Project, programme and portfolio maturity: a case study of Australian Federal Government

This paper aims to examine the notion of maturity assessment and maturity models more broadly and goes on to examine the findings from the assessments of project, programme and portfolio maturity undertaken across Australian Government agencies.

A statistical analysis was performed to determine the level of maturity that best represents the Australian Federal Government agencies as a whole. The unit of analysis in this study is the agencies overall scores in each sub-model across the seven perspectives of the portfolio, programme and project management maturity model (P3M3) maturity model.

This study has identified a number of interesting findings. First, the practices of project, programme and portfolio across the dataset practiced independently of each other. Second, benefits management and strategy alignment practices are generally poor across Australian Government agencies. Third, programme management practices are the most immature. Finally, the results showed a high sensitivity to the “generic attributes” of roles and responsibilities, experience, capability development, planning and estimating and scrutiny and review.

All data used in this analysis are secondary data collected from individual Australian Government agencies. The data were collected by accredited consultants following a common data collection method and using a standard template to ensure a consistent approach.

The study poses some implications for practice, particularly given the context of Australian Federal Government agencies current plans and action to improve organisational maturity. The study suggests that benefits management processes at the project level and benefits management, governance and stakeholder management processes at the programme level should be an area of focus for improvement.

This study is the first attempt to systematically review the data collected through such an assessment and in particular identify the findings and the implications at a whole of government level.