Project Management Capability Levels: An Empirical Study

This paper outlines existing maturity models of project management and their underlying constructs. Organizations involved in software development in Sydney, Australia were interviewed about their project management practices and their responses analysed to determine whether different project managers used different levels of project management practices and whether the practices were in accordance with a process based maturity model. This did not seem to be the case, yet the data suggested that, as a possible alternative, a systems theory based approach might be more tenable. The overall conclusion, that a system theory based maturity model appears to be better correlated with organizational size and software development maturity than a process based maturity model, is briefly discussed and additional research is suggested that could investigate this novel conclusion further.