Product Description

"It has often been said that 'to improve, one must be prepared to measure the improvement' and 'one must inspect what one expects.' The Kerzner Project Management Maturity Model has provided this tangible measure of maturity. The rest is up to a company to set the expectations and to inspect the results."--Bill Marshall, Nortel Global Project Process Standards (from the Foreword)
Strategic planning for project management-a proven model for assessment and continuous improvement
Harold Kerzner's landmark Project Management has long been the reference of choice for outstanding coverage of the basic principles and concepts of project management. Now, with the Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM) detailed in this new book, Kerzner has developed a unique, industry-validated tool for helping companies assess their progress in integrating project management throughout their organization.
Strategic Planning for Project Management Using a Project Management Maturity Model begins by examining the principles of strategic planning and how they relate to project management. The second part of the book introduces the PMMM, detailing the five different levels of development for achieving maturity, along with benchmarking instruments for measuring an organization's progress along the maturity curve. These assessment tools can easily be customized to suit individual companies-a particularly valuable feature of the model.
Offering vital guidance for making project management a strategic tool for competitive advantage, this book helps managers, engineers, project team members, business consultants, and others build a powerful foundation for company improvement and excellence.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1068893 in Books
• Published on: 2001-01-16
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Back Cover Copy
"It has often been said that `to improve, one must be prepared to measure the improvement' and `one must inspect what one expects.' The Kerzner Project Management Maturity Model has provided this tangible measure of maturity. The rest is up to a company to set the expectations and to inspect the results."-—Bill Marshall, Nortel Global Project Process Standards (from the Foreword)

Strategic planning for project management-a proven model for assessment and continuous improvement

Harold Kerzner's landmark Project Management has long been the reference of choice for outstanding coverage of the basic principles and concepts of project management. Now, with the Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM) detailed in this new book, Kerzner has developed a unique, industry-validated tool for helping companies assess their progress in integrating project management throughout their organization.

Strategic Planning for Project Management Using a Project Management Maturity Model begins by examining the principles of strategic planning and how they relate to project management. The second part of the book introduces the PMMM, detailing the five different levels of development for achieving maturity, along with benchmarking instruments for measuring an organization's progress along the maturity curve. These assessment tools can easily be customized to suit individual companies-a particularly valuable feature of the model.

Offering vital guidance for making project management a strategic tool for competitive advantage, this book helps managers, engineers, project team members, business consultants, and others build a powerful foundation for company improvement and excellence.

About the Author
HAROLD KERZNER, PhD, prominent instructor for the International Institute of Learning (IIL), is currently Professor of Systems Management at Baldwin-Wallace College in Ohio and President of Project Management Associates, a consulting and training firm that conducts seminars for leading U.S. and international corporations. He is the recipient of a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Illinois and has taught engineering at that institution and business administration at Utah State University, where he received the 1998 Distinguished Service Award. The Northeast Ohio Chapter of the Project Management Institute has honored Dr. Kerzner by instituting the Kerzner Award for Project Management Excellence.

Customer Reviews

Average at best...
Kerzner's project management maturity model is legendary ... that may be a big part of the problem with this book. It's full of dated buzzwords, a wafer-thin, ultra-simplistic overview of strategic planning and provides little actionable material for integrating the strategic planning and project management processes.

From Kerzner, and for the price, I expected much much more!

Quick Read, worth the time
This is a very quick read book that talks about a general prject management Model for Companies and especially Technology Organizations within companies.
The Model offered isn't as restrictive or expensive as CMM (CMU's Capability Maturity Model), and outlines how common methods / processes / foundations can be brought together in an overall strategy for Technology organizations to develop in to true Project Oriented groups, working effective within a greater organization.

Much-needed effort, but has pitfalls
This book represents an excellent effort to apply the capability maturity model(CMM) to project management. For reference, the CMM was originated by Mitre Corp. and developed by the Software Engineering Institute originally as a benchmark for determining an organization's software engineering capabilities. It has become a widely used benchmark in the software engineering community and has been extended to other domains, such as human resources (the People Capability Maturity Model) and other disciplines.

The book starts off with an introduction, followed by three chapters that lay the groundwork for the author's maturity model: The Need for Strategic Planning for Project Management, Impact of Economic Conditions on Project Management, Principles of Strategic Planning. The ideas and material presented here are very much applicable to program management offices.

Project Management Maturity Model (PMMM) is introduced in the next chapter, which ties project management to an enterprise-wide strategic planning initiative. It also provides a project management-centric view of capability maturity. The next five chapters are devoted to each of the five levels of the PMMM: Level 1 (Common Language), Level 2 (Common Processes), Level 3 (Singular Methodology), Level 4 (Benchmarking), and Level 5 (Continuous Improvement).

The value of this is project management practices can be assessed against a standard benchmark for capability, which is something that cannot be achieved by comparing these practices against Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge.

There is one pitfall to the PMMM that the author proposes: it uses a different paradigm than the CMM, which is Level-1 (Ad Hoc), Level-2 (Repeatable), Level-3 (Defined), Level-4 (Managed) and Level-5 (Optimizing). This is not a problem outside of the software development industry and IT domain where the CMM is not known. However, because the CMM integrates project management into its process areas, the disparity of terminology, assessment paradigm and the model itself will cause confusion and make implementing the PMMM in a CMM organization a nightmare.

One thing I do like very much is the balanced approach the author takes. This is shown in a chapter titled "Special Problems with Strategic Planning for Project Management." Also, the case studies at the end of the book are excellent reading.

Here's the conundrum: the project management profession needs a benchmark and the PMMM is well thought out and thorough. However, the PMMM differs in many ways from the CMM. My personal take is at least the author drove a stake into the ground by raising an awareness of the need for a PMMM. He also has thought this through and the model itself is sound. I found the book invaluable and thought-provoking. It does lay the foundation for a PMO, as stated by a previous reviewer, and that is something that is only marginally addressed in the official U.S. PM standard (Project Management Body of Knowledge). The value outweighs the cited pitfall, in my opinion, and earns this book 5 stars and my recommendation that every serious PM read this book.