Project Management Case Studies, 7th Edition

Part 18ASSESSING PROJECT MANAGEMENT MATURITY

The project management landscape now contains a variety of maturity models whereby a company can assess how mature they are in project management and the growth of improvement. During competitive bidding situations, it is not uncommon for the customer to ask the contractors to prepare a report describing their level of maturity and the contributing factors.

Decisions must be made as to which people will participate in the assessments and how the information will be evaluated. For some contractors, the disclosure of the results of the assessments may create issues that need to be resolved.

Simone Engineering Company

Simone Engineering was an engineering component manufacturing firm as well as an engineering consulting company. Simone had an excellent reputation for stakeholder relations management practices, product quality, and customer service.

On all projects above a certain dollar value, sponsorship was performed by the executive levels of management. The executive sponsors were responsible for stakeholder relations management and, on some projects, only the sponsors handled direct communications with stakeholders and clients. On these projects, project managers met with the stakeholders and clients only during the stakeholder/client interface meetings.

Even though project management existed in the firm, and worked reasonably well, most of the business decisions on projects were made by the project sponsors. Project managers ...