To date, the most prominent quantitative studies on the effect of project
management maturity on certain success criteria are those of the research
group of Ibbs at the University of California in Berkeley, California. In studies
with Kwak and Reginato, the Berkeley
Project Management Process Maturity
Model, (PM) 2 (Kwak & Ibbs, 2000b), was
used to analyze the effects of maturity on
the adherence to the project schedule
and the project costs. In the first study,
Kwak and Ibbs (2000a) mention a positive effect in both success dimensions
by tendency on the one hand; on the
other hand, however, they concede that
the relationships are not statistically
significant (Kwak & Ibbs, 2000a, p. 42),
which later was also stressed by other
authors (Mullaly, 2006). In the second
study, Ibbs and Reginato (2002) claim
positive effects on the above-mentioned
success criteria, but do not talk about
the statistical significance. Besner and
Hobbs (2006) comment: “[..] attempts
to find a simple and direct relationship
between project management practice
and ROI have failed to find a statistically
significant link.” (p. 38)
In a conceptual article, Jugdev and
Thomas (2002b) analyzed the rela-
tionship between project management
level of maturity, bringing along cer-
tain benefits for the organization. These
improvements include time, cost, qual-
ity, and customer satisfaction; mini-
mization of project risk; alignment of
projects with the overall organization’s
strategy (Project Management Institute,
2013, p. 6); improvements regarding
transparency of project management
(Paulk, 2008, in Maier, Moultrie, &
Clarkson, 2012) and regarding the com-
munication between the project man-
agement and upper management levels
(Peterson, 2000); as well as increased
motivation of the project personnel
(Kwak & Ibbs, 2000b).
As mentioned above, the majority of
the research on PMMMs can be structured along three phases (Table 1).
While the first two phases appear to
have concentrated on a certain period
of time, the research on the benefits of
project management maturity is ongoing, with most recent contributions
by Jiménez Jiménez, Martinez Costa,
and Martinez Lorente (2012), Brookes
et al. (2014), and Spalek (2014, 2015).
The studies of this phase will be outlined in the following section, with
particular attention being paid to their
understanding of project management
maturity.
analysis as a method for addressing
these shortcomings of prior research.
In the first part of the results section,
we present the outcome of a qualitative content analysis of a number of
PMMMs, in other words, clusters of
project management maturity, which
we “reassemble” into two dimensions
of project management maturity. In the
second part of the results section, this
qualitative analysis is complemented by
analyses of survey data, which allow us
to show relationships between the clusters. These analyses help to understand
what project management maturity
consists of; the clusters and dimensions
of maturity might be used as definitions
in terms of future research. Still, we do
not perceive project management maturity as a singular concept; therefore, the
article concludes with an outlook on
potential avenues in terms of understanding project management maturity.
Research on Project
Management Maturity
While the first PMMMs were devel-
oped in the mid-1990s (for example,
by Levene, Bentley, & Jarvis, 1995;
Fincher & Levin, 1997), the concept of
assigning levels of maturity to (proj-
ect) management structures is rooted
in the disciplines of quality and pro-
cess management (Crosby, 1979) and
the management of software engineer-
ing projects (Paulk, Weber, Curtis, &
Chrissis, 1995). The Capability Maturity
Model (CMM) for the assessment of
software development processes served
as a blueprint for a vast number of
process-based maturity models (Bruin,
Freeze, Kulkarni, & Rosemann, 2005,
for example, mention more than 150) in
various management disciplines (Bruin
et al., 2005; Mullaly, 2006; see Becker
et al., 2009b, p. 3, for an overview). The
basic idea behind PMMMs is to apply
them in a cyclical manner of maturity
assessment, analysis of the results, defi-
nitions and execution of improvement
activities, and re-assessment (Project
Management Institute, 2013). These
activities should result in an increased
Research Phase Main Period Authors
Development of PMMMs,
considerations on assessment
techniques, cases on the
application of PMMMs
1997...2003 Rosenquist, 1997; Couture & Russett, 1998;
Rosenstock, Johnston, & Anderson, 2000;
Gareis, 2001; Burns & Crawford, 2002; all in
Grant & Pennypacker, 2006; Levene et al., 1995;
Fincher & Levin, 1997; Kwak & Ibbs, 2000b;
Gareis, 2002; Bryde, 2003
Comparison of average
project management maturity
levels along various industries
1998...2006 Levene et al., 1995; Mullaly, 1998; Ibbs &
Kwak, 2000; Pennypacker & Grant, 2003;
Cooke-Davies & Arzymanow, 2003; Fuessinger,
2005; Mullaly, 2006
Analysis of benefits of project
management maturity
2001...present Kwak & Ibbs, 2000a; Ibbs & Reginato, 2002;
Jugdev & Thomas, 2002b; Thomas & Mullaly,
2008; Besner & Hobbs, 2008; Yazici, 2009;
Jiménez Jiménez, Martínez Costa, & Martínez
Lorente, 2012; Pasian, Williams, & Alameri,
2012; Brookes et al., 2014; Albrecht & Spang,
2014; Spalek, 2014 & 2015
Table 1: Phases of research in the context of project management maturity models.
