Best practices an organization can adopt to improve its project management maturity level

• Availability of funding for milestone achieved - Milestones should be identified for projects that upon completion, funding will be released for the next milestone. In addition to improving project maturity, this practice supports capital stewardship and financial management.
• Monitor and control financial risks - Financial risks result in cost and schedule overrun. This adversely affects project maturity and can lead to loss in market share. An organization must monitor its financial risks and implement risk response plans to help maintain and improve the project maturity level.
• Risk Management - Risk is an event that if it occurs has a positive or negative effect on meeting project objectives (Sanghera, 2010). To improve an organization's maturity level, the executive board should have clear visibility of the organization's risk exposure and be responsible for risk management (www.p3m3-officialsite.com, n.d).
• Resource management - The organization should practice strategic and optimum deployment of required project resources. There should be evidence of a balanced resource loading and effective use of internal and external resources (www.p3m3-officialsite.com, n.d).

Key elements of change management to raise the project maturity level of an organization

The process of raising an organization's maturity level involves implementing certain changes in the organization's culture. These changes need to be properly managed in order to achieve the desired objective of improving the maturity level. Key elements of the change management boarders around the following factors:

• Doing the right things - This enables an organization to attain and improve on project maturity. The right things could be maintaining a staff of PMP certified managers, documenting best practices during project execution, and conducting post project lessons learned.
• Doing things right - Organizations start doing things right (stop doing things wrongly) by learning how to do new things. In Kerzner 2010, a large Midwest corporation had a division that was lagging behind in project maturity. An audit revealed problems areas such as lack of quality planning, scheduling and progress tracking. They were also constantly changing deadlines. Such practices need to stop, and then planning, scheduling, and estimating done rightly.
• Doing things better - Every project has an opportunity for improvement which can lead to a higher maturity level. Things that can be done better include having adequate project documentation, improving project communication, and ensuring the right personnel are assign to project teams.
• Stop doing things - When organizations evaluate their performance and maturity, certain activities are revealed which do not benefit the organization. Such activities will have to be terminated. If employees are going to be affected by stopping some activities, they will be given prior information. Reasons for stopping will also be documented.
• Doing things other people are doing - Organizations will sometimes need to copy what others are doing while improving project maturity. This is however acceptable so long as patent and copyright laws are not violated. In addition, recognition is given to owners of intellectual property.
• Doing things no one else is doing - This involves thinking differently and creating new ways of doing things to achieve better results. An example is (Kerzner, 2010) where Boeing decided to design and build the Boeing 777 airplane. This involved a new change management as the initiative required a new technology and a radical change in teamwork which permeated all levels of management.
• Doing things that cannot be done - Sometimes improving project maturity level entails doing what was regarded as impossible. Research & Development (R & D) organizations continuously implement changes with the hope of achieving the impossible. This is particularly necessary in light of the dynamic and ever changing environments, which compels organizations to always seek out new ways of providing products and services.

The above is a summary classification of the changes which an organization will make in order to improve its project maturity level. Improving the project maturity will be possible if these changes are well managed and there is executive support to implement the changes.

Most valuable actions taken by DFCU to improve project management culture

• Reassign project responsibility from IT to the business units - DFCU established project control by changing ownership from IT to the Business unit. Under the ownership of IT, most projects had weak sponsorship on the business side and projects were not selected in alignment with strategic objectives. Under the business unit ownership, the business manager provided project leadership thereby putting projects in alignment with business strategy.
• Simplify project management forms and processes - Projects were tracked on a single spreadsheet for executive team to review monthly. The spreadsheets were simplified such that it was easy to identify any projects at risk thereby leading to effective risk management.
• Use project review meetings to set priorities and allocate resources more effectively - Executive team had monthly project review meetings where the project tacking sheet was analyzed, projects prioritized and decisions taken on resource allocations for projects that met DFCU strategic objectives.
• Removed organizational barriers and encouraged input on projects from employees - All employees were reminded that it is everyone's duty to take responsibility for the progress of the organization and to speak their minds to management regarding any issue.
• Improve project success through pilots and feedback - DFCU commenced pilot test programs to obtain real feedback regarding product acceptance from end-users. These feedbacks were incorporated into the product line thereby improving product quality.