Immature adolescents learn from their mistakes and grow into fine, upstanding citizens of the world. Immature businesses might not be as lucky.
The concept of maturity, or adapting and refining business processes to ensure success, has taken root in the global business community and with good reason. Of almost 6.2 million establishments in the United States between 1998 and 1999, 713,000 were startups and 652,840 establishments didn't survive, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In other terms, 10.6 percent of business establishments “died”—that's only almost one percent fewer than were “born.”
Successful global businesses increasingly take survival and growth into their own hands by assessing their overall process maturity. Project management maturity is more specific: Think of it as your firm's sophistication in terms of consistent methods and repeatable delivery of project goals.
Measuring Up
While an eye toward project management can help most organizations, the required maturity depends on the type of business. Efficient processes are critical to project-driven organizations, but for creative organizations, tight processes may not be a priority, according to J. Kent Crawford, PMP, CEO and founder of Project Management Solutions Inc., a Havertown, Pa., USA-based consultancy. However, even companies focused on processes must continuously improve through new product development or business re-engineering.
Companies often invest in project management tools, thinking they are making strides toward an organized methodology, according to Crawford. “They spend money on software and think that project management must exist because they have tools,” he says. “They spend money on training and think project management must exist because staff went through a workshop. But without a grasp of maturity, they miss so much, such as portfolio management, integration of the methodology with corporate strategy and broad-scale enterprise integration.”
Fair Assessment
When should an organization start looking to advance? “You can prevent problems now or repair stuff later,” says William Ibbs, a management professor at University of California–Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif., USA. “And ‘later’ always costs more.”
Ibbs studied project management maturity at 54 Fortune 500 firms across five different industries and found a strong association between advanced maturity and better schedule performance. “In my experience, companies can reduce schedules by 20 percent when they move from one step to another,” Ibbs says.
Further, the research shows that companies with higher levels of maturity deliver portfolios with more efficiency. “Companies who improve their maturity by one step can improve portfolio predictability by at least one third,” Ibbs says.
Research by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa., USA, reinforces these claims. In SEI's study of six sample organizations, companies that measured maturity achieved a 35 percent increase in productivity, a 19 percent decrease in time to market and a 39 percent reduction in post-release defects, says Mike Phillips, program manager for Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI), the latest release in SEI's suite of capability maturity models. While focused around the broader concept of business maturity, SEI's various software-based models have influenced creation of project management-specific models.
The U.S. Department of Defense helped finance the development of SEI's initial CMM and uses it as a standard for selecting business partners. More large corporations are expecting suppliers and service providers to strive for continuous improvement.
Model Behavior
Most managers who are “maturity savvy” were turned on to the concept by models, which serve as objective scorecards to measure and track progress. Essentially, a project management maturity model allows you to look at your strengths and weaknesses, where you are and where you want to be.
In a maturity assessment, a company uses a model to review how well processes are performed, controlled and managed. A number of models exist—proprietary and public-access, general to specific—but they all function around the same idea: gauge the company's current maturity and detail requirements to advance.
At the lower end of most models, maturity is about consistent and repeatable processes. As you move forward, you want to link strategies with projects. The SEI model was the first to establish “levels,” but other models today use scoring or other equally valid assessments.
At the bottom end of maturity, levels make sense, but at the top end, a continuous rating system is ideal, says Terry Cooke-Davies, managing director of Human Systems International, Folkestone, U.K.
The better maturity models provide scales of measurement and/or “conditions of satisfaction” that can be assessed with a minimum of variability between different assessors, says Cooke-Davies. “If you design the scoring system correctly, it won't really matter because you can use fuzzy logic,” he says. “You can design ranges across a topic to get a more coherent picture.”
The best plan of attack? Trained internal assessors can lead the maturity process, and external assessors can help gain accreditation or refine processes, essentially validating what you've achieved. In the end, companies realize both the benefits and limitations of maturity. “A brilliant practitioner throws away the rules when dealing with specific situations,” says Cooke-Davies. “Flexible responses can deliver the best benefits.”
Start at the Beginning
Because strategic planning resides in the executive suite, management should drive the maturity process from the top down. “Executives are now recognizing the existence of the benefits and they want these benefits for their firm now, not later,” says Harold Kerzner, senior executive director for the International Institute for Learning Inc., New York, N.Y., USA. “Therefore, these models provide the executives with guidance rather than asking the executive to do it on their own by trial and fire.”
Start by choosing a model, or parts of different models, that will guide your maturity efforts. Because there are so many approaches, this is no easy task. The model must be easily understood across the organization, and without clear objectives, you'll never truly gain buy-in.
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