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Abstract
Despite the common expectation that organizational project management maturity (PMM) improves project management performance, current research offers little to support this argument. This study investigates the relationship between maturity levels on eight PMI knowledge areas and perceived organizational performance. A survey conducted with project professionals and engineers from 75 US organizations reveals a significant relationship between project maturity level and organizational performance. The study also shows that there is a great opportunity to improve the project management practices of manufacturing as well as service organizations.
1. Introduction
Project maturity, recently modeled as the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3®) by the Project Management Institute (2004) aims to integrate, assess and improve project management practices. The effects of a company's project management system and management's ability to execute projects successfully are recognized [13]. A 2004 survey of 200 respondents in 30 countries conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) concluded that the greater an organization's project management maturity (PMM), the greater the positive impact on overall project performance. However, there is no one optimum level of maturity that is appropriate for every organization [16]. Although we would expect that companies with more mature project management practices will have better project performance, the previous findings are conflicting. There is no evidence of PMM's contribution on organization success as a means of competitive advantage [9], [11], [14], [7]. These studies show the need for further research in project management maturity and how this relates to performance.
The purpose of this study is to determine a relationship between PMM and organizational performance. Organizational performance is an indicator of how an organization competes. Organizations with higher maturity levels are expected to be successful in terms of project performance as well as have a stronger competitive advantage in the market place.
2. Project Management Maturity (PMM) and Organizational Performance
Previous research in PMM's contribution to project success presents conflicting results: Ibbs and Kwak [9] demonstrated no statistically significant correlation between project management maturity (PMM) and project success based on cost and schedule performance. Jugdev and Thomas [11] could not find a correlation between process capability and project success of many maturity models. Mullaly [14] raised the concern of lack of evidence of PMM's contribution on organization success as a means of competitive...