Information technology project management : project management maturity and its effect on project success

With the widely publicized project failure rates and related cost overruns, more companies today are turning to the various corporate approaches that may help them improve their project management practices (Judgev & Thomas, 2002). Given the latter trends in the corporate project management practice, several project management maturity models (PMMMs) were designed by industry practitioners to provide a framework emphasizing that an organization needs to purposefully and progressively develop its capabilities to deliver projects with consistent success. This popular industry movement however has not been supported to date by empirical research. To breach the gap between academia and practice, this thesis investigated, through a survey of over 100 IT industry Project Management Professionals, the existence and specifics the relationship between project management maturity and project success. The sustained IT project management success appears to be attained by developing standard organizational project management practices, tools and techniques across several project management knowledge areas; in other words by increasing organizational project management maturity. Moreover, this research explores and highlights the relevance of different project success dimensions proposed in the theoretical literature. This study finds that out of four commonly named dimensions of project success---project efficiency, business benefits, preparing for the future and impact to the customer---the first two are the most relevant.