Governance and Organisation Project Maturity

In my early days as a project management consultant I sat with a General Manager in Telstra explaining how a project management improvement program I was proposing would pull together a range of management methodologies across projects and programs, execution and quality. I was walking him through an A3-size model showing lines with lots of boxes, icons, stick figures and interfaces to external systems. Having looked at the model for a while the senior manager said “Michael, I just don’t think we have the maturity to implement this.” I realised two things immediately: don’t confuse your audience with diagrams that are way too complex and defy comprehension, and understand the capability of the organisation and how far they are prepared to move to achieve well understood outcomes. It also had me thinking about what ‘maturity’ means for an organisation.