Guide to Using the Organizational Project Management Capacity Assessment Tool

Project management exists in a broader context that includes investment program management, investment portfolio management and the project management office.

Frequently there is a hierarchy of a strategic plan, portfolios and programs of projects in which the investment programs, consisting of several associated projects, will contribute to achieving a strategic plan ¹⁰.

This knowledge area is of particular importance to organizations that have complex investment portfolios and competing priorities.

The questions in this category are designed to establish the degree to which an organization focuses on ensuring that investment projects are approved, resourced and sustained.

Senior management (i.e., directors general or equivalent) could provide an overview of an organization’s approach to operationalizing its strategic plan.

Program directors or the equivalent could provide insight into how individual components of the strategic plan are operationalized and what the roles of programs and projects are.

Project management offices and program directors or the equivalent could provide insight from the perspective of being responsible for the projects whose output are expected to align with strategic objectives.

References include the departmental investment plan, Program Alignment Architecture, departmental strategic plan, Report on Plans and Priorities, investment governance records of decisions, business cases, and investment portfolio progress reports.

A low score in this area is a likely indicator that an organization may be challenged with respect to:

• Focusing on the investment portfolio of programs and projects undertaken within the organization.
• Ensuring that investments align with departmental priorities and strategic outcomes.
• Optimizing or realizing benefits through prioritizing and allocating resources to projects according to their value to strategic outcomes.

This category indicates of the degree to which an organization as a whole supports project management through alignment of corporate systems with project lifecycles, provision of standard project management tools, project management training and career progression.

Providing integrated support to project management throughout the organization lowers the risk of poor project delivery.

This area increases in importance as an organization’s projects increase in complexity, cost, scope, potential risk, number and breadth of stakeholders or operational impact.

Senior project executives, project management offices, and project managers could provide insight into the importance and support for key areas including:

• Decision-making strategies and governance structures;
• Project management direction within the organization;
• Inter-project and cross-organization communication; and
• Project culture.

References include the organization’s project lifecycle methodology, framework or model, governance model (referenced in project management plans), corporate system reports of project information, human resources plans related to project management, and training curricula.

A low score in this area indicates that the organization may not put adequate emphasis on overall support for project management. An organization that frequently undertakes complex, higher risk projects that have considerable horizontal scope may have greater challenges with project control, communications and delivery.

This area focuses on an organization’s implementation of and consistent adherence to, standards and best practices and the pursuit of project management excellence.

Consistently deployed, stable and operational project management standards may be considered a key contributor to achieving a better rating in the core project management knowledge area.

As in the case of organizational support structures, this area increases in importance as an organization takes on larger, more complex and higher risk projects.

Project management offices and project managers would be the best positioned to demonstrate and provide evidence that standards are in place and the degree to which standards are adhered to.

Reference materials could include standards such as project management lifecycle methodology, the framework or model employed, and the organizational governance model, often referenced in project management plans or charters.

A low score is typically an indicator that the organization may not be well-positioned to deliver larger, more complex projects. Similarly, a low score could also indicate an organization’s inability to deliver smaller, less complex projects that have multiple dependencies.

A low score can mean that the organization is not predictable or consistent in its ability to meet established quality expectations. Moreover, project costs may be greater for a low-scoring organization due to the need to develop and implement rather than reuse existing project management infrastructure or collateral.

A high score in this area typically indicates that an organization is relatively well positioned to score high in the core project management knowledge area.

The management of project integration refers to the key management practices that set the framework for managing projects within the organizational environment from conception to close-out. These practices enable effective governance and accountability for projects and seek to ensure defined and measureable project objectives that can be communicated, monitored and used to inform corrective action. Integration management increases in importance as project complexity increases.

Project integration management is the ability to:

• Plan a project effectively through integrating the planning elements of scope, schedule, cost, risk, quality related activities, procurement, human resources and communications.
• Keep the project on track through aggregating and analyzing project information such as scope, schedule, cost and risk and taking corrective action when needed to remain in alignment with the plan.

Project integration maturity speaks to the ability of project sponsors and managers to analyze project information and make the best decisions to keep projects on track or to deal effectively with changes.

Consider, for example, a project making multiple changes to the project baseline, as requirements are being refined and costed. This scenario requires a high level of integration between scope management, work planning, costing, risk management, and stakeholder management.

A project management office or a project manager would be best positioned to provide insight to existing processes and structures that enable project integration such as governance structures and terms of reference (especially related to decision making), documented and approved team roles and responsibilities, project management plans, project management information systems, change control, mechanisms for monitoring and controlling project work and progress reporting.

Reference materials could include: existing project charters and project management plans, project progress or status reports, change requests, and governance meeting records of decision.

A low score in this area indicates limited interaction between project management processes, which together enable strong planning, monitoring, decision making and corrective action.

Scope management ensures that a project includes all the work and only the work required to meet the baselined requirements and expectations of the project client or sponsor.

A well-defined work breakdown structure is a key input to time (schedule) and cost management. Strong scope change control and management is critical to project success. Projects often fail due to scope that is ill-defined or constantly changing due to inadequate impact assessment and business-level decisions.

A project management office or a project manager could identify the relevant processes and deliverables that support scope management.

Reference materials could include a sampling of scope definition statements (in a project charter) and work breakdown structures or the equivalent (in the project management plan or captured in a project management information system). Review scope change requests, impact assessments and associated records of decision are also valuable scope reference documents.

A low score in this category may suggest weaknesses in the organization’s ability or discipline to either assign adequate resources to a project over its entire life cycle or to limit scope "creep." Typically, the result is that projects do not meet the user’s (client’s) expectations, are not delivered in a timely manner within budget, or a combination of these elements.

This may be due to inadequate cost and time estimation related to desired scope, inadequate scope definition, or inadequate scope control and business-level decision making regarding scope.

Time (schedule) management covers the processes required to ensure timely delivery of the baselined scope at the baselined cost.

In particular, this includes establishing a project schedule with individual tasks identified that lead to the completion of larger tasks and milestones. A key element of project time management is to assign adequate resources for completing individual tasks and the regular monitoring of task completion to ensure that the project is on schedule. The timely identification of delays in project progress according to defined project objectives and taking appropriate corrective action is a critical aspect of project time management.

A well-defined and designed project schedule is considered by many projects to be the "contract" against which every team member executes project delivery. As such, it is often seen as the basis for status reporting at all levels of management.

A project management office or a project manager would be best positioned to identify and provide evidence of processes, deliverables and tools that support of time management.

Reference materials could include a list of key milestones, project schedules and Gantt charts, records of decision related to schedule baselining a schedule control process, project progress reports and, if available, an earned value analysis.

A low score in this area indicates that the organization’s projects may have inadequate project time estimation methodologies and scheduling capabilities, or inadequate monitoring and control mechanisms and analysis and decision-making capabilities regarding ongoing time management.

Inadequate project time management capacity may result in:

• Projects not meeting delivery milestones;
• Increases in the duration of the project or the effort and cost required, or all three; and
• Cost overruns or the need to reduce scope to remain within time and budget constraints.

This category relates to the organization’s management practices and methodologies for cost estimation, budgeting and control that seek to ensure that the project objectives are delivered within the approved budget.

During project execution and control a project team needs to identify how changes in the project schedule and scope affect the cost of developing, using, maintaining and supporting the product or service (i.e. solution) being delivered.

A project management office or a project manager would be best positioned to identify the project cost control processes and tools that support cost management.

Reference materials could include samples of project funding breakdowns (ideally costed work breakdown structure work packages), cost management spreadsheets or the equivalent, cost estimation guidance documents, cost estimates and cost baselines, progress reports and, if available, earned value analysis.

A low score in cost management indicates an organization’s lack of capability or discipline to establish estimates and control project costs. Accordingly, projects are often delivered, but at a cost exceeding the original estimate, or are forced to either reduce scope or obtain additional funds to enable completion. This may in fact result in late delivery or curtailed scope or reduced support of business objectives (i.e., project outcomes).

Mature and established processes that support cost planning (estimation) and ongoing monitoring and control is essential for evolutionary and transformative initiatives and for projects that consume a significant portion of an organization’s available investment resources and capital ¹².

Risk management helps quantify risks so that informed business decisions can be made on how to respond to issues.

Managing project risk involves developing a risk plan that is integrated with the organization’s horizontal or corporate risk approach and reporting processes. Through this integrated risk management approach, potential project risks should be identified and analyzed, and initiatives should be undertaken to reduce the likelihood and impact of risks. For those residual risks that remain, risk mitigation plans should be developed accordingly. Ongoing project risk monitoring and control should produce regular reports to management to inform it of possible risk threats.

A project management office and a project manager or a corporate risk manager would be best positioned to identify an organization’s risk management strategy, risk management processes, and tools used by existing projects.

Reference materials could include a departmental risk management plan, a corporate risk profile, project risk management plans and progress reports to project governance.

A low score in this knowledge area may indicate that the organization does not recognize the importance of risk management or how to operationalize it. This means the organization will likely experience difficulty in:

• Planning for risk;
• Identifying and communicating risk impacts on cost, schedule and scope; and
• Resolving the impacts without considerations to cost, schedule and scope.

The level of effort devoted to managing risk should be commensurate with the level of complexity and risk of a project. An organization is expected to demonstrate that it is capable of managing the level of risk it is likely to encounter on an individual project.

Project quality management plays a key role in ensuring that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken and address both the management of the project and its defined outcomes.

An organization needs to demonstrate that quality standards and a means for measuring adherence to the standards are in place. For example, does the organization have the subject matter expertise in place to assess the quality of a given information technology deliverable?

A project management office or a project manager could identify the quality management standards or guidelines used within the organization or that are specific to a project.

Consider the role of the client or end user in all phases of the project, particularly during the requirements and testing phases.

References include a quality management plan (typically referenced in a project management plan), key performance metrics for the project, and the project's deliverables, testing and quality assurance strategies. Reference to performance metrics should also include complementary corporate documents such as the Report on Plans and Priorities, Departmental Performance Report, and the Program Alignment Architecture.

Quality standards and measures should ideally apply to the project deliverables (e.g., project management plan, schedule and progress reports) and the project end deliverables (e.g., new information technology system, renovated building, or organizational or program change).

A low score in this area may indicate that the organization does not have adequate quality standards or mechanisms in place to ensure that projects can deliver products or services that meet defined requirements in a manner that is satisfactory to the user (client).

Procurement management includes the processes and activities required to acquire products and services needed to deliver the project’s outcomes.

When procuring services or goods, project staff will need a very good understanding of the project scope, requirements, risks and cost constraints in order to select the right contractor and tailor the contract to the needs of the project.

Project managers and the organization’s procurement sector or branch could provide insight into the procurement strategy and the processes in place for vendor management.

Consider strategies used by the organization to mitigate risk in contractor selection and optimizing vendor fit with respect to their understanding of the organization’s business needs, requirements and the organization’s project management standards.

Reference materials could include sample requests for proposal or requests for information, contracts, contract management plans, change requests and records of decision related to contract change.

A low score may indicate that the organization may not have the skills or experience to:

• Select the appropriate contractor, products or services best aligned with the goals and objectives of the organization; or
• Provide ongoing oversight of a contract, ensuring that changes to the contract are undertaken in a way that best meets the objectives of both the project and the organization.

Ultimately a low score may indicate risk to scope, cost and schedule.

This knowledge area pertains to the degree to which the right skill sets and quantity of resources are in place to deliver the project objectives within the approved project scope.

A project management office, a project manager or a corporate human resources branch would be best positioned to provide insight to project team selection strategy and processes as well any organizational requirements for project staffing plans.

References include project organization charts and project roles and responsibilities (should be referenced in the project management plan, charter, staffing plans and departmental human resources strategy).

Project functional leads could be able to corroborate the roles and responsibilities pertinent to their functions.

A low score in this area indicates that the organization may not be well positioned for building, monitoring and managing effective project teams for a given project over its entire life cycle.

Thought should be given to the project’s organization and structure:

• Do team members report to the project or to organizational functions?
• Are team members dedicated to the project or are they being shared with other projects?
• Were human resources selected because they are available or because they have the right skill sets?
• Are needed skills hired or contracted from outside and, if so, is knowledge transferred back into the organization?

Developing the right project team is always key to meeting time and cost estimates for project work packages.

Communications includes the processes required to ensure timely and appropriate generation, collection, distribution, storage, retrieval and ultimate disposal of project information ¹³.

A mature project management team will very early on (as part of the project initiation phase) develop and implement a communications strategy for communicating project status and managing stakeholder expectations.

Communicating the right information to the right stakeholders will directly affect a team’s ability to manage stakeholder and organizational expectations, resolve issues, and render and implement decisions.

Project management offices or a project manager would be best positioned to define the communications strategy, plan, tools and processes in support of disseminating key project information such as milestone status, risk and issue management and performance.

Project staff and other project stakeholders could provide insight and evidence of their level of involvement in communicating and acting on project information.

Reference materials include project communication plans (typically referenced in the project management plan), performance and status reports, change requests, risk reports, and records of decision from governance committees or change control boards.

A low score in this area indicates that project management may not be effectively communicating project objectives, requirements, timelines or progress to project stakeholders and relevant governance bodies. This potential lack of communication will often delay a project proposal for endorsement or approval, prevent management from taking timely corrective action and potentially put the achievement of project objectives at risk.