PROJECT MATURITY IN ORGANISATIONS

By
Erling S. Andersen
Professor of Information Systems and Project Management
Norwegian School of Management BI
P.O.Box 580, N-1302 Sandvika, Norway
erling.s.andersen@bi.no
and
Svein Arne Jessen
Professor of Project Management
Norwegian School of Management BI
P.O.Box 580, N-1302 Sandvika, Norway
svein.a.jessen@bi.no

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 Project Maturity in Organisations

Abstract

The paper presents research on project maturity in organisations. The purpose is to

develop an understanding of what project maturity is and to investigate the level of
project maturity in organisations today. The hypothesis is that project maturity develops
through a maturity ladder where the ladder steps are proposed to be project management,
program management, and portfolio management. Maturity itself is measured along three
dimensions. They are knowledge (capability to carry out different tasks), attitudes
(willingness to carry them out), and actions (actually doing them). The different
dimensions of maturity are further divided into sub-concepts, which should provide a
good understanding of the project maturity of an organisation. A questionnaire is
developed based on a preliminary understanding of project maturity, and an initial survey
has been conducted. The survey gives some support to the ladder construct, and shows
that attitudes and knowledge are stronger than the actions taken. Further work on the
questionnaire and surveys are proposed.

Key words: project maturity, maturity ladder, knowledge, attitude, action

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Introduction

The field of project management has extended its focus from study of a single project to
the way the company or organisation is using projects to achieve its goals. Gareis (1989)
has long ago coined the concept of the Project-Oriented Organisation (POO). The
specific feature of such an organisation is that the management of single projects, the
management of network of internal and external projects, and the relationships between
the company and the single projects are considered. Today projects are seen as far more
than solving of technical problems; they are also venues for mastering business and
change.

PMI is working on its OPMM (Organizational Project Management Model) (Schlichter,

2002). The aim of its work is to increase the domain of project management beyond the
delivery of the single project. As shown by PMI (2002), many maturity models exist.
Such models illustrate that there are differences among companies in their capability to
use projects as a mean to achieve objectives. However, many of these models are rather
limited in scope, having as their sole intention a description of the actual level of project
maturity.

Our research agenda is to create a deeper understanding of project maturity within

organisation. We will develop a theoretical framework for describing and understanding
project maturity and conduct an empirical validation of our approach. This paper presents
our approach.

The Ladder of Maturity

The concept of maturity indicates that there might be a development from one level of
capability to a higher one. The notion of a ladder of stages is imminent. Our research has
such a ladder of project maturity as its starting-point.

This is not the only way to present different stages of maturity. Gareis and Hueman
(2000) is rejecting the notion of a ladder: the argument being that a ladder model might
be too rigid. Instead he goes for a spider web presentation to allow for more
differentiation in describing the needed competencies in handling the specific processes
of the project-oriented organisation.

--------
Figure 1 in about here
--------

Our ladder of maturity is shown as Figure 1. The basic “layer”, or level, is Project
Management, or the management of individual projects. At this level project managers
can concentrate on individual team efforts in order to achieve predefined project goals
with predetermined constraints to time and resources.

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The next level is Program Management. The most common and cogent definition is that
a program is a collection of projects related to some extent to a common objective (APM,
2000). A program could be a new product development, an organisational restructuring of
the company or the implementation of an advanced software package in different
departments of the company. Program management is the effective management of all the
projects under the umbrella of the program.

At the third level, Portfolio Management, is the management of a number of projects and
programs that do not share a common objective. The issue is to undertake these
simultaneously (Buttrick, 2000). Only by relating the total effort to an overall strategy
can this level be mastered professionally. At this level the managerial approach must be
wider, and include a balanced view on how to distribute scarce resources between
competing desires.

We will hypothesise that an organisation in general is weaker – or less capable – on a

higher stage of the ladder than a lower. An organisation should be more capable on
project management than program management. Further it should be more capable on
program management than portfolio management.

The Concept of Maturity

Measuring “maturity” will perhaps always be more subjective than objective. Best
explained maturity within the business community must be a sum of action (ability to act
and decide), attitude (willingness to be involved), and knowledge (an understanding of
the impact of willingness and action). The triangle in Figure 2 is originally based on
research in consumer behaviour (Simon, 1955), later enhanced by Williamson (1985) and
March (1989) and empirically debated by Helgesen (1992).

----------
Figure 2 in about here
----------

The basic assumption is that modern societies are typified by their change ability and
their willingness to change. And change generates needs. Needs are in turn the
prerequisite for development. Most individuals in modern societies are in situations were
they continuously experience needs. The result is that they have to prioritise, and thus
decide. In reality the modern citizen is in a continuous decision process. Even not to
decide, is a decision, referred to as the “zero-alternative”, which is a decision in itself.

In many of these decision settings, knowledge will be the decisive parameter. But
knowledge alone is not enough. We also need to have an attitude to the problem, and to
the way the problem is supposed to be solved. Generally attitude is defined as a person’s
stable value-orientation, opinions or views in relation to the surrounding, or him or
herself. But today one has observed that often people act based on what they believe is
true, rather than what fact actually reveals about the truth. The true relationship between
action, attitude and knowledge is therefore today debated (Bronczek et al., 1980). The

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principle that belief is stronger than fact, so-called “perceived influence”, is also strongly
reflected in the System Dynamics modelling introduced by Forrester (1968) when
investigating the behaviour of social and business-oriented decision systems.

The traditional view was that knowledge comes first, then attitude, and finally action. But
there is today clear evidence that many people in the market place start with action, for
instance buying shares in the stock market, then become interested in shares, and then in
time accumulate knowledge of how the stock market behave. And a third variant known
from the open market place, is that attitude comes first, followed by knowledge, and
where the later action is just mechanical follow ups, for instance in household shopping
(Helgesen, 1992).

Transformed to testing project maturity, the idea is to ask questions about project
management knowledge, project management attitude, and actual project practice on the
different stages of the project maturity ladder. The purpose of the questions is to
investigate whether there are differences among central project stakeholders on the
willingness, the knowledge, and the actual use of projects at their level in the
organisation. In this way a more complete picture of the way project management is
adopted in organisations could come forth. This way of investigating a phenomenon
complies also with the way “corporate identity” is measured, in the sense that such
identity, according to studies made, can only be understood as a mix of communicated
symbolism, behaviour and action (Birkigt and Stadler, 1986).

The attitude, knowledge and action dimensions

We will investigate in more depth the three different dimensions of maturity.

An attitude is the mental position of an individual or a group of people. We need

concepts to characterise the different positions. We rely on the work of Hofstede (1982).
He has developed concepts, which are extremely useful in understanding national
cultures, but his four cultural dimensions can very well be used to describe attitudes
towards project work:

a) Attitudes towards risk and insecurity (“uncertainty avoidance”)

b) Attitudes towards power and responsibility sharing (“power distance”)
c) Attitudes towards hard and soft values (“masculinity and femininity”)
d) Attitudes towards co-operation (“individualism and collectivism”)

We use the concepts to study the attitudes towards project and phrase our questions in
such a way that if given a high score, one would assume this to be a result of a high
degree of project maturity in the organisation. Positive attitudes towards risk and
uncertainty, power sharing and responsibility, combining hard and soft values and co-
operation are taken as indications of mental willingness to undertake project work.

We might regard a project as a production process. Based on certain resources (the

inputs), certain ways of working (the work processes), results (the outputs) are created. A

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project-oriented organisation should have knowledge of each of the elements of the
production model as well as an understanding of the whole picture. That this model
seems to fit the project management approach well is positively confirmed (Antilla et al.,
1998). Our model studies four categories of knowledge:

a) Knowledge about suppositions (“the inputs”)

b) Knowledge about ways of working (“the work processes”)
c) Knowledge about desirable results (“the outputs”)
d) Knowledge about totality (“the holism”)

The purpose of the questions are the same as for attitudes above, in the sense that if all
four kinds of dimensions are given high score, one would assume this to be a result of a
high degree of project maturity in the organisation.

The action dimension was investigated by using the traditional hierarchical model for
organisational systems (Boulding, 1956), later revised by Mintzberg (1983) for corporate
decision-making. Four dimensions are used:

a) Action taken at strategic level (top management level, CEO level)

b) Action taken at tactical level (line management, program management, portfolio
management)
c) Action taken at administrative level (administrative support functions)
d) Action taken at operational level (project management, project participants)

Again, a high score is taken as a verification of a high degree of project maturity.

The questionnaire and the initial survey

A questionnaire has been worked out based on the theoretical framework outlined. It is
shown as Appendix 1. A scale of six choices, ranging from “disagree completely” (1) to
“agree completely” (6), was adopted to measure the responses.

The questionnaire has been tested on 59 middle managers and project managers attending
the Master of Management program in Project Management at the Norwegian School of
Management BI. No specific actions were taken to secure a random sample of Norwegian
companies. The purpose of this initial survey was primarily to test the questionnaire and
the concepts. However, the informants represent a generous cross-section of both small
and large companies, based in different locations, and from a wide range of industries.

Results and discussions

Table 1 shows the project maturity of the companies surveyed.

Table 1 Project maturity

Mean Std. Minimum Maximum Cronbach
deviation Alpha

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Project management 4.01 .79 2.33 5.67 .8769
Program management 3.93 .91 1.57 5.67 .8869
Portfolio management 3.90 .91 1.50 5.58 .8393

The results of Table 1 give indications of a ladder structure with higher requirements as
we move upward. However, the differences between the means are not statistically
significant. Paired Samples Test for difference in mean between project management and
portfolio management gives t=1.462 and sig. 0.149, which means that we do not have a
statistically significant difference.

The three concepts of maturity levels have high internal consistency as shown by the help
of Cronbach Alpha. The problem is a very high correlation between the three concepts:
all correlation coefficients are significant at the .01 level. The correlation coefficient
between project management and program management is for example 0.785. The
number of observations is too low to conduct a factor analysis to identify the variables
that explain the pattern of correlation.

Our conclusion is that more work is needed to see if we can measure more precisely the
three maturity levels. We have to study our questionnaire in order to hope for a sharper
distinction between the different levels. On the other hand there will always be a strong
correlation between the three levels for the more advanced organisations since the
capability measured at a lower level will still be relevant for a higher stage.

Table 2 shows the empirical results for the three dimensions of maturity.

Table 2 Dimensions of maturity

Mean Std. Minimum Maximum Cronbach
deviation Alpha
Attitude 4.07 .80 2.33 5.83 .8644
Knowledge 3.98 .84 1.75 5.75 .8947
Action 3.82 .97 1.50 5.33 .8709

Our results show the willingness or the ambitions as we have measured them are greater
than the knowledge needed and that the actual action or implementation of the project are
lagging behind. This is what might be expected in a relatively new field like project
work. There exist statistically significant differences between means of attitude and
action (t=2.686, sig. 0.009) and between means of knowledge and action (t=2.081, sig.
0.042).

Tables 3-5 study the different dimensions of maturity, broken down into attitude,
knowledge and action.

Table 3 Dimensions of attitudes

Attitudes towards: Mean Std. Minimum Maximum Cronbach
deviation Alpha
Risk and insecurity 4.19 .93 1.67 5.67 .6964

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Power and 4.06 1.03 1.33 6.00 .5301
responsibility sharing
Hard and soft values 3.85 1.01 2.00 6.00 .7737
Co-operation 4.18 .83 2.00 6.00 .5618

Table 4 Dimensions of knowledge

Knowledge about: Mean Std. Minimum Maximum Cronbach
deviation Alpha
Suppositions 3.80 .92 1.00 5.67 .6535
Ways of working 3.98 .96 2.00 6.00 .6438
Desirable results 3.98 .87 1.33 5.67 .5551
Totality 4.16 .93 2.00 6.00 .6224

Table 5 Dimensions of actions

Action taken at: Mean Std. Minimum Maximum Cronbach
deviation Alpha
Strategic level 4.09 1.21 1.00 6.00 .4969
Tactical level 3.89 .96 1.50 5.67 .7049
Administrative level 3.81 1.09 1.33 5.67 .4886
Operational level 3.52 1.21 1.33 5.67 .7245

We observe large differences between organisations as they are expressed through large
values for standard deviations and considerable differences between minimum and
maximum values. In this sense the questionnaire is able to distinguish between the
situations of the different companies and might be used by an organisation to measure its
own performance. Some of the concepts have a low Cronbach Alpha and need to be
looked into.

Each organisation has to look at its own results and find out where the organisation has a
great deal to gain in increased project maturity. The tables above identify areas for
general improvements. Projects need more focus on the simultaneous thinking of hard
and soft issues. The organisations need more knowledge and better understanding of the
starting-point of the project. The project practice seems to be at its weakest at the
operational level.

Further work

Further work might be of value to improve the questionnaire. The ladder of maturity
might be subject to more analysis. We might claim that the types of projects the
organisation is handling are of importance in determining the level of maturity. Projects,
which have as their objective to create fundamental changes within the organisation,
might be much more difficult to carry out than for instance construction projects.

The analysis could also be extended to cover a study of which factors explain the level of
maturity. We might hypothesise that attitudes, knowledge and action concerning change
in general are the overall prerequisites for developing a project mature organisation.

Project Maturity in Organisations 15/04/02 Page 8 of 14

References

Antilla, V., Artto, K. and Wallèn, G. (1998) ‘Project Management by Results’, Project
Management: Professional Magazine of the Project Management Association
Finland 4(1): 40-45.
Association for Project Management (APM) (2000) The Body of Knowledge, Association
for Project Management, Buckinghamshire, UK.
Birkigt, K. and Stadler, M. M. (1986) Corporate Identity: Grundlagen, Funktionen und
Beispilen, Verlag Moderne Industrie, Landsberg an Lech.
Boulding, K. (1956) ’General Systems Theory: The Selection of Science’, General
Systems, Yearbook of the Society for the Advancements of General Systems Theory 1:
11-17.
Bronczek, R. H., Holsapple, C. W. and Whinston, A. B. (1980) ‘The Evolving Roles of
Models in Decision Support Systems’ Decision Sciences 11(2): 337.
Buttrick, R. (2000) The Interactive Project Workout, Financial Times-Prentice Hall, UK.
Forrester, J. W. (1968) Principles of Systems, Wright-Allen Press; MIT, N.Y.
Gareis, R. (1989) ‘Management by Projects”: the management approach for the future’
International Journal of Project Management 7(4, November): 243-249.
Gareis, R. and Hueman, M. (2000) Project Managemnt Competences in the Project-
Oriented Organization. In Turner, J. R. and Sinister, S. J. Gower Handbook of
Project Management, Gower, Aldershot.
Helgesen, T. (1992) ‘The Rationality of advertising Decisions – Conceptual Issues’
Journal of Advertising Research 32(6): 22-30.
Hofstede, G. (1982) Culture’s Consequences. International Differences in Work-Related
Values, Sage Publication, Newbury Park.
March, J. G. (1989) Introduction: A Chronicle Of Speculations About Decision-Making
in Organizations. In March, J. G. (ed.) Decisions and Organizations, Basil
Blackwood, Oxford and N.Y.
Mintzberg, H. (1983) Structures in Five: Designing Effective Organizations, Prentice
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Project Management Institute (PMI) (2002) Existent Maturity Models
http://www.pmi.org/opm3/models.htm
Schlichter, J. (2002) PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model
http://www.pmi.org/opm3/OPM3%20Article%20PDF.pdf
Simon, H. A. (1955) A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice Quarterly Journal of
Economics 69(1): 99-118.
Williamson, O. E. (1985) The Economic Institutions of Capitalism, Free Press, N.Y.

Appendix

Table A The organisation of the questionnaire

Dimension Questions
Project management 1-12
Program management 13-24
Portfolio management 25-36

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Attitude 1-4,13-16,25-28
Knowledge 5-8,17-20,29-32
Action 9-12,21-24,33-36
Attitudes towards risk and 1,13,25
insecurity
Attitudes towards power and 2,14,26
responsibility sharing
Attitudes towards hard and soft 3,15,27
values
Attitudes towards co-operation 4,16,28
Knowledge about the 5,17,29
suppositions
Knowledge about ways of 6,18,30
working
Knowledge about desirable 7,19,31
results
Knowledge about the totality 8,20,32
Action taken at strategic level 9,21,33
Action taken at tactical level 10,22,34
Action taken at administrative 11,23,35
level
Action taken at operational 12,24,36
level

The questionnaire

1. All project participants are positive towards the demands their projects may place on
them
2. The organisation has a positive attitude to developing steadily better internal project
management competence
3. There is a positive attitude to the well-planning of all sides of project work, both
technical and human
4. There is a positive attitude in the organisation to the benefits of working across
disciplinary borders when running projects
5. The organisation has a clear picture of how to map resource requirements and risks
in its projects
6. The organisation has a good understanding of the way effective project work must be
organised and executed
7. The organisation has a good understanding of the complexity and difficulty in
defining good project goals
8. The organisation has a good general competence in initiating and executing projects
9. The organisation has an approved Project Handbook or manual for the way internal
projects should be initiated and run
10. There is a good interplay between the projects, the functional line managers, and
stakeholders outside the project organisation

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11. All projects have access to good IT support
12. All projects are executed in a professional manner, and they achieve their goals
within the planned time and budget
13. There is a positive will to attach organisational challenges through the use of
simultaneous or successive projects
14. There is a great will amongst managers to avoid bureaucratic structures in executing
project programs
15. The organisation puts a lot of effort into combining technical projects with projects
that enhance organisational development and competence building for individuals
16. Project managers and sub-project managers are not occupied by “ territorial” fights,
but concerned with working across projects and support other projects when
appropriate
17. The organisation has a good knowledge of the way development work and can be
better executed through project programs, i.e. several projects building on each other
18. The organisation has a good understanding for the need for ongoing projects to be
supplied by new projects, or being terminated, when new and better projects ideas
come up
19. There is a mutual understanding that own organisations often can achieve even better
goals and missions through establishing good project programs, i.e. combinations of
projects that depend and support each other
20. There is a good understanding of the benefits of having functional line work and
project work integrated in order to better achieve intentions behind larger R&D
efforts
21. The organisation has one or several project programs that are clearly defined and
well aligned towards the achievement of specific aims within the organisation’s
overall mission
22. The project programs in the organisation are executed in close co-operation between
project management and line management
23. The organisation has an effective administrative support system for the execution of
project programs
24. The organisation has introduced working methods that effectively support the
execution of its project programs
25. There is willingness in the organisation to create a project portfolio that include both
high-risk and low-risk projects
26. There is willingness in the organisation to involve all staff in the development of new
project ideas
27. There is willingness in organisation to involve all competent staff in the creation of
both “hard” (technical) and “soft” (organisational development or HRM) projects
28. There is willingness in the organisation to create a project portfolio with projects
across functional disciplines
29. The management has a good understanding of how to select projects for the
organisation’s project portfolio
30. The organisation has a good knowledge in how to prioritise resources between
projects within a project portfolio
31. The management has a good picture of how the project portfolio supports the current
and future goals of the organisation

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32. The management has a good perspective of which projects the organisation currently
are dealing with, and how they are connected
33. The organisation has a clear strategy for the selection and control of the project
portfolio
34. The organisation has good routines for both terminating current projects and
including new ones in their project portfolio if conditions so demand
35. The organisation has good methods and systems for reporting and communicating
between all projects within the project portfolio
36. The organisation has a Project Office, a Project Co-ordinator, or similar, who tracks
and overviews all ongoing projects in the organisation

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 Portfolio Management

Program Management

Project Management

Figure 1 The Ladder of Project Maturity

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 Attitude

Action Knowledge

Figure 2 The Three Dimensions of Maturity

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