Friday, October 12, 2007

Your Maturity Matters

It has been said that Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) is largely a discussion about maturity. The more mature your key processes, the better your IT governance. As an organisation’s IT governance processes mature, it becomes more successful at doing the right projects right.

As discussed in a previous article, where project management focuses on the execution of projects, PPM looks at ensuring that the right projects are selected in the first place and that there is a balance in the portfolio of projects that is congruent with the pursuit of the strategic goals of the organisation.

Now, an organisation cannot become mature over night. Maturity takes time and effort and must be done in a progressive manner. Obviously the organisation needs to know where it currently is and what direction it should head in to make this change.

QMA
The Quick Maturity Assessment (QMA) is intended to help in this regard. It takes the form of a two hour telephone survey where key people from the organisation, with the help of an expert, answer set questions about the way it operates in seven key areas.

The output of the QMA is a report that shows, amongst other things, how the organisation scores in these seven areas. This gives the organisation a sense of what its current maturity level is. The report also details which are the areas that would bring about the most advancement in maturity for the least cost. Obviously by tackling these first, the organisation gets the most benefit for the least effort.

The screenshot below shows the Future State Maturity graph from a sample QMA which maps the organisation’s current maturity and shows where it could expect to be if it was to implement the next level of the plan from the QMA report.


The QMA is a free service that Client Solutions is now offering. Please contact us if you want to talk about your maturity and getting a free QMA.

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