5 things your organization can learn from taking a PPM maturity assessment

As an organization grows, the path from strategy to execution becomes more complex, with more initiatives, projects, teams, people, processes, and timelines that all need to be managed efficiently. When a project misses the mark, how do you pinpoint what went wrong, take corrective measures, and ensure that it doesn’t happen again? A project and portfolio maturity assessment can help bring clarity by identifying both gaps and opportunities. 

Here, we define what a PPM maturity assessment is, what it measures, and five vital things your team can learn from your results.

What is a PPM maturity assessment?

A PPM maturity assessment is a systematic evaluation of an organization's ability to manage its projects and portfolios from the lens of people, process, and technology. It involves measuring an organization's PPM practices, often gathered through a self-administered questionnaire, against a set of best practices to determine its level of maturity, i.e., its maturity score. 

What does a PPM maturity assessment measure?

A PPM maturity assessment is designed to evaluate how your organization is set up to handle projects, programs, and portfolios against key PPM disciplines, a.k.a PPM jobs-to-be-done. These disciplines are Strategic Planning, Demand Intake, Portfolio Prioritization, Project Sourcing and Planning, Project/Work Execution, and Portfolio Reporting. The results from each discipline are compiled into the overall maturity score. 

When should your organization take a maturity assessment?

Assessing your organization’s PPM maturity is a useful exercise no matter what stage of growth or level of maturity you’re in. High-performing organizations continuously measure their PPM maturity, as the exercise not only exposes gaps that prevent their teams from performing at their best, but also provides a roadmap for improvement. 

1. How well you’re performing across key PPM disciplines

Organizations tend to have varying maturity levels across the different disciplines we mentioned earlier. A maturity assessment will help you dive deeper into each one of these and gain a granular understanding of how your organization is delivering against them.

2. How to benchmark your organization against industry peers

A PPM maturity assessment allows you to benchmark your PPM practices against industry standards and peers. This benchmarking can provide valuable insight into how other organizations are approaching PPM and help you identify areas where you may be falling behind the curve.

3. Understanding of your strengths and weaknesses

Your assessment results will help clarify areas where your organization is strong, as well as any gaps across people, processes, and technology that are hindering effective execution and creating risk. You’ll also be better positioned to identify and address issues before they turn into risks.

4. Identifying which process improvement initiatives to prioritize 

Lower maturity levels can impede change. You can use your assessment results to focus on areas of low PPM maturity and develop a targeted strategy for incremental improvement that includes realistic and measurable goals. This data can also help you make the case for needed investment into team training, process standardization, or new technology. 

5. How to better align with strategic objectives

An assessment can help illuminate areas where your project portfolios are not truly aligned with your organization’s business goals. A true business case for maturity lies in the ability to prioritize and balance projects so that everyone is working to fulfill strategic goals and not waste time and resources on low-value, busywork.  
 

Free ebook: Fast Track Your Project and Portfolio Management Maturity

Optimizing your project and portfolio management is the best way to equip your organization to move faster and respond more strategically to disruption. Smartsheet has designed a 10-minute PPM Maturity Assessment that provides a personalized score based on three levels of maturity: Initial, Defined, and Optimized. To learn more about the Smartsheet PPM Maturity Model, including insight into each level of maturity, download the free ebook Fast Track Your Project and Portfolio Management Maturity.