Organizational Management and Maturity

Plan, work, optimize and become mature is a life cycle of an entrepreneurial conceptualization. Once a dream, can be nurtured into an organization very soon in today's vapor world. I call the world - `vapor` due to its dissolute property whereby technology evaporates fast. The ability of one to sustain against all odds gives it maturity. There are several obstacles against this cause and to sustain these makes one a true leader in today's markets.

When a VC (Venture Capitalist) invests for a startup, they look at the potential to succeed in the startup group. More often than not a management guru is accompanied; who lays down the plan to evolve and manage the organization. Executing the plan and optimizing the work done is carried out effortlessly due to the enthusiasm of the startup group. New people join and the startup is turned around into an organization. Work in this juncture is what differentiates a successful sustaining organization with the one who drifts away in a wave of impedimenta. Success to be carried forward is more arduous than success itself. An organization can be managed to become mature and sustain all odds by the way it is managed.

Technology leadership is a key to attainment and focused management is what drives the organization. The most subdue level of management lies in the most junior people. They need to manage their daily tasks and un-augmented work which is given upon them. The middle level management plans, executes and monitors work. These are the key people who focus on the drive to enable an organization to mature. Over the edge are the strategic leaders. They define, incorporate and drive thought leadership, entrepreneurial leadership and focus towards the strategic goals with simplistic views. Primary focus of the strategic leaders is not to cultivate strategies but to inculcate them down to the most sub level of personnel.

Maturity is a vision but to attain one, the organization needs to plan for optimization, automation and new ventures with diversified orientation. A vision oriented organization deals not only with bottom lines, profit margins and financial stability but also focuses on new technology areas, growth and potential oriented practices. Management is closely related to this maturity and focus on management brings in the drive to work towards the vision. A manufacturing firm can have a vision to attain operational maturity, a software firm to attain project management maturity and an audit firm to attain auditing maturity. Let’s focus towards a software organization. Operational project management maturity models are available at various levels for IT (information technology organizations). PMI (Project Management Institute) appraises an OMP3 (Organizational Project Management Maturity Model) for an organization. Primary focus towards this maturity is a projectized organization that operates from managing independent projects to programs and has a healthy and inspiring PMO (Project Management Office).

PMO operates at a level of precision that would prevent or detect a misstatement that was more than inconsequential or material for a project. At operational level, PMO is responsible to educate, train, provide process knowledge and toolkits, organize workshops and maintain Organizational Process Assets (OPA). At strategic level, PMO has to drive technology initiatives, customer engagement models and facilitate in managing leadership potentials for projects. The PMO operates at a macro level in the organization and does not execute the project tasks or is not responsible to the business unit budgets or growth. PMO is an essential part of a projectized organization and is the primary scrutiny start point for PMI Audits.

OMP3 multidimensional structure deals with Knowledge, Assessment and Improvement. These structures are based on the focus of an organization and its management towards process improvement stages. These stages are of Best practices, continuous improvements, capabilities, outcomes and KPI (Key performance initiatives). The 3 domains of Projects, Programs and Portfolios are appraised with these stages and the management articulates its maturity. This global appraisal certainly helps a projectized organization to stand out in a competitive arena of today. All the thought leaders, middle level management, strategic leaders and even potential individuals participate to attain maturity and this close tie of management and maturity characterizes a successfully mature organization.