UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM

DIRECTORATE OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES

COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (CoET)

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL AND INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING

MASTERS IN ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

MG 623: PROJECT MANAGEMENT

INSTRUCTOR: Prof. N. M. LEMA

PARTICIPANTS

Name Registration Number

Kajigili, Joackim George 2019-06-01318
Mwenda, Innocent Abel 2019-06-02091
Sumaye, Samwel Ally 2019-06-02468
Mwakatobe, Elia Kenani 2019-06-10990
Kinahi, Sauli Meshack 2019-06-14386
Mgaya, Ismail 2019-06-14509

June, 2020
ABSTRACT

This paper presents the findings of an investigation on the developments in project

management maturity modeling at global and local level and how a full pm maturity
assessment could be carried out in Tanzania. Project Management Maturity Model
(PMMM) is very essential due to its capability to control time and cost most efficiently, as
well as meeting the stakeholder’s requirements. More and more establishments have
included Project Management Maturity Modeling (PMMM) as a key approach for
remaining modest in today’s highly competitive corporate environment.

However, there are various levels in the Project Management Maturity Model that
constitute to meaningful and measurable results of the project, leading to Economic
development of the country and globally as well.

Keywords: project management maturity model (PMMM), project management.

INTRODUCTION

Project management maturity model has been continuously applied in a number of projects.
The only difficulties arises when there is a need of implementations, firms are facing this
difficulties in implementation than in drawing up organizational strategies (Meskendahl,
2010) and thus, organizational project management maturity models has well been
discovered, criticism of their implementation as inefficiency as continuity of its usability
by the firms faced difficulties in implementing and improving projects practices (Viana and
Mota, 2016).

Throughout the history, every kind of organizations such as governments, companies,

charitable institutions have spent important efforts to define their long- and short-term goals
or objectives, and to design strategies to help them achieve these goals. Project management
is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities in order to
meet project requirements (Management, 2017).

The Project Management Maturity Model is a concept that lets Project-Based Organizations
assess their project management success. According to the thought proposed by this model,
there are five levels of project management maturity that each business must go through on
their path to success. Most of the PMMM was inspired by the Size Maturity Model (CMM)
established at the foundation of 90ies, which was originally intended to measure capability
in software development project (Backlund, Chronéer and Sundqvist, 2014).

Project Management Maturity Model has been used in a number of projects. The only
difficulties arise when there is a need of implementations, firms are facing this difficulty in
implementation than in drawing up organizational strategies (Meskendahl, 2010) and thus,
organizational project management maturity models have well been discovered, criticism
of their implementation as inefficiency as continuity of its usability by the firms faced
difficulties in implementing and improving projects practices (Viana and Mota, 2016).

As increasing demand of project management was restless different methodology where

implemented to unify and simplify the process involved in project management, generic
standard was developed looking at locally and external based experts, thus to establish
criteria for evaluation and qualification scale to perform best practices (López, Viveros and
Melendez, 2017). Cost reduction has been made possible by the use of project management
maturity due to its increasingly level of implementations (Spalek, 2013).

According to the researches, organizations who improve their maturity gain improved
schedule and budget predictability, improved cycled time, increased productivity,
improved quality, customer satisfaction, employee morale, increased return on investment
and decreased cost of quality (Bourne and Tuffley, 2007).

The project maturity constitutes of human, financial and technical, technical systems,
behavioral systems, more competent and mature personal within a company. Research
shows that 75% of its members indicated that there is a tendency that their companies will
give more and more importance to the management of projects (PMI, 2009).

However, Tanzania, like most developing and emerging economies, is overwhelmed with
project management (PM) problems. Similarly, PM is among the challenges identified as
facing developing countries with projects failing to meet budget and schedule expectations
(Kavishe and Chileshe, 2018).

Mostly Tanzanian construction projects are being characterized by sheltered procurement

process and procedure having less or no transparency at all, political interference on
projects tend to undermine the industry, improper construction policies on private and
public sectors, legal construction institutes (boards) such as CRB, ERB and AQRB have
narrow strategy in the industry. This makes Tanzanian construction industry fall under a
category of poorer performing in project management and with less attention and misuse
of collected taxes, According to Kakas, this poor performance is due to the application
conventional procurement methods thus not meeting the cost and time requirements
(Kavishe and Chileshe, 2018).

MATURITY MODELLING

A maturity model as a tool benefits people in assessing the current efficiency of a person
or group and supports reckoning out what skills they need in delivering and improving their
performance. In many circles maturity models have gained a bad reputation, even though
they can easily be misused, in proper hands they can be helpful.(Fowler, 2014)

There has been a dramatic and steady increase in the extent to which the modern enterprise
adopts and relies upon project management to secure a competitive advantage. As project
management be- comes the dominant way that work is accomplished, organizations strive
to become good at delivering projects successfully.(Grant and Pennypacker, 2006)

In the past few years, technological development and innovation have altered the shape of
projects globally. Such changes have opened up windows of opportunities in terms of
collaboration and knowledge transfer among project managers and developers. It’s
therefore very important for such an improvement in practices isn’t adopt randomly as it
may result in a mismatch in standards.

The modern enterprise must approach improvement purposefully. Committing an

organization to a significant improvement effort requires a thorough understanding of
where the organization is and, perhaps more importantly, where the organization needs to
grow. This is the need that is addressed by the recent interest and attention devoted to the
development of project management maturity models (Grant and Pennypacker, 2006).

MAIN CRITICISM AND INSIGHTS

Criticism:

There was a time when PMMMs had been criticized severely. A number of researchers
claimed that they were lacking foundations (Cooke-Davies, 2007; Jugdev & Thomas, 2002;
Mullaly, 2006), there is a lack of agreement among researchers about the contents
comprised in the project management maturity (Ibbs & Kwak, 2000; Pasian et al., 2012)
and a lack of evidence of the relationship of maturity and perceived outcomes (Ahlemann
et al., 2009; Besner & Hobbs, 2008a; Killen & Hunt 2013; Mullaly, 2014).

Another stream of research has criticized the structure of PMMMs by arguing that they are
rigid and inflexible (Jugdev & Thomas, 2002), process- oriented (Bushuyev & Wagner,
2014), bureaucratic and overwhelming Overwhelming (Albrecht & Spang, 2014; Jugdev
& Thomas, 2002) and ignore the organizational context (Killen & Hunt, 2013; Kujala &
Artto, 2000; Mullaly, 2014).

Tanzania is among the rapid growing African economies faces similar bottlenecks.
Generally factors such as government policies, insufficient funds, withdrawal by donors,
shortage of foreign exchange, inappropriate contract conditions, political priorities,
poverty, social-cultural conditions, corruption , low institutional and human capacity ,and
occurrence of unexpected events such as war, drought are considered to be the major factors
behind the poor performance of projects in developing countries (Adeyemi and Idoko,
2008).

Another important reason for failure of projects in developing countries is the way projects
are set up and implemented in those countries. This is mainly applicable to the so called
“development projects.” In such projects, it is common to see lack of involvement and
consultation of users and the tendency of some donors to finance only what they wanted or
perceived to be important for the recipient rather than based on need of the users (Adeyemi
and Idoko, 2008).

Insights:

Other studies, besides making negative criticism,Have given some interesting insights into
PMMMs and the evaluation of maturity. For example, Andersen & Jessen (2003) point out
that some of the most important studies on project maturity seem to have a narrow
interpretation of what maturity means, as they focus primarily on what organizations and
project people are doing operationally. In addition, these authors argue that measuring
maturity seems to be more subjective than objective. For them, competence is related to a
com

Tanzania has experienced growth in the construction industry especially in the urban areas.
There have been huge investments in the housing and real estate industry. Project
management practices therefore tend to play an enormous role towards the successful
implementation of such projects.

This goes without saying, that a lot of challenges still exist towards project management
practices in the country. Therefore, apart from their technical knowledge and expertise,
Project managers are encouraged to demonstrate a whole range of behavioral skills that can
help make an effective multi organizational teamwork and communication towards
achieving successful project outcome (Reinschmidt and Trejo, 2006).

Although the project management process and systems do exist, a major role needs to be
played by Project managers in ensuring project are delivered effectively. Thus, the effective
performance of the project manager is a critical factor towards understanding and
improving the related managerial practices required (Abdullah, Mukmin and Samad, 2011).

The availability of skills and expertise and local content is among the major challenges
towards successful project deliver in third world countries, Lack of institutional capacity
and trained personnel is also another main reason why projects fail in developing countries
.Further, the lack of awareness about the benefit and application of Project Management in
many developing countries‟ organizations combined with the presence of few trained
project managers and wrong perception that sees project managers as an unnecessary
expense has contributed to the low level of development of project management in those
countries (Adeyemi and Idoko, 2008).

In summary, success and implementation of projects in developing countries is influenced

much more by the external environment than the internal environment. Thus, project
management in those countries should focus more on the management of the externalities
of the project environment (Jekale, 2004). Project Leaders therefore need to leverage on
politics, public relations and communication skills in order to become successful. Bi nation
of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that influences performances.
CONCLUDING REMARKS

This paper presented an explicit procedure for supporting organizations in taking

investment decisions with a view to improving organizational project management
maturity. For this purpose, a literature review was conducted in order to develop a further
understanding of PMMM frameworks, their main assumption and shortcomings. This
produced some useful insights which aided discussion on how managers could make better
and holistic decisions using the currently available PMMMs in order to maximize the return
on their investments.
REFERENCES:

Backlund, F., Chronéer, D. and Sundqvist, E. (2014) ‘Project Management Maturity

Models – A Critical Review A case study within Swedish engineering and construction
organizations’, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. Elsevier B.V., 119, pp. 837–
846. doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.03.094.

Fowler, M. (2014) ‘MaturityModel’, pp. 4–7.

Grant, K. P. and Pennypacker, J. S. (2006) ‘Project management maturity: An assessment

of project management capabilities among and between selected industries’, IEEE
Transactions on Engineering Management, 53(1), pp. 59–68. doi:
10.1109/TEM.2005.861802.

Kavishe, N. and Chileshe, N. (2018) ‘Identifying Project Management Practices and

Principles for Public – Private Partnerships in Housing Projects : The Case of Tanzania
sustainability Identifying Project Management Practices and Principles for Public –
Private Partnerships in Housing Projec’, (December). doi: 10.3390/su10124609.

López, A. C., Viveros, J. A. M. and Melendez, A. B. R. (2017) ‘Methodology proposal to

determine project management maturity level in engineering companies’, Revista EIA,
14(27), p. 85. doi: 10.24050/reia.v14i27.808.

Management, P. (2017) BODY OF KNOWLEDGE or A Guide to the.

Meskendahl, S. (2010) ‘The influence of business strategy on project portfolio

management and its success — A conceptual framework’, JPMA. Elsevier Ltd and
IPMA, 28(8), pp. 807–817. doi: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2010.06.007.

Spalek, S. (2013) ‘Influence of Project Management Maturity on Projects’ Costs’,

Toknowpress.Net, pp. S2-79. Available at: http://www.toknowpress.net/ISBN/978-961-
6914-07-9/papers/S2_79-85.pdf.

Viana, J. C. and Mota, C. M. de M. (2016) ‘Enhancing organizational project

management maturity: A framework based on the value focused thinking model’,
Producao, 26(2), pp. 313–329. doi: 10.1590/0103-6513.169913.