Top Companies Show Higher Maturity in PM Training and Development

New research on PM Maturity underscores the contribution of training processes to organizational performance.

The recent study on project management maturity released by PM Solutions Research has a wealth of information in it that serves to support our long-held contention that better project management leads to better organizational outcomes.

Of particular interest to us here at PM College are the statistics related to training. These can be found in two segments of the report.

Training as a Key to PMO Maturity
One of the things that makes PM Solutions’ PM Maturity Model unique is the inclusion of three components that influence the adoption of project management practices (Management Oversight, the PMO, and Professional Development). PMO process maturity is broken down into six components:

•  Processes and Standards
•  Project Support
•  Project Management
•  Project Management Software Tools
•  Consulting and Mentoring
•  Training

Participants in the study rate their organization’s performance on each component on a 5-point scale that mirrors the five levels of maturity, from Level 1 (Initial Process) to Level 5 (Optimizing Process). The overall average score for the Training component of the PMO is 2.5. Not bad – above Basic, but not yet at the Institutionalized level.

However, when you look at the difference between PMOs in high-performing organizations (those that score in the top 25% of respondents on an array of organizational performance measures) the numbers tell a more striking story. High performers’ PMOs have Training processes that score at 3.4 maturity level, while the bottom 25% of respondents, the “low performers” score at only 1.8, well below average.

Now, there are two ways to look at those statistics. Either the high performers’ PMOs have invested more in training because they are high performers … or the more capable PMOs have focused more on training, thus helping their companies to become high performers – companies that score well on customer satisfaction, financial performance, and strategic execution, among other measures.

I think it’s the latter, and the other area of the study where training and development is measured backs me up.

Corporate Commitment to Developing Great Project Managers
As I mentioned earlier, one of the three components that influence the adoption of project management practices is Professional Development Management. This component comprises three process areas:

•  Individual Project Management Knowledge 
•  Individual Project Management Experience and Competence
•  Corporate Initiative for Project Management Development 

This last area is defined as “A process has been designed for ongoing improvement of the organization’s ability to enhance the PM professional track and opportunities.”

The average maturity score for this process area, for all respondents, is 2.4. But when we look at the respondents by organizational performance, it looks like this:
 

• High Performers’ Corporate Initiative for PM Development: Maturity Level 3.5
• Low Performers Corporate Initiative for PM Development: Maturity Level 1.7.

So, in those companies where the PMO has more mature training processes, we also see a corporate commitment to PM improvement. And, not coincidentally in my view, these companies also score highest in organizational performance.

If you needed an argument for investing more in project management training, here it is!