Strategic Planning for Project Management Using a Project Management Maturity Model

Rating:
Summary: Its about time...
Review: I have spent the last three years building Project/Program Management Office (PMO) infrastructures, processes, systems and project manager training programs. The reason I love this book is that it explains the vital need of strategic planning for successful project management. Most of the project managers I have worked with have little, if any strategic planning training. We have had a significant amount of success with the projects where we started with a strategic planning session. It is about time that someone wrote a meaningful and useful book on strategic planning for project management. Thank you Harold Kerzner.

Rating:
Summary: Its about time...
Review: I have spent the last three years building Project/Program Management Office (PMO) infrastructures, processes, systems and project manager training programs. The reason I love this book is that it explains the vital need of strategic planning for successful project management. Most of the project managers I have worked with have little, if any strategic planning training. We have had a significant amount of success with the projects where we started with a strategic planning session. It is about time that someone wrote a meaningful and useful book on strategic planning for project management. Thank you Harold Kerzner.

Rating:
Summary: Average at best...
Review: Kerzner's project management maturity model is legendary ... that may be a big part of the problem with this book. It's full of dated buzzwords, a wafer-thin, ultra-simplistic overview of strategic planning and provides little actionable material for integrating the strategic planning and project management processes.

From Kerzner, and for the price, I expected much much more!

Rating:
Summary: Much-needed effort, but has pitfalls
Review: This book represents an excellent effort to apply the capability maturity model(CMM) to project management. For reference, the CMM was originated by Mitre Corp. and developed by the Software Engineering Institute originally as a benchmark for determining an organization's software engineering capabilities. It has become a widely used benchmark in the software engineering community and has been extended to other domains, such as human resources (the People Capability Maturity Model) and other disciplines.

The book starts off with an introduction, followed by three chapters that lay the groundwork for the author's maturity model: The Need for Strategic Planning for Project Management, Impact of Economic Conditions on Project Management, Principles of Strategic Planning. The ideas and material presented here are very much applicable to program management offices.

Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM) is introduced in the next chapter, which ties project management to an enterprise-wide strategic planning initiative. It also provides a project management-centric view of capability maturity. The next five chapters are devoted to each of the five levels of the PMMM: Level 1 (Common Language), Level 2 (Common Processes), Level 3 (Singular Methodology), Level 4 (Benchmarking), and Level 5 (Continuous Improvement).

The value of this is project management practices can be assessed against a standard benchmark for capability, which is something that cannot be achieved by comparing these practices against Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge.

There is one pitfall to the PMMM that the author proposes: it uses a different paradigm than the CMM, which is Level-1 (Ad Hoc), Level-2 (Repeatable), Level-3 (Defined), Level-4 (Managed) and Level-5 (Optimizing). This is not a problem outside of the software development industry and IT domain where the CMM is not known. However, because the CMM integrates project management into its process areas, the disparity of terminology, assessment paradigm and the model itself will cause confusion and make implementing the PMMM in a CMM organization a nightmare.

One thing I do like very much is the balanced approach the author takes. This is shown in a chapter titled "Special Problems with Strategic Planning for Project Management." Also, the case studies at the end of the book are excellent reading.

Here's the conundrum: the project management profession needs a benchmark and the PMMM is well thought out and thorough. However, the PMMM differs in many ways from the CMM. My personal take is at least the author drove a stake into the ground by raising an awareness of the need for a PMMM. He also has thought this through and the model itself is sound. I found the book invaluable and thought-provoking. It does lay the foundation for a PMO, as stated by a previous reviewer, and that is something that is only marginally addressed in the official U.S. PM standard (Project Management Body of Knowledge). The value outweighs the cited pitfall, in my opinion, and earns this book 5 stars and my recommendation that every serious PM read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Much-needed effort, but has pitfalls
Review: This book represents an excellent effort to apply the capability maturity model(CMM) to project management. For reference, the CMM was originated by Mitre Corp. and developed by the Software Engineering Institute originally as a benchmark for determining an organization's software engineering capabilities. It has become a widely used benchmark in the software engineering community and has been extended to other domains, such as human resources (the People Capability Maturity Model) and other disciplines.

The book starts off with an introduction, followed by three chapters that lay the groundwork for the author's maturity model: The Need for Strategic Planning for Project Management, Impact of Economic Conditions on Project Management, Principles of Strategic Planning. The ideas and material presented here are very much applicable to program management offices.

Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM) is introduced in the next chapter, which ties project management to an enterprise-wide strategic planning initiative. It also provides a project management-centric view of capability maturity. The next five chapters are devoted to each of the five levels of the PMMM: Level 1 (Common Language), Level 2 (Common Processes), Level 3 (Singular Methodology), Level 4 (Benchmarking), and Level 5 (Continuous Improvement).

The value of this is project management practices can be assessed against a standard benchmark for capability, which is something that cannot be achieved by comparing these practices against Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge.

There is one pitfall to the PMMM that the author proposes: it uses a different paradigm than the CMM, which is Level-1 (Ad Hoc), Level-2 (Repeatable), Level-3 (Defined), Level-4 (Managed) and Level-5 (Optimizing). This is not a problem outside of the software development industry and IT domain where the CMM is not known. However, because the CMM integrates project management into its process areas, the disparity of terminology, assessment paradigm and the model itself will cause confusion and make implementing the PMMM in a CMM organization a nightmare.

One thing I do like very much is the balanced approach the author takes. This is shown in a chapter titled "Special Problems with Strategic Planning for Project Management." Also, the case studies at the end of the book are excellent reading.

Here's the conundrum: the project management profession needs a benchmark and the PMMM is well thought out and thorough. However, the PMMM differs in many ways from the CMM. My personal take is at least the author drove a stake into the ground by raising an awareness of the need for a PMMM. He also has thought this through and the model itself is sound. I found the book invaluable and thought-provoking. It does lay the foundation for a PMO, as stated by a previous reviewer, and that is something that is only marginally addressed in the official U.S. PM standard (Project Management Body of Knowledge). The value outweighs the cited pitfall, in my opinion, and earns this book 5 stars and my recommendation that every serious PM read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Quick Read, worth the time
Review: This is a very quick read book that talks about a general prject management Model for Companies and especially Technology Organizations within companies.
The Model offered isn't as restrictive or expensive as CMM (CMU's Capability Maturity Model), and outlines how common methods / processes / foundations can be brought together in an overall strategy for Technology organizations to develop in to true Project Oriented groups, working effective within a greater organization.

Rating:
Summary: Quick Read, worth the time
Review: This is a very quick read book that talks about a general prject management Model for Companies and especially Technology Organizations within companies.
The Model offered isn't as restrictive or expensive as CMM (CMU's Capability Maturity Model), and outlines how common methods / processes / foundations can be brought together in an overall strategy for Technology organizations to develop in to true Project Oriented groups, working effective within a greater organization.