Project Maturity Review and Uplift Against Global Best Practice Framework

Exent improved an Aged Care client’s Project Management Office (PMO) capabilities in a rapid 4-week assessment. The review highlighted areas for improvement, and Exent presented an actionable 14-week roadmap. The plan addressed challenges in project management, scope management, and organisational planning, aligning with global best practices. The client received the findings well, fostering enhancements in their PMO efficiency.

CHALLENGE

Our Aged Care client had an established Project Management Office and internal Project Management capability. An internal review of their PMO capability identified an opportunity to improve the quality of project execution in the organisation.

In order to assess and uplift their internal project capability, they engaged Exent to undertake an evaluation of their PMO, their Project Management team, and related processes, templates and frameworks. Exent was tasked with applying our benchmark reflecting global best practice PMO standards and to highlight areas for opportunity in practices, methodology, and governance and controls followed by a detailed implementation roadmap of PMO capability uplift.

APPROACH

Exent took a systematic assessment approach using the Project Management Institute (PMI)’s Organisational Project Management Maturity Model (OPM3) Standard augmented with two Exent-internal frameworks. This assessment was conducted by a certified OPM3® Assessor.

The engagement applied a three-step approach to the delivery of a project maturity assessment.

PHASE 1 focused on aligning and educating the organisation on the framework that would be used for assessment to ensure it was well understood, and that where possible incorporate any organisation‑specific quality metrics.

PHASE 2 was an evaluation of the current PMO maturity of the organisation focusing on workshops, self‑assessments, and interviews to benchmark the organisation’s current capabilities relative to best practice. Gaps are identified and raised and areas of particular interest are investigated with follow up sessions.

PHASE 3 presents the findings back to the organisation incorporating the results from the benchmarking and a clear roadmap outlining clear next steps and ongoing improvement opportunities for PMO improvement.

OUTCOMES

The assessment was rapidly completed in under 4 weeks and produced an actionable roadmap and set of findings that was well received by executive and board.

The project identified divergence between multiple areas of perceived and actual maturity, in particular areas relating to project frameworks. Multiple areas reviewed yielded consistent maturity and good performance relative to benchmarks, however, there were areas on project planning, scope management, and organisational planning that were identified as areas for improvement.

Exent prescribed a detailed and actionable plan to remediate these challenges through a 14-week improvement roadmap. We documented forward-looking guidance that focused on the implementation of global best practice standards, built out procedural documentation, and addressed training of the PMO team.