OPM3

The Organizational Project Management Maturity Model or OPM3 is a globally recognized best-practice standard for enterprise improvement published by the company Project Management Institute Incorporated (PMI). OPM3 provides a method for organizations to understand their Organizational Project Management processes and measure their capabilities in preparation for improvement. As a maturity model, OPM3 then helps organizations develop the roadmap that the company will follow to improve performance.

History

In 1998, the Project Management Institute Inc. (PMI) chartered the OPM3 Program to develop an Organizational Project Management (OPM) Maturity Model to be a global standard for Organizational Project Management (OPM). During development, a team of volunteers analyzed twenty-seven existing models and deployed surveys repeatedly to 30,000 practitioners.[1] The concept of maturity model had been popularized through the “Capability Maturity Model” or CMM for software development that was created by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University between 1986 and 1993. The volunteer OPM3 model review team reviewed CMM and other models to understand the scope of each model, capabilities of each model, methodology for conducting assessments against each model, each model's structure, and each model's implementation procedures. The analysis concluded that existing models left many important questions about Organizational Project Management (OPM) maturity unanswered and that the team should proceed with the development of an original model through the sponsorship of PMI Inc.[2]

The project team used a brainstorming technique to facilitate the identification of elements of Organizational Project Management (OPM) in such a way that no single person could dominate the process. Participants were invited to suggest elements that constituted maturity in Organizational Project Management (OPM). Such elements were refined as testable capability statements, consolidated, and eventually organized into groups called OPM3 best practices. Each OPM3 best practice statement denotes a group of OPM3 capability statements. OPM3 capabilities are the testable statements of the OPM3 standard, not the OPM3 best practices, and this distinction has led to the development of different kinds of products (described below under Controversy). To ensure alignment to PMI's "A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge" standard, processes from this PMI standard were incorporated in the first edition of OPM3 (see Contents below) published in December 2003.

Upon release of OPM3, the user community expressed interest in the development of supporting products and services for companies that were adopting the model. PMI Inc. responded by developing OPM3 Online, a web-based database that allows users to search OPM3 best practices, conduct rudimentary assessments against the model, and serve as a reference when implementing improvements. Shortly thereafter, PMI Inc. also created the OPM3 ProductSuite, a set of certifications and software tools that enable service providers with more powerful diagnostic and improvement tools.[3]

Following the typical PMI Inc. standard development lifecycle, the OPM3 Second Edition team was formed in 2005 to update the standard based on experience in the field and further aligning with other PMI Inc. standards. The team worked with PMI Inc. to publish the second edition of the standard in December, 2008. OPM3 Second Edition aligns with the 4th Edition of A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, the second edition of the Standard for Program Management, and the second edition of the Standard for Portfolio Management.

Contents

OPM3 covers the domains of Organizational Project Management, the systematic management of projects, programs, and portfolios in alignment with the achievement of strategic goals.[4] The three domains are Project Management, Program Management and Portfolio Management. OPM3 uniquely integrates these domains into one maturity model.

OPM3 offers the key to Organizational Project Management (OPM) with three interlocking elements:
•Knowledge - Learn about hundreds of Organizational Project Management (OPM) best practices.
•Assessment - Evaluate an organization’s current capabilities and identify areas in need of improvement.
•Improvement - Use the completed assessment to map out the steps needed to achieve performance improvement goals. As with other PMI Inc. standards, OPM3’s intent is not to be prescriptive by telling the user what improvements to make or how to make them. Rather, OPM3 provides guidelines regarding the kinds of things an organization may do in order to achieve excellence in Organizational Project Management. Consultants who are certified by PMI Inc. in OPM3 ProductSuite are trained to help organizations to identify and choose among improvement options based on strategic priorities, benefits, costs, technical prerequisites, and other factors.[5]

Benefits

OPM3 is designed to provide a wide range of benefits to organizations, senior management, and those engaged in project management activities. Some of the benefits derived from using OPM3 are as follows:
•Strengthens the link between strategic planning and execution, so project outcomes are predictable, reliable, consistent, and correlate with organizational success.
•Identifies the best practices which support the implementation of organizational strategy through successful projects.
•Identifies the specific capabilities which make up the Best Practices, and the dependencies among those Capabilities and Best Practices.

Controversy

Debate exists within the user community regarding the relative merits of OPM3 Online versus OPM3 ProductSuite. Criticism of OPM3 Online has been growing among users who report that it is a superficial survey, that it does not collect the information necessary for an organization to implement OPM3, and that it produces erroneous results.[6] They say that OPM3 Online does not reflect the OPM3 Standard because it proposes assessment questions in terms of OPM3 best practices but not in terms of the testable OPM3 capability statements. Therefore users of OPM3 Online cannot determine the actual capabilities of an organization and corresponding improvement options per the OPM3 standard. By contrast, more organizations are recognizing that OPM3 ProductSuite is a more robust and reliable maturity assessment tool that functions at the testable OPM3 capability statement level, enabling the identification of specific improvement options that correspond to the OPM3 standard.[7] However, only consultants who are certified by PMI Inc. and who pay license and maintenance fees to PMI Inc. may use OPM3 ProductSuite.

External links

•Largest free online OPM3 discussion group [8]. 556 members and counting.
•Project Management Institute Inc. (PMI)[9]
•OPM3 description and site by original OPM3 Program Manager John Schlichter [10]
•OPM3 Marketing Team [11] devoted to increasing adoption of OPM3 by identifying value added products and services, encouraging discussion of both PMI's and the larger OPM3 community's core capabilities, value propositions, customer segments, customer relationships, partner network, activity configuration, cost structure, distribution channels, and revenue streams.
•OPM3 ProductSuite case study by Mark Scott in PM World Today May 2009: 30% schedule acceleration on projects at Harris Corporation [12]
•OPM3 ProductSuite case study by Abdullah Tamimi in allPM April 2009: culture transformation at Saudi National Information Center [13]
•CMMI and OPM3: Are they compatible? (Nazar and Abassi, 2008)[14]
•Orgagility [15]
•gantthead.com [16]
•QAI Global Workshop [17]
•OPM3 Site at pmi.org [18]

See also

•Organizational Project Management [19]
•A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge [20]
•Project Management Institute[21]
•Maturity Model [22]

References

Organizational Project Management Maturity Model 2nd Edition (©2008, Project Management Institute)