As the rate of change accelerates, organizations continually strive to identify and leverage competitive and performance advantage from improved efficiency and delivery. Best practice continues to evolve as the understanding of what makes organizations perform well grows.
In many sectors, management models have grown in importance to become the foundation for assessing organizational capability and identifying opportunities for improvement. P3M3® (Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model) was one of the earliest maturity models in the portfolio, programme and project management (P3M) sector. It was first released in 2005 and is now in its third iteration.
Management maturity models tend to focus on process maturity and compliance. P3M3 is unique in that it looks at the whole system and not just at the processes. It analyses the balance between the process, the competencies of the people who operate it, the tools that are deployed to support it, and the management information used to manage delivery and improvements.
P3M3 is not built around a particular body of knowledge or discipline, but has been specifically designed to be independent. Regardless of whether you are committed to an approach (such as PMBOK® or PRINCE2®) or a national professional body (such as the Project Management Institute, the International Project Management Institute, the UK Association of Project Management or the Australian Institute of Project Management), P3M3 will be of value to you.
Since the release of Version 2 in 2008, P3M3 has spread globally from its roots in the UK. It is used extensively in the Middle East, China, Australia, Europe, New Zealand, Africa and South America. As better practices in the domain of P3M evolve, so P3M3 will continue to be refined and expanded on. This evolution may lead to new or amended key practices at specific levels within P3M3.
It is important to emphasize that, as a model for assessing organizational maturity, P3M3 expects there to be multiple instances of projects and programmes within an organization. The portfolio management maturity model (PfM3) is the most complex, and while that model allows for only one portfolio at the strategic level of the organization, it also has the potential to include multiple sub-portfolios in that overarching portfolio.
