Project Management Capability Levels: An Empirical Study

Abstract

This paper outlines existing maturity models of project management and their underlying constructs. Organizations involved in software development in Sydney, Australia were interviewed about their project management practices and their responses analysed to determine whether different project managers used different levels of project management practices and whether the practices were in accordance with a process based maturity model. This did not seem to be the case, yet the data suggested that, as a possible alternative, a systems theory based approach might be more tenable. The overall conclusion, that a system theory based maturity model appears to be better correlated with organizational size and software development maturity than a process based maturity model, is briefly discussed and additional research is suggested that could investigate this novel conclusion further.

An Approach to Evaluating Software Process Adaptation

“…One of the principal developments in the software process domain has been the emergence of process maturity frameworks, with ISO/IEC 15504 [5] and CMMI [6] considered the most dominant [7][8][9]. Although process maturity reference frameworks are sometimes criticised for being cumbersome and costly [10], ISO/IEC 15504 [5] and CMMI [6] have been shown to deliver significant benefits for software development [11][12][13][14][15][16].…”

A framework for improving effort management in software projects

“…In this particular case, the CMMI requirements for one initiated SPI activity to seek out means to improve processes involved in software engineering, project and effort management included. This implies that a maturity model can be a force either to launch or maintain a higher quality level of project management, which was also concluded by McBride et al (2004) with a finding of a correlation between organizational process maturity and the number of monitoring techniques used by project managers. However, our research is rather a SPI activity initiated by CMMI than employment of CMMI, since CMMI considers effort management functions in a fragmented manner.…”

“…The organization in question, TietoEnator Telecom & Media, employ CMMI for assessing and improving its software development processes. However, capability maturity models such as CMM, CMMI, and ISO/IEC15504 (SPICE) are focused in the improvement of the technical processes of software development rather than project management (McBride et al 2004). CMMI does not provide direct tools to improve effort management rather than requirements for the software engineering process to consider effort management, including the requirement of organization's measurement repository, a managed process is institutionalized by monitoring and controlling the performance of the process against plans for performing the process and taking corrective actions (SEI 2002b(SEI , 2006, or the requirement of work to be arranged into a WBS (SEI 2002a(SEI , 2006.…”

“…Haapio number of studies have been conducted applying above mentioned models in software industry (e.g. Rautianen et al 2002, McBride et al 2004). However, studies describing improvement activity in software project effort management context are not very common.…”

“…It is also argued that maturity models provide a good basis for SPI, but also an excessive overhead if deployed in full, and on the other hand, do not take enough in consideration that different businesses and situations require different processes (Rautianen et al 2002). Furthermore, it is argued that maturity models may not be the best models to measure maturity in management processes such as project management, effort management included, as opposed to the technical processes of developing the software, since models have an underlying process model that view software development activities in an industrial production-like fashion, focusing attention on the flow of work from one process to another (McBride et al 2004).…”