Step Two, in getting Hi-Level view, the authors have added several questions associated with Best Practices to each OPM3® Self-Assessment question. These questions are carefully provided so that the organization can easily understand and answer by their standard and criteria. OPM3® Self-Assessment tool suggests where to focus. However, this area has a large set of target Best Practices, additional prioritization methods are introduced for further focusing into more specific area. As a next step, Improvement Paths provided by OPM3® Tool are examined. Tools to categorize the paths considering dependencies and commonality between and among Best Practices and associated Capabilities are introduced. By grouping the paths, improvement plans and procedures are integrated effectively.
The results of this study suggest that Tools to find the Focusing Points and integrating them into an improvement plan are very helpful in applying OPM3® for organization.
Introduction
Recent business environment is becoming more and more dynamic and rapidly changing. To cope with this kind of environment, maturity models, including OPM3®, are being paid more and more attention by various organizations today. Executives and managers are realizing the importance of the organization's maturity. OPM3® is a very attractive tool for executives and managers trying to make their organizations more competitive. However, OPM3® is designed as a general and flexible tool. For executives and managers, that feature causes some difficulty in applying OPM3® to Japanese industries.
For executives and managers, this paper shows the effectiveness of appropriate tools used during OPM3® Cycle; repeating cycles for improving the maturity of an organization. For practitioners to assess the maturity of organizations and to implement its improvement plan for an organization, this paper also shows the tools that make the OPM3® Cycle highly efficient and keep the quality of resulting improvement plans. Study on OPM3® Cycle implementation with tools has been conducted against three Japanese organizations, for evaluating the applicability of OPM3® and the tools. The tools are designed to figure out various solutions to get a higher degree of maturity under the concept of finding the “focusing point”
Points to be considered upon introducing OPM3®
OPM3® is a framework for an organization to evaluate its organizational project management maturity and provides itwith a guide for further improvement. Further more, OPM3® suggests that the improvement activities derived from OPM3® are conducted as projects. These improvement projects must be aligned with the organizational strategy.
High level executives/managements involvement
Since maturity improvement activities are organization wide, activities must be carefully selected and planned, reflecting the organizations strategies and/or prioritized interests. It is very important that high level executives/managements are involved in the planning process and confirm whether the strategies and/or organizational interests are properly reflected to the improvement plan.
Step by step focusing approach
OPM3® is applied to an organization in a cyclic manner, through the repeating cycle called the OPM3® Cycle. Within each cycle, organizational project management maturity is assessed, evaluated, the important focusing point is picked up, an improvement plan is developed, and then the plan is executed. After completing the improvement activities, the next cycle starts. The maturity is assessed again, and the results, ncluding effectiveness of the previous improvement activities are evaluated. Based on the evaluation result, a new improvement plan is developed and so on.
Authors divided a cycle into several steps in order to ensure the focusing points picked up are aligned with an organizational strategy. Going through the steps, focusing points are narrowed down step by step by confirming the alignment at each step. At each step, people can concentrate on issues, which must be taken care at that level and consequently they can get the result effectively and quickly.
Common understanding
In applying OMP3, there are several questions to be answered and commonly understood among the people involved in the OPM3® activity. First, strategic objectives of implementing OPM3® must be clearly explained and understood. People may have various backgrounds, and this may cause some misunderstanding among the people. Second, correspondence between the management structure defined by the OPM3® model and the actual structure of the organization being assessed is investigated and understood commonly. Third, terminology, such as practice, capability, and outcomes may have different meanings from an organization to other, the terminology definitions must be confirmed for common use. Fourth, the objectives/ merits to incorporate OPM3® adding to other existing maturity model/management system such as CMMI are investigated and commonly understood. The authors believe OPM3® provides a framework to improve their maturity along with other maturity models and management system.
Finding the Focusing Points for the Improvement
Focusing points are identified in a step-by-step manner in OPM3® Cycle aligning with the organizational strategies. An output from a step becomes an input to the next step and focusing criteria based on the strategy is inherent from step to step.
An assessment team is organized to conduct OPM3® Cycle for assessing and improving an organization's maturity. Roles of the team must be clarified and commonly understand by the team members. The team is responsible to support the organization, as OPM3® expert, in leading the organization to focus the point effectively and consistently with its strategy in each step. It is an organization's responsibility to make decisions to focus the points at each step based on the assessment results with the help by the assessment tem.
Understanding the aspect of the organization being assessed
Understanding the actual organization's aspect is very important to implement OPM3® Cycle successfully. Based on this understanding, focusing points are picked up at each step. In addition, clear understanding of the actual structure of the organization being assessed, with comparison to Project, Program, and Portfolio management domain model defined by OPM3®, is essential in proceeding OPM3® Cycle.
In proceeding with OPM3®, the team members need to understand the processes, process sequences and hierarchies employed by the organization being assessed. The team utilizes this information in understanding and evaluating the input to the OPM3® Cycle provided by the organization.
In applying the Self-Assessment tool on the OPM3® CD-ROM properly to an actual organization, some information is needed by the team. In order to get the information, a Preparatory Survey Sheet is prepared. The sheet is designed to get key information characterizing the organization, including the following items:
- Business Description
- Organization chart
- Organization's strategic Goal
- Key Activities
- Business environment
- Prospect for OPM3®
The actual organization may locate their operational units at geographically distributed places. Thus, in some cases, even one process may be divided into some pieces and distributed to several geographical places. In assessing an organization precisely and planning for an improvement, it is important that this kind of situation is fully understood and carefully taken care of.
Tools to focus points for further investigations
The Self-Assessment questionnaire is highly integrated into certain abstract levels. There are difficulties for respondents to answer whether their organization's status is satisfied with the questions. Especially in the case where a question is asking whether the organization established such and such process at such and such level. Respondents need criteria to judge Yes or No, and the criteria is defined that each question is assumed Yes when over 50 percent of processes expected to be investigated by that question are implemented, for the first iteration. And also detailed descriptions, providing information to help respondents to answer the question is provided for each Self-Assessment question.
The Self-Assessment tools included on the OPM3® CD-ROM are useful for an assessment team to know how respondents of an organization consider their status through their view, and to focus what the team should address first. Using this tool, a team can focus a Project, Program and Portfolio (PPP) domain and a Standardize, Measure, Control, continuous Improvement (SMCI) stage that an organization should address at the next step. However, a section crossed by a domain and a stage still has a number of best practices to be assessed at the comprehensive assessment. Further focusing step is needed.
In addition to CD-ROM tools, an additional tool is a table showing the degree of yes responses. The table is used to focus further, for that shows more detailed information and describe each discrete area that separated by processes and enablers. This table helps the team to focus toward the next step and a direction that an organization prefers to go forward to improve their maturity.
The additional tool list is following:
- Instruction for Respondents to judge Yes/No,
- Detail description for Self-Assessment Questionnaire, and
- Area Analysis Table.
Tools to focus to points for improvement planning
Following the high-level assessment, comprehensive assessment is conducted. For this step, Weighting table / Evaluation charts are provided and utilized.
At this step, the Capability Directory and the Improvement Planning Directory within the CD-ROM tool are utilized. The Capability Directory provides detailed data on the capabilities already achieved by the organization, and/or not achieved. Capabilities are a specific competency that is aggregated to constitute a Best Practice. The Improvement Planning Directory shows the dependencies between Capabilities, and its Outcomes, which are essential to the assessment and improvement steps. The tables derived from the previous step are used as necessary.
By checking the Outcomes shown in the Improvement Planning Directory, an inventory of non-existing Capabilities is created. The inventory consists of the BP No., Capabilities, Outcomes, and field to be filled with its weight. Based on this inventory, each Capability is evaluated and prioritized. In evaluating the priority, following four factors are considered and rated:
- Attainability
- Strategic priority
- Benefit
- Cost
These factors are rated depending on the organization's concerns. Each member of the assessment team evaluated the Capabilities independently, rate a priority, and fill the resulting rate in the inventory table.
Ratings by each team member are summed up and charted for discussing priorities within the team. This process should be completely aligned with organization's strategy. The charts plotted with the rating, show the relative impact of each capability to the organization. The assessment team should review all the charts and make a decision from what Capabilities to start the organization's improvement planning. This decision is basically a driver to implement their improvement project.
Although the decision is made at the previous step, there still exist several candidate Capabilities to start the improvement. The candidate Capabilities should be reviewed in detail with its Outcomes and categorized by their characteristics into several groups. By each category, an improvement project may be started. Because the project is dedicated to achieve the same kind of Capabilities, the project is carried out effectively and efficiently.
Validating the tools
Organizations being assessed and Assessment team build
To validate the tools proposed, pilot assessments have been conducted against three organizations. They all have substantial project management knowledge and experiences. The first one is a nonprofit organization which develops high level plans of their activities and the plans are executed through projects mainly supported by volunteers. The second and third organizations are selected from some Japanese IT related service providers. Two of the business units within the company have been assessed.
Members, representing each level of organizational hierarchy, were assigned and an assessment team was organized for each assessment. Assessors external to the organization, including the authors, were also members of the team. All the members took a mentor program to get substantial OPM3® knowledge.
Implement each step
The pilot assessments were conducted following steps described previously, mainly through face-to-face interviews and clarification discussions.
As a first step, OPM3® KF was lectured to the representatives of the organization, and then an OPM3® Cycle guidance meeting was held. As a second step, organization representatives answered to Q&A provided by the assessment team. The team guided the representatives how to respond and/or make decisions when required. Then the team reviewed and confirmed these responses at the face-to-face interview. As a third step, the responses were analyzed and evaluated using the tools introduced by the authors. Then a draft improvement plan was provided, and its concept and context behind were discussed with the organization representatives to finalize the plan.
Step One
The Preparatory Survey Sheet, described previously, was used to collect the information on the organizations, and it was found that the sheet was very useful in making decisions efficiently to focus the improvement points by avoiding misunderstandings among the team and the assessment questions respondents.
This information helped the team to understand the background behind the answers provided to the Self-Assessment questions and captured misunderstandings, especially, at the Hi-level assessment step. At that step, a common mistake found during the pilot assessment was that the portfolio, program, and project (PPP) domain model defined in OPM3®, was misinterpreted into the organizational hierarchal structure. Respondents often had difficulty to understand the mapping relations between PPP domain and their organization structure. Without having substantial knowledge about the domain model, it was difficult for the respondents to understand the true meaning of the assessment questions. A process in an actual operation sometimes does not have one to one correspondence with the OPM3® model. By improving the organization referring OPM3® Best Practices, this issue may be solved
Step Two Hi-level View
The instructions describing the criteria of judging and the description of each question associated with Best Practice descriptions, described previously, and helped respondents to successfully judge Yes/No to each question. However, there were various factors to be considered among responses of each question. Even the criteria for answering a question was available, the judge depended on each respondent view that was based on their position and information they had. To make the assessment more reliable, only when the average of the number of Yeses exceeded 50 percents, were the responses considered as Yes.
The assessment team asked and clarified their problems at face-to-face meeting. For the respondents, the questions were highly abstract level and generalized in considering their operation within their organization. They also requested the information of the meanings on the questions and best practices description. The process models included OPM3®KF Appendix I as fundamental especially for comparing the documents produced by the real organization to the Input and Output of the process models to find a process was established or not in an actual organization.
After clarifying and solving their issue on the Self-Assessment tool, the assessment team input their response into the tool to see the degree of the organization's maturity. The output of the Self-Assessment tool showed the organization's maturity, and this was a first recognition for the attendees watching through charts. Analyzing based on those charts, the comments of the respondents on the preparatory survey sheet were almost correct, in turn, the results from the Self-Assessment tool with using averaged view of respondents adequately reflects an organization's status of its maturity.
The Area Analysis Table (Exhibit 1) was used for recognizing the maturity of a project process group and its enabler separately. Exhibit 1 shows the result of a case. This organization implementing their project domain processes and their standardizing step processes were well maturated, but those enablers were not maturated enough, compared to the same process domain and its stage.
Exhibit 1 – The Area Analysis Table
Column Bs shows the Yes percents for processes SMCI question. Column Es show the Yes percents for process enabling question. S, M, C, and I mean standardize stage, measure stage, control stage, and improve stage each.
Then, the team decided the focusing points where the rating was lower than adjacent area were the enablers of Project domain and the processes of Measuring stage. Based on the result, the next sub-step was conducted to focus more in detail using the focused collection of No answered Self-Assessment questions with its best practice descriptions. The respondents held the discussion meeting associated with the assessment team, and found the focusing point of the potential target best practices. The respondents found the focusing points, from the assessment team, with the knowledge of the dependencies among the best practices. This focusing began considering each best practice to be eliminated what the organization have already been achieved, or to be assessed what the organization thought it was a latent or clear issue. And also selecting the best practices to be assessed in the comprehensive assessment, the team considered that there are the dependencies among the best practice derived from the relationship of the Project management processes and the SMCI stages. The comment of the focusing was written in the column to clarify the reason and the status of it for the current organization. This table shows a density distribution of the organizational maturity. The team should decide the direction of following assessment and improvement from the higher density rated area to the lower area. The decision suits the organization's real situation and balancing efforts of implementing OPM3® Cycle against the organization's strategy.
Step Two Comprehensive
This sub-step conducted based on the description of OPM3®KF. The output from the previous sub-step was used to the comprehensive assessment to confirm the existence of their capabilities using the improvement planning directory and the capability directory.
Step Three
After assessing every pre-collected capability with its outcomes, the lack of the confirmed capabilities was collected in a table for scoring various perspectives by the respondents. The perspectives were decided based on generally used factors. More than one respondent scored the capabilities within 1 to 5 of its score range. The score was calculated and shown using graphic charting with a mapping. The mapping chart figured out the priority with the scored capabilities conformation (Exhibit 2). The best practices were prioritized and selected based on those charts for following improvement planning.
Exhibit 2 – The Mapping Chart Based on Scored Capabilities
Those charts shown the key process/ best practices which the organization should consider for their improvement planning.
The Best Practices in or near the right upper window were collected, deployed, and presented using graphic on those capabilities for re-recognizing each context. The sequences and the dependencies among collected Best Practices revealed and discussed to categorize those contexts for planning the improvement plan with effective and efficient efforts, Exhibit 3 shows those overall views to be considered for planning. The paths, the team calls the maturity paths, showed the sequences of that the organization goes along to their higher maturity degree. The same column level capabilities included the context to be preferred to group on its improvement planning (Exhibit 3).
Exhibit 3 – The Maturity Path Diagram with Grouped Capabilities
The improvement projects were decided by the grouped capabilities that could be implemented at the same time. Then, the organizations are implementing there improvement plans to achieve their desired Best Practices.
Conclusion
Through the pilot assessment, it is confirmed that OPM3® is very helpful for organizations in finding the focusing points to develop a organizational project management maturity improvement plan, aligning with the organization's strategic objectives, effectively and efficiently. The tools to find the focusing points for developing an improvement plan using OPM3® are proposed and validated through the pilot assessment. The tools include the methods of scoring and evaluating the answerers provided by an organization in answering assessment questions and mapping chart for evaluating the focusing point. The sequences of the dependencies among the Best Practices and the Capabilities are also important in focusing and grouping the point for improvement. Tools to visualize the dependencies and to help the grouping are also proposed and their effectiveness is confirmed. Each group may initiate an improvement project.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the organizations for accepting the implementation of the pilot assessment and also special thank M. Seo and K. Shimizu for their encouragements of this conduct. We would like to thank the project management institute, Japan chapter and its OPM3® maturity research group for research assistance, and also thank our team members, K. Takahashi and M. Oguchi, for contribution to conduct the pilot assessment and great discussions.