OPM3 > OPM3 Standard

Many people still do not understand the Standard and the differences between its implementation tools. What are the differences between the OPM3 Standard, OPM3 Online and OPM3 ProductSuite? The answers await inside...

What is maturity? Can an organization be considered mature if it does the wrong things well? What if it does the right things in the wrong way? The OPM3 business standard helps organizations become more mature. But misperceptions still exist about what “maturity” means. This issue is not explained in the standard itself and has never been written about by anyone, so what better place to do so than here and now?

An assessment using PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model is intended to help organizations develop capabilities in project, program or portfolio management. Find out more about OPM3 assessments--and how you get certified--in this article.

gantthead ushers in a new era with its OPM3 department, and this welcome from subject matter expert John Schlichter provides an overview of PMI's organizational project management standard--and gives us a look at things to come.

We have seen a growth in the emphasis on acquiring, managing, sharing and exploiting information--and supporting individual and collective decision-making. In particular, more mature organizations have the ability to recognize situational change and to adopt the correct management approach required to meet that change: agility. Two standards provide ways of assessing and developing these capabilities--and both are explored here.

From Harris Corporation
Harris Corporation offers compelling insights into the impacts that process can have on culture and vice versa. This organization understood the four reasons why many organizations fail to transform their Project Management cultures, and avoided these pitfalls with their PMO working with OPM Experts LLC.

Leading companies are renewing their organizations to position themselves for the upturn in the market--and those that use OPM3 have an advantage.

A forthcoming book from publisher McGraw-Hill will explore the facets of OPM3, and you can help contribute to its development in the context of peer-production or user-developed content. What questions do you want the book to answer? What topics should be explored? Would you like to be featured in the book, and if so, what is your own success story using OPM3? Click here to find out how you can help.

From the Saudi Arabian MOI NIC
The history and culture of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia posed unique challenges to the Ministry of Interior’s PMO. Like Harris Corporation, they understood the four reasons why many organizations fail to transform their Project Management cultures, and avoided these pitfalls working with OPM Experts LLC. But as a counterpoint to Harris, the NIC’s case shows how the culture can be the driver of process deployment.

One approach to improve project management maturity is through a project management community of practice, an informal group of PM practitioners who share advice, tips, techniques, lessons learned and promote relevant topics in the project and program management domain.

In today’s economy, businesses must continuously improve processes and the PMO needs to continue to add value by maturing with the business. How do you know that your PMO and project management processes are effective? Who sets the standards and how do you compare your PMO to those standards? As our look at the Central Arizona Project case study continues, we see how OPM3 stepped in to help.

Recently we surveyed members of two OPM3 groups and asked them what they thought the generic reasons for using OPM3 may be, and how OPM3 should be used. We also asked them how various stakeholders within an organization may view these questions. Their answers provide interesting food for thought.

How mature is your organization, and how mature does it need to be? There are many ways to define maturity. Here is an overview of the major maturity models and how they might relate to the projects, programs and portfolios that you're working with.

We would like to hear from you! What do you think the objectives for using OPM3 are? Click here to find out how you can help.

From OPM Experts, LLC
Ask yourself what culture means, and you may find it difficult to state a clear and succinct definition, but it is likely that you can recall an organization in which you have worked that had a healthy culture, and just as likely that you may recall an organization that you would characterize as having an unhealthy culture. Why is that? Although culture is a many-faceted thing that may seem difficult to boil down into a sound bite, it is something that impacts everyone. The culture determines how people define themselves and their relationships with others, and greatly influences a person’s sense of self.

The building of capable project management processes and the transformation of a company’s project management culture go hand in hand. Project management offices and the standard known as OPM3 should play a lead role in accomplishing both.

As we enter 2011, it's time for a refresher--it's the perfect time to explore the cross section of views and perspectives about PMOs. It's the perfect time to see what others are thinking regarding the state of PMOs, and this article will focus on starting a PMO, avoiding PMO failure, trends and the future of the PMO.

At Central Arizona Project, the IT department had 89 projects with significant resource management challenges. Although it began with all of these projects behind schedule, over budget and with low quality, it corrected these problems with OPM3. This story is about CAP’s Information Technology department and its journey of project management improvement through PMI's OPM3 assessment model.

To help manage the ambitious project to simultaneously update its four standards, the Project Management Institute created a new position: the content integration analyst. Beth Ouellette was chosen to fill the role, and here she shares a first-hand account of the effort to “harmonize” the standards.

With an emphasis on harmony and cohesion, the Project Management Institute recently updated its four global standards — PMBOK, the Organizational Maturity Model, portfolio management and program management. Here’s a closer look at what’s new.

One of the most established standards organizations (and their pronouncements) is often missing from the IT governance conversation: the International Organization for Standardization. Did you know that the ISO has been very active in the governance and compliance space? Here is an update on the standards that you might find useful.

Are you familiar with the new Joint Framework IT Governance Standard, the first attempt to develop a universal standard that will work in Europe and the United States? This work in progress will undergo many changes and recalibrations over the coming years, but it's not too soon to familiarize yourself with its components.

Project management is becoming recognized on an international scale. In support of this, there are a number of efforts underway to promote a global view of how we think about, discuss and practice project management. But to what extent is project management a universal language? To what extent can it be? Or are we all simply sowing confusion as we use the same words to mean very different things?

Does OPM3 help to ensure that an organization’s brain is connected with its heart, hands and feet? Or is the project management maturity model simply feeding companies another flavor-of-the-month fad, long on theory and process but oblivious to the ambiguities and uncertainties of real project work?

The demand for qualified project managers, specialized knowledge and global standards shows no signs of abating, according to top education officials at the Project Management Institute, which is preparing to release findings from a major research study on the value of implementing project management.

Many organizations still struggle with keeping project portfolios organized and making hard decisions between competing projects. Here's some advice in using good portfolio management and organizational governance to cancel a project.

How can project management maturity affect EPM implementations in a government agency? You'd be surprised. By procuring and implementing EPM, government agencies are essentially shifting from a people-centered organization to a project-centered organization. The challenge for project managers responsible for these implementations is that the agency probably does not realize this. How should project managers address these cultural issues and help prepare an agency for a successful EPM implementation?

Testing is not the same as quality, and it’s not a replacement for it either. Our writer hopes to help you identify some ways that you can improve how you manage quality on your own projects--and hammer home that if you plan for quality in the first place, you won’t need to spend so much time fixing the things that have gone wrong.

Just calling a practice “best” does not make it so. But for many PM practitioners, the term “best practice” appears to represent the business practice equivalent of a “get out of jail free” card--wave it around enough, and critical thinking seems to be banished. It's time for a new outlook on this misused term and concept.

PMI has announced the impending launch of a new certification--a program management credential. The question needs to be asked…do we need another certification? And is this the one we need?

Welcome to the PMO! Does your Program Management Office have a plan for helping new project managers? More than any other function, the PMO varies hugely from one organization to the next--and even from one division to the next. That means that there will always be a ramp-up period for anyone entering as a project manager--and yet many PMOs make no allowance for this.

Establishing strategies with a sponsored project management office dedicated to overseeing their implementation within an organization can generate a stronger, more refined and professional business environment that is reliable and dependable--and thus more attractive to customers.