Outsource to Growth after a Project Management Maturity Assessment

Capitalize on a Project Management Maturity Assessment

With the continuing appeal of outsourcing tasks that require significant resource hours but relatively low skill levels, deciding if outsourcing part of your business’s production or support processes will be profitable can be difficult. If the purpose of potential outsourcing is to cut costs, ultimately offer a better product at the same price, and thus stimulate growth, then it may be advisable to carry out a project management maturity assessment beforehand. This analysis can help a firm to identify flaws, inconsistencies, and wasteful practices in its project management strategies, and yield suggestions for how to rectify those weaknesses to prepare to manage a partially outsourced project.

Outsourcing often requires revamped organizational structures, new communication strategies and technology, cross-cultural training to facilitate communication, and practical training in the target country to create the necessary human resources. Pre-existing PMO services will almost certainly be insufficient, even if management processes were efficient, standardized, and reproducible.

Many project management maturity assessments include an interview and a questionnaire component. Though time consuming both to collect and to analyze, the resultant data can offer a wealth of information about where PM practices are falling short or just not being executed completely. Two important results can be expected from implementing changes based on this information. First, improved communication and access to information should make effective decision making easier, which will in turn create a more adaptable firm better equipped to overcome the difficulties that can arise from outsourcing.

Second, by prioritizing outsourcing as a growth strategy and motivation for the project management maturity assessment, the firm can engage project management experts in the design of outsourced production. This will enable a more organic growth cycle in preparing the firm to move part of its production or services overseas. Advanced knowledge of such a significant change, increased communication about it, and more effective and standardized strategies for initiating the change should decrease the time necessary to complete the shift, and minimize interruptions in the outsourcing process.

Project management maturity assessment helps a firm gain a better understanding of its strengths and weaknesses as they relate to why outsourcing would be beneficial, ultimately allowing the firm to get a better ROI on the outsourcing. Please contact us for more information; we are available by phone at 425.284.7800, or email us at adainfo@adaquest.com.