Organizational Best Practices: How Do You Measure Up?

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  ProjectsAtWork  

Formal risk management, metrics and estimation, combined with organizational support, are the keys to successful projects, study confirms.

What capabilities represent the best-in-class in project management today? What are key levers in improving project management practices? And what are the leading indicators of an organization on the path to project management greatness? These are the questions that many organizations face as they contemplate the need to improve their project management capabilities, or the next steps required on their improvement journey.

Until the past few years, however, they are questions that could not readily be answered. While consultants and authors have offered intuitive or theoretical frameworks for how projects should be managed, there has been little concrete and objective information that identifies what the current state of practice in organizations really looks like. The Organizational Project Management Baseline Study conducted by Interthink Consulting has attempted to answer some of these questions and provide the project management industry with an objective picture of current capabilities.

Now in its sixth year, the OPM Baseline Study is an industrywide survey of organizational project management practices. The research is a public benchmark that has drawn participation from more than 550 organizations worldwide, …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.