Abstract
Project managers are determinants of their organisations’ project management maturity as their competence is one of the factors that affect their organisations’ capability of an organisation to successfully execute projects. This capability of an organisation is reflected in its project management maturity. The study reported in this conference paper sought to investigate whether there is a correlation between South African project managers’ power and influence on their organisation’s project management maturity. This was done to determine if project managers have sufficient power to influence their organisation’s project management maturity. The paper reports on a nation-wide survey that collected data from self-identified project managers. It received three hundred and six valid responses which were edited, coded, and analysed descriptively and inferentially. The study found weak positive correlations between project managers’ power, project managers’ technical expertise and their organisations’ project management maturity. Thus, as project managers’ power and technical expertise increase, it is likely that their organisation’s project management maturity also increases. However, causation could not be established as it was not possible to establish the temporal order amongst the variables. The established correlations were too weak to be used for prediction.
Highlights
Formalised project management posts are a recent addition to South African organisations
The majority of project management models measure project management maturity of a five-level ordinal scale following the structure of the first project management maturity model, Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model (SEI-CMM)
The study indicates that project managers, the power that they have in their organisations, cannot be ignored in initiatives that organisations embark on to improve their project management maturity
Summary
Formalised project management posts are a recent addition to South African organisations. In a 2013 study, Labuschagne et al [1] claim that only 35% were senior enough to influence change in their organisations This presents a challenge as by and large a project is a specialised undertaking which requires unique competencies from the project leader. The existence of is a common belief by senior executives that “picking the right project manager” is the answer for the success of the project execution [4] This is one side of the equation as other functionaries (the project team and the project organisation) has a bearing on the effectiveness of project execution [5]. The ability of an organisation is to practice project management principles that permeate through the entire organisation demonstrates project management maturity [8] Such an organisation provides structural support for the implementation of projects within itself at all levels. If relationships amongst the parameters exits, project managers cannot be ignored in initiatives which organisations embark on to improve their project management maturity
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