Project Management Offices as inducers of project management maturity

Abstract

As a result of the importance that projects have been acquiring within organizations, two subjects have been appearing frequently in specialized públications in project management: Project Management Offices (PMOs) and organizational maturity models. Project Management Offices are an element that helps companies to manage their undertakings better through the implementation of a formal structure, whether by helping them to minimize the associated risks, whether by reducing the inherent conflicts between projects and operations or even by providing appropriate methodologies, etc. The maturity models help companies understand their project management competency levels and establish strategies for ongoing improvement, with a view to attaining their objectives through projects. However, there appears to be a gap where the interrelation of these two subjects is concerned, as they are not being treated in a persuasive and appropriate manner by the specialized literature. Given these issues, this study attempts to fill this gap, presenting the results of a survey that investigated the degree of maturity of organizations and their relation with Project Management Offices. This work tried to check whether or not the existence of Project Management Offices induces organizational maturity where project management is concerned. The methodology used was an informal survey, whereby 86 representatives of companies situated in Brazil were heard (77% of them being project managers). They belonged to different sectors, especially industry (30%) and information technology (17%). The outcome was a fairly rich array of information on the two subjects under examination.