1. The publication is about:
Project management maturity models (PM3) are generic project management tools, designed to measure the approximate balance state of organization’s capability and capacity to manage projects, programmes and portfolios. These tools are designed to be generic in form, free of technical jargons and structured at a level that is high enough for users to see the big picture and then adapt to tailor to their appropriate level of rigor thus serving diverse organizations.
Studies in the last decade found mature project organizations outperform competitors which are not. There is also a tremendous increase in PM education and certification judging from PMI’s phenomenal 5 year growth of 25% to 553,150 members. There is also a 50% growth in Project Management Professionals (PMP) to 887,937 PMPs based on the PMI TODAY (Dec 2018 issue) which has since pass the 1 million mark. This positive growth trend however has not translated into PM3 growth uptake. Neither has research shown improvement in project success rates. To understand this dichotomy, this book examines the impediments to PM3 adoption, the continuing alarming project failure statistics in a PM contextual framework and whether the knowledge gained can provide insights for solutions to improve organizational performance.
The study uses a mixed research method, involving interviews and surveys of 1,201 PM practitioners ranging from industries, commerce, academia to government. Participants were from 27 to 55 years of age where 623 (52%) had attended the PMP exam preparation boot camps and 578 (48%) senior participants attended the public PM intermediate and advanced level seminars/workshops conducted in Malaysia between 2011 to March 2019. To avoid the impediments experienced by past PM3 models, this study proposes DPM3 (Duplex Project Management Maturity Model) as a user-friendly novel approach to improve PM3 capability assessment following naturally occurring evidence at work to cater for different types and scale of projects. This provide an intuitive pathway that enable user friendly self-reflection, a shortcoming that has plague all the PM3s studied in this research. This systematic approach should augur well with the global trend of recognizing PM as a profession that entail onerous responsibilities from duty of care, due diligence, governance, ethical and in the appropriate use of international standards which together should mitigate project risk, reduce disputes and exposure to litigation, all of which contributes to organizational performance.
2. Impact to the research community:
- The book focused on why current PM3s have not been as successful as one would have expected and whether the following factors collected from the PM practitioners feedback (via interviews and survey) could have contributed to the PM3 low level of implementation and if so, what lessons could be learned from it.
- This book present the data, analysis and discussion that involved 10 personal interviews and surveys of 1,201 project managers who attended 89 classes over an 8 year period from 2011 to Mar 2019. Where 623 respondents (52%) attended the PMP exam preparation boot camps (project managers, 90% graduates with minimum 3 years in leading projects), 578 respondents (48%) are PM seniors who attended the public and in-house intermediate and advanced level PM seminars or workshops conducted in Malaysia. While the age groups from 27 to 55 years, expatriates and locals consist of 80% MNCs from GLCs and 20% Government and SME/SMIs. The participants were from industries, commerce, banking, insurance, management consulting, IT/ICT developers and implementers, construction, manufacturers, energy, universities (including post graduate levels), government and enforcement agencies.
- The book also included a new proposed Duplex Project Management Maturity Model that is user-friendly, functionally robust, adaptable and cost-effective to give PM practitioners a head start following naturally occurring evidence of project-process work.
3. Intend to use
The book serves as a guidance for project manager practitioners, organizations and stakeholders involved in a project to understand the levels of PM maturity level, to consider the use of Duplex Project Management Maturity Model (DPM3) to measure both the organizational maturity level and the organizational employees’ performance equation as well as a pathway to PM maturity that will subsequently enhanced organizational performance.