Project Management Maturity Key Best Practices: According

Project Management Maturity

Key Best Practices:

According to the text by Kerzner (2006), one of the most critical paths to refining key best practices is the establishment of a positive and effective company culture. It is the orientation of the organisation and its personnel on a broader level that will impact its project management style and success. This is why such strategies as project 'integration' offer a model for best practices adherence. According to Kerzner, "the integrated nature of PM Development Framework is a best practice. It forces the interaction between supporting elements of a successful Project Management career, and in turn a PM discipline that can best support customer projects and increase a company's financial position." (Kerzner, p. 462)

This denotes that key best practices are those which allow for a seamless integration of goals relating to internal operations, customer needs and the organisation's overall economic imperatives.

Key Elements of Change Management

The process of organisational change is inherently one driven by the demand to raise the project maturity level of the organisation in question. Change management generally must infiltrate every dimension of the organisation in order to bring about comprehensive and meaningful advancement of goals. This denotes a project management orientation toward driving change in areas such as resources allocation, alignment with strategic imperatives, visibility into project spending, applications and a balanced portfolio. (Weekly Notes, p. 3) These are the key elements that must be addressed as a project advances from its germinal phases to eventual completion. Under the umbrella of the P3M3 or OPM3 models that help to direct project maturation, the five levels of maturity that denote progress along the project continuum are, respectively, getting started, developing, complying, sustaining and advocating. According to our notes, "each of the levels represents discrete organisational capability based on the summary level characteristics." (p. 2) These denotes that these levels of maturation are essential to refining the key elements of change management.

DFCU Actions:

What was perhaps most valuable to the future of DFCU was the firm's attention to its internal culture. According to Kerzner, project management had largely been undermined at that juncture by a lack of accountabity for project execution, poor strategic planning, IT-driven rather than human-driven projects, excessive bureaucracy and limitations on individual empowerment. This meant that an important and effective change would take place as DFCU imposed project control through brand action and a sense of project ownership amongst employees. This has simplified both accountability and the ability to "focus more on identifying potential roadblocks and issues." (Kerzner, 285)