This analysis provides an overview of benchmarking in project management in different industries. Different industries face different obstacles in regard to project management. A construction project will tackle tangible and physical spaces while an IT project will reside more in an intangible and uncertain space. Because of these differences project management is difficult to compare across different industries.
Benchmarking
Project Benchmarking
Different industries face different obstacles in regard to project management. A construction project will tackle tangible and physical spaces while an IT project will reside more in an intangible and uncertain space. Because of these differences project management is difficult to compare across different industries. Therefore benchmarking must be constructed in each industry individually so that project managers can compare their projects to metrics that are relevant to their particular industry. For example, metrics from the telecommunications industry might not be relevant to the construction of a hospital. This analysis will provide an overview of benchmarking projects to various industries and the construction of industry standards that can be useful to help guide projects.
Benchmarking
Project management can benefit greatly from the construction of best practices. These best practices can be incorporated into a process known as benchmarking. Hasbro Children's Hospital in the early 1990s benchmarking "best-in-practice" pediatric facilities was used in which the planning team visited a number of notable children's hospitals, and then shared findings with other teams; Hasbro's success at incorporating the best processes resulted in the hospital becoming a benchmark partner for other institutions (Zwikael & Globerson, 2006).
Benchmarking can be further fined tune to specific organizational functions. For example, the benchmarking of engineering productivity can assist in the identification of inefficiencies and thus can be critical to cost control and as a result a metrics system has developed the Engineering Productivity Metric System (EPMS) composed of a series of hierarchical metrics with standard definitions suitable for measuring engineering productivity at various levels (Liao, et al., 2012). However, while the EPMS can be used to assess engineering productivity at multiple levels within a discipline, it cannot produce an overall project level productivity measurement due to the underlying method of defining productivity.
There are also many specific benchmarks that can be applied to specific IT functions. One study investigated a methodology used for managing Information Technology (IT) projects in public organizations (HERMES) is improved by comparison with a context-specific project management methodology (CASSIS) (Renault, et al., 2010). Benchmarking is used as a mean to identify gaps and improvements for the HERMES methodology and the authors started the benchmarking by mapping the two methodologies in order to identify equivalence between major components of each methodology. By continuing to refine the benchmarking techniques to specific industries, project managers can have a metric system that can effectively guide them through many aspects of the project lifecycle and management in general.
For larger organizations that conduct several projects simultaneously, benchmarking can be a key management tool for a project management office (PMO). PMO design differs greatly, certain key characteristics, responsibilities, and tasks are very similar and successful PMOs take on responsibility for different project-related functions and core tasks related to development of shared methodology and processes for handling of projects, training and competence development within project management, proposing of new projects, and quality assurance of projects; the success of the PMO is related to ensuring the necessary authority of the PMO, real organizational authority as well as academic and social credibility, top management support, and that the PMO covers true needs in the organization (Andersen, et al., 2007).
For some projects it is difficult to find a source to use as a benchmark; especially for large-scale development projects. Due to high level of risk associated with large-scale development projects, the traditional risk management approach, which assumes that risk can be predicted and budgeted early on, is not adequate for application in the context of these projects because each large-scale project has a high level of uniqueness that renders benchmarks from databases generated out of previous projects obsolete (Baydoun, 2010). Therefore risk management systems are difficult to benchmark and must be handled in more of a reactive approach that attempts to streamline the response to the various risks that can emerge as opposed to being able to proactively identify all of the possible risks due to the complexity and amount of risk exposure that is involved.
Despite the many aspects of benchmarking that is industry specific, there are others that can apply to virtually any project. One example of this is how a project team handles change orders. Change orders are ubiquitous in most projects whether they are formal or informal. There have been many empirical suggestions as to how to manage changes for best project outcomes, but this research is specifically aimed at exploring the relationship between project characteristics and the implementation of project change management best practices (PCMBP) (Yi & Sang-Hoon, 2009). Using the best practices from change management can assist project managers to adapt PCMBP to their specific set of project characteristics so that they will be better able to develop and administer their project execution plans.
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