Over the years I’ve completed many project management maturity assessments for many organisations around the globe. A key part of these maturity assessments is not only the scoring and benchmarking provided but the list of recommendations that go with the assessment.
The recommendations are intended to improve the organisations approach to project management and ultimately to deliver tangible value to the organisation in a short space of time.
I keep a database of all the recommendations I have made to every organisation and this database currently runs to well over 1000 recommendations. Recently I sat down and went through these recommendations and compiled them into common themes. There were a lot of common themes appearing and what follows is the top 10 common recommendations made to organisations. It is worth noting that the average overall score for the organisations assessed was at 2.21 out of a possible 5.
Read through the following list of recommendations and see which ones would work for you.
- The current levels of resources available to the PMO are, at a minimum, retained, and that consideration should be given to increasing the resources available to staff to ensure that all the current, and planned, improvement works are carried out and fully embedded.
- Development and rollout of project governance and sponsorship training for all project executives and sponsors
- Ensure that all existing methodology documentation, processes and practices are known to all project management practitioners within the organisation. Consider implementing induction and testing methods to ensure awareness and consistent use of these documents.
- Develop a single list of all project management initiatives underway within the organisation (You would be surprised how many organisations do not have this).
- Develop and implement a robust lessons learned tracking, storage, retrieval and reporting system.
- Consider allocating greater delegated authority to project and programme managers to enable them to process minor change requests.
- Develop clear guidelines for how benefits should be quantified, valued, verified, tracked and reported back upon realization.
- Development of a common framework for stakeholder and communications management that can be used within multiple methodologies as appropriate. Provide staff training on stakeholder expectation management and effective communications management.
- Provide training to management and practitioners on effective cost management including estimating, monitoring and controlling, change control and forecasting used the earned value management method.
- Development of project management practitioner competency framework including defined competencies, defined roles and associated experience and credentials required.
If you have any questions about any of these feel free to get in touch and we can discuss further.
