Organisational Project Management Maturity Model

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Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®)[1] is one of many project management maturity models. The model which is developed by volunteers and owned by the Project Management Institute provides requirements for assessing and developing capabilities in portfolio, program, and project management, helping organizations to advance organizational strategies through projects.

It contains three elements - a knowledge foundation, assessment, and improvement.

The purpose of the model is to enable organizations to assess and improve their project, program, and portfolio management capabilities. This standard is developed to bridge the gap between the organization’s strategic goals and individual projects. According to PMI the model benefits organizations irrespective of their size, geographic area or type of industry. Its sizable and customizable. It has three interlocking elements: Knowledge, Assessment and Improvement. Knowledge refers to the OPM3 foundation concepts, relevant Best Practices and terms. Assessment refers to a device to measure an organization against all the Best Practices present in OPM3. Improvement refers to the results concluded after assessment which identifies improvement areas

There are 586 best practices and on average 2109 capabilities (3-4 Capabilities per Best Practice ) in OPM3. It categorizes best practices and capabilities in two categories: Project management domain (Project, Program, Portfolio) and Process improvement stages (Standardize, Measure, Control, continuously Improve). This categorization helps in choosing high priority improvement areas from the big list of improvement areas. An organization Understands all the best practices and concepts of OPM3. Assess itself against all best practices and capabilities present in OPM3. Identifies improvement areas based on above results. The benefits an industry can get from it is knowing current maturity on project management capabilities, identifying improvement areas and presenting project management awareness among senior management. PMI offers two tools which can help an organization implement OPM3. The first is OPM3 Online which allows one to conduct a self-assessment, and the second is a product called OPM3 ProductSuite in which a certified Assessor conducts a much more granular assessment. Both tools have all three elements (Knowledge, Assessment and improvement).

The underlying assumption is that the greater the maturity, the greater will be the effectiveness and efficiency in implementing projects. Consequently, the greater the strategic organizational performance.