The Application of Project Management Standards and Success Factors to the Development of a Project Management Assessment Tool

Abstract

In spite of all that is known about project management best practices, they are often absent from typical construction projects. This has motivated our interest in developing a tool to assess construction project management practices, focusing on the assessment of individual project practices. We will also explore project outcomes and their correlation with project management practices-potentially identifying project management value. Previous efforts have addressed project management assessment. The paper describes examples that assess an individual's project management skills and approaches that examine the project management competencies of organizations. In contrast to these, our focus is on assessing the project management practices that have been implemented for specific construction projects. A central component of any assessment scheme is the identification of specific elements to be assessed (the assessment “targets”). We intend to draw heavily upon established project management standards and project success factors from previous research to provide the specific targets and benchmarks to be assessed. These include the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) by the PM Institute, the IPMA Competence Baseline (ICB) by the International PM Association, ISO 9000, and Prince2 by The Office of Government Commerce UK. This paper describes how these standards are integrated into the project management assessment tool. It discusses the theoretical foundations for the project management assessment tool and the methodologies used for developing the tool and for applying the tool to specific project situations.