Project Portfolio Management Maturity Modeling -

25Mar 0

Project Portfolio Management Maturity Modeling

“Maturity comes not with age but with the acceptance of responsibility. You are only young once but immaturity can last a lifetime!” -Edwin Louis Cole

The essence of an IT strategic plan is to align the IT department with the organization’s strategic intent, vision and business objectives in concert with the senior executive team. The goal is to develop a road map of initiatives and activities that will enable the organization to achieve the vision, and optimize the IT resource capability to deliver on the promised benefits and outcomes needed to accomplish the firm’s mission.

In April of 2000, Cirque du Soleil engaged Danielle Savoie as the first CIO of the famous Cirque and she placed the organization on a course of upward maturity by developing their first IT Strategic Plan. According to a CIO.com 2002 article titled “Rapid Deployment: IT at Cirque du Soleil”, Ms. Savoie delivered on her department’s strategic intent to streamline the Cirque IT infrastructure to provide a perfect show under the big top night after night.

So what does IT Strategic Planning and Cirque du Soleil’s accomplishments have to do with Project Portfolio Management Maturity Modeling? Everything!

When an organization starts down the road of maturing its IT department to execute the right projects more efficient and effectively, they have embarked on a form of Project Portfolio Management Maturity. They are addressing the questions: are we doing the right thing and are we doing them right?

Organizations are made up of individuals who will only change their behavior for one or two reasons: avoiding pain or going for gain. Pains that prompt an organization to pursue maturing their PPM capability are:

Lack of accountability regarding who owns the oversight of the IT portfolio.
Project investments are not aligned to the business objectives of the corporation.
Lack of standardized processes leading to project execution heroics.
Roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined which creates confusion within the organization.
Investments are approved regardless of critical information being absent.
Limited or no visibility into the portfolio performance.
Project outcomes are not verified to determine if the investment produce the expected return. (Try that with your 401K you’re expected to retire on).
Constrained resources are used sub-optimally due to lack of appropriate alignment and allocation.

One of the greatest challenges to Project Portfolio Management Maturity assessment is the lack of industry standardization. There are a number of recommended ways to conduct an assessment but no official methodology or process has been sanctioned.

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According, to James S. Pennypacker in his book “Project Portfolio Management Maturity Model”, there are 5 Levels of PPM maturity that an organization can use to assess its organizations PPM processes. They are:

Level 1 – Initial Process
Level 2 – Structured Process and Standards
Level 3 – Organizational Standards and Institutionalized Process
Level 4 – Managed Process
Level 5 – Optimizing Process

Each level is then subdivided into (6) six sections which are:

Portfolio Governance
Project Opportunity Assessment (Demand Management)
Project Prioritization and Selection
Portfolio and Project Communication Management
Portfolio Performance Management
Portfolio Resource Management

Gartner developed the Five Progressive Levels of the Maturity Model which is displayed below.

Source:
Gartner (April 2012)

Also, in their book, “IT Portfolio Management Step-by-Step,” Maizlish and Handler state that, “The overall goal of IT portfolio management is to optimize the risk reward trade-off when allocating resources in support of organization objectives.” Their PPM Maturity Model follows the steps below:

(0) Admitting
(1) Communicating
(2) Governing
(3) Managing
(4) Optimizing

Maizlish and Handler’s maturity model is further sub divided into the following section:

Projects
Application
Infrastructure
People
Process
Information

Organizations embarking on a Project Portfolio Management Maturity Modeling journey need to select a maturity model that is aligned to their company’s culture. In my experience, this is more important than the specific vendor model chosen to perform the assessment. In the end, the executive leadership’s goal is to impact the following areas of their organizations:

Project Server can be configured and modified to enable an organization to align it's project investments with its strategic objectives. Whether on premise or online, Project Server can provide: