Chapter 6: Assessment

Overview

Organizations improve business and project management performance by analyzing three interrelated factors — people, processes, and practices. Some organizations tend to focus on only one of these factors and likely become very good in that area, sometimes to the detriment of the other two factors. However, as organizations become more project-based and pursue project management from an enterprise perspective, an integrated approach is needed to manage all three factors throughout the relevant organization. This highlights the need for assessments to ascertain current position and progress toward enterprise level project management goals.

In the project management environment, initial assessments are conducted to establish a baseline for the current state or conditions. In turn, assessment results facilitate the formulation of strategies and action plans to guide advancements or improvements in the current state or condition. Then, follow-up assessments are performed at intervals to measure improvements or advancements relative to the initial baseline state or conditions.

The term "project management assessment" appears to have some variation in meaning across industries and even among different sources within the project management discipline itself. For the purposes of this PMO function model, project management assessments are conducted to evaluate three facets within the relevant organization — competency, capability, and maturity.

This model also distinguishes between assessments and audits. Where assessments measure conditions, audits measure performance resulting from those conditions. (See the PMO "project auditing" function in Chapter 15.)

This "assessment" function enables the PMO to:

• Identify project management assessments than can be used within the relevant organization

• Evaluate conditions of project management competency, capability, and maturity.

• Develop strategies and action plans to improve project management performance

• Validate the use of project management standards and practices within the enterprise

This PMO function is another facet of project management oversight within the relevant organization. It represents the PMO's ability to influence growth and advancement of project management competency, capability, and maturity — ideally across the entire enterprise.