NATIONAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT MATURITY: A

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
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Seelhofer, D., Graf, C. O.

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This paper extends the concept of organizational project management maturity to the national
context. Based on a review of the extant literature and a thorough analysis of existing
organizational maturity models, it develops a systematic framework of national project
management maturity and the national project management maturity model (NPM3), by
defining maturity levels, identifying key maturity perspectives and drivers, and discussing key
performance indicators that may be used to assess and compare national project
management maturity. Practical implications, limitations, and the need for further research
are discussed.

Keywords: project management; maturity

JEL Classification: L20, L78, M10

1 Introduction
Organizations profit from competent project management, which can be a significant
organizational success factor (see e.g. Pinto and Prescott, 1988; Shenhar, Levy and Dvir,
1997; Milosevic, 2003; Srivannaboon, 2009; Lundin and Hällgren, 2014). The two large
international project management associations, the U.S.-based Project Management Institute
(PMI) and the Europe-based International Project Management Association (IPMA) have
both experienced substantial growth in recent years, and according to KPMG’s 2017 Project
Management Survey the significance of organizational project management is expected to
increase further in the coming years.

Competent project management, therefore, is clearly relevant. Yet according to the Standish
Group’s Chaos Report, which has been published every year since 1994, about two thirds of
all projects fail (Standish Group, 2018). And the Project Management Institute estimates that
around 12% of all investments are wasted due to poor project performance (PMI, 2016).
This clearly has far-reaching economic implications. Yet despite these numbers, the wider
public generally only realizes the importance of project management competencies when
failures of large public projects become known. As Kreiner (2014, p. 20) puts it: “[…] but
in short it is failure, not success, that dominates the narratives of projects and their
management.” In the United Kingdom, for example, the Ministry of Defence’s Defence

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Information Infrastructure project (a defense computer system designed to help Britain's
troops operate more effectively on deployment abroad), the National Health Service’s
National Programme for IT (a centralized electronic care record system that would have
connected about 30,000 general practitioners to more than 300 hospitals) or the Scottish
parliament building (which opened three years late and ran about ten-fold over budget) have
all become synonymous with failed public projects. In another large developed economy,
Germany, famous examples include the Flughafen Berlin Brandenburg project to build a
new international airport in Berlin, which is expected to be about ten years behind schedule
and at least four times over budget when it finally opens. In another German case, Stuttgart
21, a new underground central train station in Stuttgart will be at least 6 years behind
schedule and is expected to exceed its original budget by a factor of at least four; or the
Elbphilharmonie, a new concert hall in Hamburg that was almost seven years late when it
opened in 2017 and cost more than 11 times the originally planned amount. These examples
may be surprising, considering that both countries have a good project management
reputation and active project management bodies. In the United Kingdom, the PMI’s local
Chapter has around 3,500 members, while the IPMA’s local certification body, the
Association for Project Management (APM), counts more than 23,000 members. The
IPMA’s German chapter, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement (German
Association for Project Management, GPM), also has around 8,000 members. Yet large-
scale project failures continue to happen, and governments should take an active role in
combating this. The United States, for example, have continuously emphasized the
importance of project management at the government level after having won the Space Race
of the 1960s— due to its, at the time, advanced project management competencies. In line
with this, former president Barack Obama signed the Program Management Improvement
and Accountability Act in 2016, which was designed to increase accountability and best
practices in project management throughout the United States government.

The question, however, is what a country can do to increase project management competence
not just at the government level but across the domestic economy, thereby contributing to
the agility and national and international success of its domestic firms. A promising
conceptual start are project management maturity models that are widely employed at the
organizational level but have so far not been extended to the national stage. This paper
attempts to start a corresponding discussion by suggesting a framework that can be used to
assess national project management maturity (NPMM).2 Theoretical Framework

2 Literature Review
Organizational project management maturity has been described as the organization’s
openness to project management (Skulmoski, 2001). Project management maturity models
provide capability assessment and development frameworks that help organizations compare
their project delivery and performance to its competitors and/or with best practice and
provide a structured path to improvement (Schlichter and Skulmoski, 2000; Hillson, 2001;

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Foti, 2002). The model’s roots lie in the Capability Maturity Model developed between
1986 and 1993 by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University
(Grant and Pennypacker, 2006).

One of the most popular maturity models today is the Organizational Project Management
Maturity Model (OPM3). The OPM3 program was initiated in 1998 with the aim to develop
a standard maturity model. Introduced in 2003, OPM3 is now in its third edition and is
widely used. It revolves around three core themes: acquiring knowledge, performing
assessment, and managing improvement (PMI, 2013). Based on a large number of best
practice examples, organizations are enabled to evaluate their project management
capabilities and identify areas that need improvement, which are then dealt with by designing
and implementing an appropriate action plan.

Besides OPM3, there is a substantial number of other maturity models. An initial list was
presented by Schlichter and Skulmoski (2000), and in 2003 Pennypacker and Grant
estimated that there were over 30 project management maturity models in use then.
Nonetheless, the usefulness of the maturity concept is not a universally shared view. On one
hand, project management maturity is seen as an increasingly important success factor,
especially for organizations that deal with a range of projects, programs, and portfolios
(Bushuyev and Wagner, 2014) because of a reported link between project management
maturity and organizational performance (Torres, 2014). This link has been attributed to the
fact that an increased understanding of an organization’s capabilities enhances
organizational learning and improvement (Mullaly, 2006), that application of the model
implies decisions are based on facts rather than intuition and experience (Cooke-Davies and
Arzymanow, 2003)Also, such models provide a structured and systematic framework for
identifying an organization’s project management-related strengths and weaknesses
(Backlund et al., 2014), which in turn may contribute to better prioritizing actions and
initiating cultural change (Crawford, 2006).

On the other hand, some authors question the link between higher maturity levels and
organizational success (e.g. Besner and Hobbs, 2013), while others lament that existing
models are too complex for efficient assessments and address only tacit but not implicit
project management knowledge (Jugdev and Thomas, 2002; Hillson, 2003).

Despite these comparatively isolated criticisms, however, the concept of project

management maturity is by now widely accepted and applied not just at the organizational
but also at the industry level. For example, in 1997 Ibbs and Kwak used the Berkeley Project
Management Process Maturity model to compare the U.S. engineering and construction,
high-tech manufacturing, telecom, and information systems industries with each other and
found that, back then, the first three evidenced significantly higher project management
maturity than the last but that, overall, maturity was comparatively low across the board. In
2006, Grant and Pennypacker used the PM Solutions Project Management Maturity Model
to analyze the U.S. manufacturing, information, finance and insurance, and

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professional/scientific/technical services industries and also found that project management
maturity was consistently low in all these industries. In 2011, Ghoddousi, Amini, and
Hosseini used the OPM3 to analyze 81 Iranian construction companies and discovered that
almost two-thirds of them had a project management maturity of below 50%. In line with
the notion of performance benefits of project management maturity, they also found that
only companies which showed noticeable maturity levels had been able to win projects based
on international tenders.

Other examples where such models were used to analyze industry-wide project management
maturity include: the software industry in Estland (Puus and Mets, 2010), the engineering
and construction industry in South Africa (Pretorius et al., 2012) and Morocco (Alami et al.,
2015), and the Serbian energy sector (Mihic et al., 2015). All these studies found generally
low levels of project management maturity. The preliminary results of the OPM3 Portugal
Project (Silva et al., 2014) and Backlund et al.’s (2014) case studies of Swedish engineering
and construction companies also suggest the same.

From a national perspective, this low level of project management maturity across important
industries should be worrisome. If project management maturity is a competitive factor at
the organizational level, then the same should be true at the aggregate industry and, by
extension, national level. In line with Michael Porter’s seminal theory of the competitive
advantage of nations, where government plays an important role as a facilitator of advanced
factors like infrastructure and education (Porter, 1990), a country should actively foster and
improve project management maturity. In fact, various emerging economies have been the
subject of early efforts to improve project management capabilities and to identify obstacles
to development in an attempt to overcome competitive disadvantages. For example,
Kazakhstan organized and hosted the 2017 IPMA World Congress in Astana, welcoming
around 1,000 project management professionals from around the world. A study of the
impact of project failure on Zimbabwe’s socio-economic development concluded that
corruption and other factors like irresponsible government led to a so-called unconducive
environment that preceded—and, indeed, promoted—project failure (Mapepeta. 2016). And
Ghana (Ofori and Deffor, 2013), Indonesia (Simangunsong and Da Silva, 2013), and
Kazakhstan (Narbaev, 2015) were the subjects of early attempts to measure and develop
national project management maturity.

Despite these efforts, however, there presently seems to be no holistic framework to assess
a country’s national project management maturity.

3 Methodology
Reasonably, a framework of national project management maturity should follow the logic
and structure of existing organizational maturity models. In order to do so, the most relevant
models must first be identified. This was done in a three-step process.

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In a first step, a full list of project management maturity models in current use was compiled
through a systematic review of the extant project management literature. This led to a list of
36 different models.

In a next step, the academic relevance of these models was determined based on a
quantitative and a qualitative criterion. First, the number of citations for the corresponding
base articles was retrieved from Google Scholar. The resulting scores where then ranked in
descending order and the two lower quartiles excluded, which left 18 models. Second, the
remaining models’ relevance in the literature was analyzed and rated as low, medium, or
high according to how they were discussed. All those rated as low were excluded, which left
11 models.

Finally, the practical relevance of each of the remaining models was assessed by four project
management experts. Of these, two were university lecturers in project management. Both
represented either a formal focus on project management or a unit with ‘project
management’ in its title. The other two were senior project managers employed in the private
sector holding formal project management certification. All had at least 10 years’ worth of
experience as project managers. Practical relevance was measured as mean score of the
individual assessors’ subjective evaluation of each model, measured on a scale from zero
(’not relevant’) to three (‘highly relevant’). All models which were rated less than two
(‘somewhat relevant’) were excluded from the final list. This process led to the identification
of seven models of current, practical relevance that provided the starting point for the
development of a framework of national project management maturity. A basic model of
national project management maturity was then derived by systematically comparing and
synthesizing these frameworks. Finally, key performance indicators and associated basic
assessment rubrics for the model were obtained by collecting and aggregating inputs for each
point from the above-mentioned experts.

4 Results
The seven models identified as having both current academic and practical relevance are
listed in Table 1.

Developed at the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and first
introduced in a technical report in 1987, the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI)
was intended to eliminate the need for multiple models during software development by
integrating three existing capability maturity models, the Capability Maturity Model for
Software SW-CMM, the Systems Engineering Capability Model SECM, and the Integrated
Product Development Capability Model IPD-CMM (Humphrey, 1988). The CMMI defines
five maturity levels and has been applied in the airline, automotive, banking, education,
engineering, health care, IT, and telecommunications industries.

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Table 1 | Comparison of Existing Project Management Maturity Models

Model Origin
Description Maturity Levels Industry Application
(Acronym) (Year)
Eliminates the need to
Capability 1-initial; 2-managed; 3- Airline, automotive,
use multiple models for
Maturity Model Humphrey defined; banking, education,
software development by
Integration (1988) 4-quantitatively engineering, health care,
integrating various CMM
(CMMI) managed; 5-optimized IT, telecommunications
models.

1-basic project
management
Integrates previous processes; 2-individual
practices, processes, and project planning; 3-
Berkeley Project
Ibbs and maturity models to systematic project Engineering/construction,
Management
Kwak improve project planning and control; IT, telecommunications,
Process Maturity
(2000) management 4-integrated multi- manufacturing
Model (PM2)
effectiveness and allow project planning and
benchmarking. control; 5-continuous
project management
process improvement

Helps organizations
Organizational understand project,
1-standardization; 2-
Project program, and portfolio construction, education,
measurement;
Management PMI (1998) management and engineering, gas and
3-control; 4-continuous
Maturity Model measuring maturity by a energy, health care, IT
improvement
(OPM3) wide-ranging set of best
practices.

Presents methods to 1-common language; 2-

Kerzner Project assess and verify each common processes; 3-
Management Kerzner level of project singular methodology,
Education, health care
Maturity Model (2002) management maturity. 4-benchmarking; 5-
(KPMMM) Extension of the CMMI continuous
model. development

1-initial process; 2-
Allows organizations to
Project structured process; 3-
systematically and
Management Crawford organizational Airline, construction,
efficiently develop and
Maturity Model (2006) standards; education, IT
measure their project
(PMMM) 4-managed process; 5-
management capabilities.
optimized process

Allows diagnosis of the

current maturity level and
Project need for improvement;
1-naïve; 2-novice; 3-
Management Hillson provides a foundation for
normalised; -
Maturity Model (2001) progress evaluation.
4-natural
(ProMMM) Based on CMM, EFQM
Excellence Model, and
Risk Maturity Model.

Provides three maturity

Portfolio, models that can be used
Programme, and separately to focus on 1-awareness; 2-
Project specific areas of the repeatable; 3-defined; Public sector,
OGC (2006)
Management organization and to help 4-managed; 5- transportation
Maturity Model assess the relationship optimized
(P3M3) between portfolios,
programs, and projects.
Source: Own elaboration

First published by Kwak and Ibbs in 1997, the Berkeley Project Management Process
Maturity Model (PM2) integrates previous practices, processes, and maturity models with

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the intent to improve project management effectiveness and allow benchmarking. Like the
CMMI, it defines five—albeit different—maturity levels and has been applied in the
engineering and construction, IT, telecommunications, and manufacturing industries.

Introduced by the Project Management Institute (PMI) in 2003, the Organizational Project
Management Maturity Model (OPM3) was designed to help organizations understand
project, program, and portfolio management and allow measuring four levels of maturity by
benchmarking against a wide range of best practices. It has been applied, for example, in the
construction, education, engineering, gas and energy, health care, and IT industries.

First published by Harold Kerzner in 2002, the Kerzner Project Management Maturity
Model (KPMMM) is an extension of the CMMI and presents methods to assess and verify
each of five levels of project management maturity. It has been applied in education and
health care.

The Project Management Maturity Model (ProMMM) is based on the CMMI, the EFQM
Excellence Model, and the Risk Maturity Model and was intended to allow easy diagnosis
of an organization’s current maturity level and need for improvement, thus providing a
foundation for progress evaluation (Hillson, 2001). Although not widely applied at industry
level, the model was deemed of relevance by the polled experts because of its simplified
evaluation of four maturity levels by evaluating four attributes:culture, process, experience,
and application, in a rubric style.

Sharing a name with Hillson’s earlier model, PM Solutions’ Project Management Maturity
Model (PMMM) was first published in 2002 and was developed to allow organizations to
systematically and efficiently develop and measure their project management capabilities
based on five levels of maturity (Crawford, 2015). It has been applied in the airline,
construction, education, and IT industries.

Finally, the Portfolio, Programme, and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3) is an
integrative framework aligned with, for example, the PMI’s Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK) and various UK government models. It was first introduced in 2006
by the UK’s Office of Government Commerce, although in 2014 ownership was transferred
to Axelos, a joint venture between the UK Government and consulting company Capita. The
model provides three maturity models—for portfolios, programs, and projects— with five
maturity levels each that can be used separately to focus on specific areas of the organization
(OGC, 2010). It has been predominantly applied in the public sector and in the transportation
industry.

Following the logic of these organizational project management maturity models, it makes
sense that a national project management maturity model should also be level-based. While
language and number of levels differ between the various models in Table 1, the models all
follow the same logic, from nascent to mature project management. For national project

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management maturity, therefore, the following four levels are proposed: nascent,
developing, adolescent, and mature.

Nascent maturity implies that there may be some isolated attempts by a few (mainly large)
organizations to use project management best practices, but this is neither routine nor
systematic, with little support by the government and project management associations.
Developing maturity means that project management best practices are only infrequently
used by a minority of organizations, without systematic support from the government or
professional associations. Adolescent maturity is given if project management best practices
are routinely—although not always consistently—used by the majority of organizations,
with systematic support by professional associations and some support by the government.
Finally, a country is mature regarding national project management maturity if project
management is routinely and consistently used by the vast majority of organizations, with
systematic support by the government and professional associations. Table 2 summarizes
this.

Table 2 | Definition of NPMM Maturity Levels

National Project Management Maturity

Level 1: Nascent Level 2: Developing Level 3: Adolescent Level 4: Mature

There are some Project management Project management Project management

isolated attempts by best practices are only best practices are is routinely and
some (mainly large) infrequently used by a routinely but often consistently used by
organizations to use minority of inconsistently used by the vast majority of
project management organizations, without the majority of organizations, with
best practices, but systematic support organizations, with systematic support by
this is neither routine from the government or systematic support by the government and
nor systematic, with professional professional professional
little support by the associations. associations and some associations.
government and support by the
professional government.
associations.
Source: Own elaboration

With these levels defined, the next question is how to gauge the maturity level of a country.
Importantly, all of the organizational project management maturity models except the
ProMMM define a varying number of so-called knowledge areas, i.e. specific areas that the
organization must know about in order to gauge maturity. The PMMM, KPMMM, and
OPM3 each define ten, the PM2 nine, and the CMMI eight such knowledge areas. The P3M3
does not specifically refer to knowledge areas but instead defines seven perspectives,
although contextually these conform to the knowledge areas of the other models. When put
together, a list of 34 knowledge areas and perspectives results. By comparing these and
eliminating those that refer to the same concept, 18 distinct knowledge areas emerge. In
alphabetical order, these are: benefits management, communications management, cost and
finance management, governance management, integration management, monitoring and

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controlling, performance management, planning management, product and process
management, quality management, resource management, risk management, scope
management, stakeholder management, strategic management, supplier and procurement
management, teaming and HR management, and time management. Table 3 provides an
overview of these 18 knowledge areas and whether they are included or not in each of the
seven models.

However, this comparatively large number of knowledge areas may lead to an unwieldy,
inflexible, and unnecessarily complex assessment process. With regard to national project
management maturity, therefore, in line with Hillson (2001) these 18 core knowledge areas
were condensed into eight proposed national project management maturity (NPMM)
perspectives: project governance and controlling (combining governance management and
monitoring and controlling); project planning and organization (consisting of integration,
scope, product and process, strategic, teaming and HR, and planning management), project
execution (merging time, performance, and benefits management), project communications
management, project resource management (consisting of cost and finance, supplier and
procurement, and resource management), project quality management, project risk
management, and project stakeholder management. Table 3 summarizes these deliberations
and provides details on how these NPMM perspectives were derived.

In contrast to the other models discussed, Hillson’s (2001) Project Management Maturity
Model (ProMMM) does not define specific knowledge areas but lists four ‘attributes’—
culture, process, experience, and application—that are used to describe the organization’s
project management maturity using a kind of rubric. Regarding national project management
maturity, this seems a sensible approach because, due to the myriad differences between
countries, keeping the resulting model to a fairly abstract level should make it more generally
applicable. Hillson’s ‘attributes’ can be considered drivers of project management maturity
because governments and project management associations may actively support them.
When applying this logic and adapting Hillson’s approach to the national level, this leads to
four maturity drivers: national project management culture, national project management
process saturation, national project management experience sharing, and national project
management application support.

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Table 3 | Derivation of NPMM Perspectives

Maturity Models

Knowledge NPMM
Areas CMMI PM2 OPM3 KPMMM PMMM ProMMM P3M3 Perspectives

Governance
1 X X Project
management
governance and
Monitoring and
2 X X controlling
controlling
Integration
3 X X X
management
Scope
4 X X X
management
Product and
5 process X
Project planning
management
and
Strategic
6 X organization
management
Teaming and
7 HR X X X X
management
Planning
8 X
management
Time
9 X X X
management
Performance
10 X Project execution
management
Benefits
11 X
management
Project
Communication
13 X X X X communications
s management
management
Cost and
12 finance X X X X
management
Supplier/procure Project resource
14 ment X X X X management
management
Resource
15 X
management
Quality Project quality
16 X X X
management management
Risk Project risk
17 X X X X X X
management management
Stakeholder Project stakeholder
18 X X X
management management
Source: Own elaboration

National project management culture refers to the existence and characteristics of a system
and mindset, at the national level, that fosters project management best practice. The more
effective and efficient such a system and the more natural such a mindset, the higher national
project management maturity is.

National project management process saturation indicates how widely used standardized
project management processes are. The more this becomes second nature in as many
organizations as possible, the higher maturity is.

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National project management experience sharing refers to the availability of information—
and the efficiency with which it can be accessed—about project management best practices
and lessons learned. Regulations that enforce the sharing of project charters and reports or
the existence of experience-sharing platforms contribute to higher maturity.

Finally, national project management application support refers to initiatives and systems
of government entities and professional associations that support organizations when
managing their projects. Examples are freely available project management methodologies,
such as the Swiss government’s HERMES or the European Union’s OpenPM2. Project risk
mitigation mechanisms, such as export risk guarantees for large construction projects, can
also be considered part of this.

Figure 1 summarizes the final national project management maturity model, or NPM3.

Figure 1 | National Project Management Maturity Model (NPM3)

The NPM3 closely follows the conceptual approach of relevant organizational project
management maturity models. It necessarily diverges regarding key performance indicators
(KPI), however, to compare the project management maturity of two countries, a much
higher level of aggregation and some specifically country-level indicators is required.

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Regarding project governance and controlling, the stringency with which project governance
is adhered to at a national scale—particularly in the case of large private projects and public
projects of national significance—indicates how mature the country’s NPMM is: the higher
the number of projects that conform to a defined standard regarding project oversight and
controlling, the more mature. The same is true for planning and execution conformity, i.e.
the number of organizations that adhere to a defined standard regarding project planning and
execution. This includes both the processes employed and the best practices used as a
benchmark. The specific standard used should not matter as much as the fact that each
project is planned and executed according to one.

With regard to the management of project communications, transparency is highly relevant

at the national level. Particularly in the case of projects of national significance, pertinent
information often only surfaces once the press starts digging in case of scandal or failure.
This transparency principle should apply to all—not just large public—projects, however,
as this contributes to a positive national project management culture.

When it comes to project resource management, which includes project-related factors such
as cost or finance and supplier/procurement management, two aspects are particularly
indicative of national project management maturity: consultant support and overall project
success rate. Consultant support relates to the perceived necessity to include external
consultants in a project. A high proportion of the overall budget spent on consultants
indicates that an organization’s project management is not mature enough to handle these
projects alone. By aggregating and averaging this figure across all pertinent organizations,
the same factor can be calculated at the national level. A second important number is the
overall ratio of successful to unsuccessful projects. At its most basic, success can be defined
as reaching the defined goals on time and on budget. A higher the aggregate number
correlates to the higher national project management maturity.

With regard to project quality and risk management, stringency of adherence and reporting
are two key aspects. At its most basic, stringency can be defined as the number of projects
that have regular quality and risk assessments. Ideally, this follows a standard methodology,
but the main thing is that these assessments occur on a regular basis. Reports—final or,
particularly in the case of large, complex projects, also intermediate—about project quality
assessments and risk reports should be made publicly available. These may be standalone;
however, this kind of information is often included in a project charter and/or final report.

Similar to quality management, risk management must be stringently applied and

transparently and systematically reported. The more that projects have regular project risk
assessments and the more risk-related project information is available, the higher maturity.

Finally, information about who a project’s stakeholders are and what their influence on—
and their contributions to—said project are should be known. This reduces opportunities for
corruption and prevents the kind of scandal that regularly occurs when journalists digs out

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undisclosed stakeholders and their conflicts of interest, particularly in troubled, nationally
significant projects. Table 4 summarizes these points.

The maturity perspectives described above provide a good picture of the state of project
management at the national level. How fast national project management maturity improves
is largely determined by the maturity drivers, however, and these should therefore also be
assessed. Like in the case of the afore-mentioned maturity perspectives, this can be done
using key performance indicators.

Table 4 | NPMM Perspectives and Key Performance Indicators

Key Maturity Contribution

Performance
NPMM Definition/
Indicators
Perspectives Require Data High Medium Low
KPI
(examples) (3) (2) (1)

1 Project Stringency of Number of projects that Majority Some Hardly any

governance project conform to a defined or none
and governance standard regarding project
controlling oversight and controlling

2 Project Planning Number of projects that are Majority Some Hardly any
planning and conformity planned according to a or none
organization standard methodology

3 Project Execution Number of projects that are Majority Some Hardly any
execution conformity executed according to a or none
standard methodology

4 Project Project Availability of information Widely Some Hardly any

communicati transparency about significant projects, available available or none
ons including project charters, available
management progress reports, and final
reports with lessons learned

5 Project Consultant Percentage of overall Low Medium High

resource support project budgets spent on
management consultants

Project success Number of projects that Majority Some Hardly any

rate reach their goals on time or none
and on budget

6 Project Stringency of Number of projects that Majority Some Hardly any

quality project quality have regular project quality or none
management management assessments

Project quality Public availability of project Widely Some Hardly any

management quality reports available available or none
reporting available

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 7 Project risk Stringency of Number of projects that Majority Some Hardly any
management project risk have regular project risk or none
management assessments

Project risk Public availability of project Widely Some Hardly any

management risk reports available available or none
reporting available

8 Project Stakeholder Availability of information Widely Some Hardly any

stakeholder transparency about project stakeholders available available or none
management and their influence and available
contributions

Source: Own elaboration

To foster a national project management culture conducive to project management best

practice, four aspects are particularly important: projectification, the professional status of
project managers, project-related career opportunities, and a general project management
mindset.

Projectification in this context means the percentage of all activities carried out as projects.

This is seen as positive because projects are considered to be a suitable organizational form
to react flexibly to internal and external changes, generate innovations, and solve complex
or novel problems (Wald et al., 2015). The higher this number, therefore, the more this drives
maturity. Likewise, the higher the professional status of project managers, the larger this
aspect contributes to maturity. Both points could be quantitatively or qualitatively defined.
If the data can be obtained, a quantitative assessment will foster better comparability
between countries. In order to identify improvement potential, however, having experts
make a comparative assessment based on Tables 4 and 5 will already be valuable, too.

Finally, a project management mindset—running activities as projects whenever possible—

also contributes to maturity. This is a hard to grasp—and even harder to measure—concept,
however. One simple and normally fairly easily available proxy could be to use the number
of registered members of large international project associations—such as PMI, IPMA, and
IPMA-associated certification bodies like APM in the United Kingdom—and put that
number in perspective to the overall workforce. For example, in 2017 Switzerland had a
workforce of 5.01 million. In the same year, PMI’s Swiss chapter had 1,400 members, while
IPMA’s local member entity, the Swiss Project Management Association, came to about 900
members. The fraction of project management association members in relation to the total
workforce was thus around 0.4 per-mille. In contrast, in the UK, PMI membership was about
3,500 and APM membership around 23,000 in the same year. Compared to a workforce of
31.11 million, this brings the same fraction to roughly 0.8 per-mille, or about twice that of
Switzerland. Although these are very small numbers, it seems clear that with regard to this
particular factor, the UK is considerably more mature. A more qualified statement could be
made, however, by calculating and comparing this figure for all countries and, for example,
determining the quartile to which each belongs.

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National project management process saturation refers to how widely used standardized
project management processes are. Ideally, this would encompass the use of standardized
methodologies like PRINCE2, IPM, or PRiSM. As there are a large number of such
methodologies, however, and reliably determining their stringent application would be
almost impossible, a more manageable proxy is needed. One possibility is the number of
specialized university programs with a project management focus. This is normally indicated
by a program carrying “project management” in the official program name and/or degree
awarded. As a university may also have project management expertise not reflected in a
program’s title, however, organizational units specifically dedicated to project management
should be included.

The level of systematic experience sharing about project management best practices and
lessons learned in a country can be facilitated by the government and/or professional
associations. The more systematic and widespread, the stronger the contribution to maturity.
The availability of data about project management’s best practices and lessons learned on
one hand and the average remuneration of project managers on the other seem particularly
relevant.

Finally, several factors influence project management application support at the national
level. Specifically, the degree of research funding for project management-related topics,
the existence of government or private support initiatives and systems to help organizations
identify and mitigate project risks, and the availability of free project management
methodologies supported by the government or large professional associations, such as the
Swiss government’s HERMES or the European Union’s OpenPM2, all increase maturity.
Table 5 lists these NPMM maturity drivers, along with associated key performance
indicators and their maturity contribution.

Table 5 | NPMM Maturity Drivers and Key Performance Indicators

Key Maturity Contribution

NPMM Performance
Definition/
Maturity Indicators
Require Data High Medium Low
Drivers KPI
(3) (2) (1)
(examples)

1 National Projectification Percentage of all activities Majority Some Hardly any

project carried out as projects or none
management
culture Project manager Professional status of High regard No special Low regard
status project managers recognition or ignored

Project-based Number of certified project Top quartile Second and Bottom

career managers in relation to third quartile quartile
opportunities other countries

Project Number of project Top quartile Second and Bottom

management management association third quartile quartile
mindset members as a percentage
of the overall workforce

CENTRAL EUROPEAN BUSINESS REVIEW 15

 2 National Tertiary project Percentage of universities Majority Some Hardly any
project management with dedicated project or none
management programs management programs
process
saturation Tertiary project Percentage of universities Majority Some Hardly any
management with dedicated project or none
units management units (e.g.
centers)

3 National Project General availability of data Good Medium Bad

project management about project management
management data access best practices and lessons
experience learned
sharing.
Project manager Availability of data Good Medium Bad
remuneration specifically relating to the
data remuneration of project
managers

4 National Degree of Public spending in relation Top quartile Second and Bottom
project national project to other countries third quartile quartile
management management
application research funding
support.
Degree of risk Availability of government or Widely Some Hardly any
protection private support initiatives available or none
and systems to help
organizations identify and
mitigate project risks

Sponsored Availability of freely Two or One None

project available project more available available
management management methodologies available
methodologies supported by the
government or large
professional associations
Source: Own elaboration

Now that both project management maturity perspectives and drivers have been identified
and operationally defined, a country’s national project management maturity can be
assessed. Using the simple rubrics in Tables 4 and 5, the level of maturity contribution (high,
medium, or low) can be determined for each maturity perspective and maturity driver. After
completion, an overall picture will emerge that roughly indicates national project
management maturity. To interpret it, a simple linear scoring system may be helpful.
Specifically, if high contributions are assigned a value of two, medium contributions a value
of one, and low contributions a value of zero, and assuming that high maturity will, at a
minimum, consist of eleven high and ten medium contributions and medium maturity of at
least eleven medium and ten low contributions, the following overall assessment scale
emerges:

 32-42 points: High national project management maturity

 11-31 points: Medium national project management maturity

 0-10 points: Low national project management maturity

Clearly, the above scale is not yet evidence-based. Empirically determining appropriate
numeric levels will need further research.

16 CENTRAL EUROPEAN BUSINESS REVIEW

5 Conclusion
Like its organizational-level counterparts, a systematic model of national project
management maturity can help to gain a better understanding of a country’s project
management-related strengths and weaknesses. If organizational project management
maturity can improve the bottom-line of these organizations, then national project
management maturity will likely also have an aggregate economic impact. Of course,
collecting the necessary information at the national level can be daunting. That does not
mean it should not be attempted, however. The more dynamic markets and technologies
become, the more valuable project management skills become. By applying the NPM3
framework developed in this paper, a country’s government can actively promote and
support, rather than just passively track or even ignore, project management skills in its
domestic public and private organizations. The concept of national project management
maturity can also contribute to gaining a better understanding of the roles that various actors
in a country, such as government entities, professional associations, universities, and so on,
play in the successful implementation of projects. Such an understanding, in turn, can be
valuable both for supporting the growth of new and the transformation of obsolete industries
and sectors. Furthermore, it can help to identify potentials and shortcomings in nationally
significant projects. This facilitates the reduction of failure-related financial, political, and/or
reputational damage by improving the professionalism with which they are planned and
executed. Additionally, this can improve sustainability in the context of such projects, such
as in the case of the responsible urban development that accompanied the 2012 Summer
Olympics in London, which stands in stark contrast to the derelict ruins left by various large-
scale events in other locations. In summary, national project management maturity is an
overdue concept with clear practical implications.

This paper should be seen as a first attempt at defining a national project management
maturity model. Particularly the various examples of key performance indicators provided
for the maturity perspectives and drivers are, by necessity, still quite generic. Additionally,
the criteria by which a key performance indicators’ maturity contribution is gauged are only
very roughly defined. Future research into the area of national project management maturity
should therefore aim to empirically validate these key performance indicators in various
contexts and further refine the associated operational definitions.

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Authors
Prof. Daniel Seelhofer, PhD
Director, Department of International Business
Zurich University of Applied Sciences
School of Management and Law
[email protected]

Christian Olivier Graf, MSc

Lecturer of international project management
Zurich University of Applied Sciences
School of Management and Law
[email protected]

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