What’s P3M3? What are the benefits for organizations?

What’s P3M3? What are the benefits for organizations?

The P3M3 model identifies an organization’s maturity in managing each portfolio, program, and project to evaluate how effectively they handle strategic projects, giving Recognition at a glance to those in charge. Also called SPM3; Strategic Project Management Maturity Model. Maturity is measured using structuring and benchmarking in a simple and practical way, helping organizations better understand how to implement project management at a tactical level from a strategic perspective.

P3M3 allows organizations to identify their strengths and weaknesses in delivering change – or their willingness to accept change.

P3M3 has five levels, within each level, there are processes, procedures, tools, and behaviors that contribute to achieving the overall strategic goals of the organization. These five levels enable organizations to improve their project management approach and results. This will benefit the entire facility in defining and achieving its goals, and then start implementing and completing projects in order to obtain good results.

P3M3 Maturity Levels

P3M3 (Portfolio, Program, and Project Management Maturity Model) has 5 levels as follows:

Level 1: Awareness
The process of realization usually begins by defining the strategic intent and goals of the organization. This is where the organization can use gap analysis or the balanced scorecard, which usually reveals long-term goals that exceed five years long.
Level 2: Repetition
The iteration process redefines where the facility wants to be in the next five years.
Level 3: Define the processes
The definition process defines what needs to be done in addition to refining the long-term goal. During this level, the short-term goals become clearer.
Level 4: Management
Management process is all about the projects; to define who is responsible for the project and what are their tasks, when should the subtasks be completed, who supervises, and who to corrects and evaluates. Another thing that belongs to the management process is to make comparisons with similar projects, which creates clarity when it comes to setting priorities.
Level 5: Improvement
The improvement process – which is the last level of maturity in P3M3 – focuses on achieving the optimal outcome. This means that corrections and changes are necessary to obtain the best results using evaluation methods that enable organizations to evaluate operations in general. This level focuses on the financial condition, quality, and project planning.

P3M3 operations

The P3M3 model helps manage portfolios, programs, and projects by dividing the operations in the hierarchy into smaller major operations. The hierarchy is known as the Key Process Area as there are seven KPA processes which include:

Organizational governance
Management control
Benefits management
Risk management
Stakeholder management
Financial management
Resource management

P3M3 Background and how the need for it began:

The establishment of project management offices by governmental or private organizations and the demand for professional certificates in the field of project management are topics that are frequently discussed in today’s media.

The 1990s witnessed a significant increase in the number of people occupying the position of project manager, as organizations addressed an ever-changing problem through project management, as many organizations adopted the PRINCE2™ method as a way to gain experience in this field, and with the increasing need for project managers and an increasing number of people claiming to be project managers Many organizations have based their recruitment and development strategies on project management competency certification and having a PRINCE2™ Practitioner certification has become an indicator of competency.

From then on, the need began to measure the organizations’ capacity (including the projects department) and their maturity and then compare them with other facilities. The first version of the model was in 2005, followed by another developed version in 2008 until we got the current version of model 3 (V3). It is expected that P3M3 will continue to be improved and expanded as practices in the area of the portfolio, program, and project management evolves. This evolution may lead to the inclusion of new or modified key concepts in perspectives and/or the addition of different levels.

Advantages of P3M3

The P3M3 approach benefits the organization by providing a shared and integrated vision for improvement. This integrated approach leads to lower costs and improvements in on-time delivery, productivity, quality, and customer satisfaction. One of the main benefits of using P3M3 is that it provides a publicly available set of independent standards. This is not proprietary or exclusive property and can be used by all facilities regardless of their methodology.

P3M3 Benefits:

Assisting organizations in determining the level of maturity required to meet the needs of their business and customers.
Create a baseline capability against which improvements can be measured objectively.
Invest in specific aspects of management that will result in the greatest improvements to the organizational context.
Recognize and build on accomplishments from previous investments in capabilities.
Using an independent market standard to compare your facility to others.
AXELOS consulting partners provide quality assurance.
Make plans for ongoing progress.
Provide an objective evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses.
Demonstrate service quality to back up proposals to potential clients.
All levels of the organization will share a common vision of which improvement initiatives will yield the best results.

Who will benefit most from the P3M3 model?

Managers responsible for achieving organizational change
Heads of portfolios, programs, or projects
Heads of professions who wish to prove the effectiveness
Bid managers wishing to evaluate their institutions
Quality/Performance Improvement Team
Audit specialists.

The desire for continuous growth that will always motivate organizations to improve is the primary driver for using project management and maturity models, so organizations that manage multiple projects with the same resources at the same time need to use a model that enables them to potentially improve delivery results with high quality, and this is what represented by P3M3, success is achieved by guiding organizations from a stage of immaturity, increasing project risk to be of low quality, to maturity, where risk is greatly reduced meaning increased quality.

It’s your turn!
Tell us what you think. Are you familiar with the P3M3 Maturity Model, and can you apply it within your organization? What are your experiences measuring organizational maturity? And how effective is it on your long and short-term decisions?

Synexcell is accredited by Axelos as a consulting partner for P3M3 certification in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In addition, we provide our clients with a set of proposals and guidance necessary to enable them to obtain P3M3 certification. We are also working on providing all advisory proposals resulting from the P3M3 assessment.