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PPM Governance Maturity Levels Low According to Survey #pmot

The Resource Management Maturity Survey is in its last phase of data collection and we are approaching 500 responses. With this sample size we can share some statistically significant  response cross-tabulations in advance of the completion of the survey and final analysis. In a previous blog post we looked at how resource management maturity levels correlate with the number of resources being managed. In this post we will examine the maturity levels of PPM governance processes as defined by the Resource Management Maturity Model. We will then see if or how the maturity of governance processes is affected significantly by the number of resources being managed.

Here are the results so far for governance maturity levels reported by almost 500 organizations around the world. The specific question asked and the number and  percentage of respondents is provided below:

Which best describes the role, if any, of your resource and capacity management governance process?

Level 1: We have no formal governance body or process. (70; 15.7%)

Level 2: By default, the process is owned by a resource or line manager. (208; 46.7%)           

Level 3: A formal governance body is in place to provide top-down portfolio prioritization and oversee demand and capacity management. (132; 29.6%)

Level 4: The governance body leverages bottom-up, up-to-date project phase schedule information for capacity and demand management oversight and decision-making (27; 6%)

Level 5: The governance body leverages bottom-up, up-to-date project task-level schedule information for rigorous demand and capacity management oversight. (8; 1.7%)

The first thing to note is that 62% of all organizations do not have a formal governance process in place for their project and portfolio management initiatives. Either there is no formal process at all or the process defaults to a resource or line manager. For those organization’s that do have a formal process in place, the focus is on top-down portfolio prioritization and high-level demand and capacity management. Not surprisingly, typically governance does not try to incorporate bottom-up project resource information at the project or task level in its decision-making process. This is the right answer (the “sweet spot”) for most organizations and it doesn’t make sense for most project-intensive environments to evolve beyond Level 3.

I wanted to see if these general conclusions need to be adjusted based on the number of resources under management. Would we see maturity levels correlate with organization  scale if we split the sample into organizations with a relatively small number of resources (<100) and organizations with a relatively large number of resources (>100)? Specifically, I wanted to see if the 60% of the total respondents that represented organizations managing less than 100 resources, explained the overall low levels of maturity of PPM governance processes. What I found, is that while maturity levels are measurably higher in larger organizations, they are not significantly, or certainly, dramatically higher.

Here’s the actual data:

Thus, the conclusion that governance processes – for organizations of all sizes -- are in general not very mature and that there is a general need to progress to at least Level 3 is unavoidable.