Office Support

  ProjectsAtWork  

A project office maturity model can plant the seeds for senior management support.

Your senior management supported education and training. But when you tried to implement the best practices you learned, you found out you were on your own. Melvin B. deGuzmán, Ph.D., PMP, president of Systems Management International, sees this scenario often. He says that if the organizational culture doesn't support what the project manager is trying to implement as industry best practice, you have a standoff. In this particular standoff, senior management and customers may prevail. But in the end, everyone loses.

A maturity model, deGuzmán says, can create a more nurturing environment in which you and your enterprise can both win.

How do you define a maturity model for project offices?

The project office maturity model is the framework that allows organizations to establish and develop a project office designed to support project managers and project stakeholders.

Senior management and customers need to see the return on investment and value of a project office. One way to demonstrate value is to describe the staged growth of a project office from a cost center to a mature project office characterized as a profit center. Without this framework, project offices will remain ineffective and eventually collapse.

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