A PMO Maturity Assessment isn’t just a fancy organisational introspection exercise—it’s a brutally honest mirror. One that shows you whether your Project Management Office is a well-oiled engine of value delivery or a glorified reporting desk held together with spreadsheets, heroics, and prayer. And yes, it matters. Because when your PMO is immature, your projects bleed budget, timelines wobble, risks sneak past unnoticed, and your execs get twitchy. Mature PMOs, on the other hand, don’t just track projects—they shape strategy, forecast outcomes, and help a business pivot without tearing its hamstrings.
Why this matters
A PMO Maturity Assessment tells you how capable your organisation is at delivering strategy through projects. That sounds abstract until you realise it’s about answering whether you’re wasting money. Or wasting people’s time. Or both. The higher your maturity, the more likely your projects deliver measurable value. At the lower levels, projects are chaotic, decisions get made on gut feeling, and “lessons learned” are mostly forgotten. At higher levels, there’s governance, visibility, capacity planning, and project prioritisation that actually aligns with business goals. Like magic, but with Gantt charts.
What problems does it solve?
Poor project delivery doesn’t always announce itself with fireworks. Sometimes it’s subtle. Margins shrink. Staff churn rises. Customers get cranky. You start hearing words like “strategic misalignment” and “initiative overload.” What a PMO Maturity Assessment does is bring clarity. It pinpoints where things fall apart—maybe your planning is great but execution is disjointed. Maybe governance is just a word on a slide deck. Maybe your tools are powerful but nobody uses them properly. The assessment gives you a structured, evidence-based view of your current state, rather than relying on anecdotal grumbles or executive wishful thinking.
Tale-tell signs it’s time to assess the maturity level of your PMO
You don’t always need a formal audit to sense that something’s gone off in PMO land. Sometimes the signs are practically neon. Other times, they hide behind polite status reports and over-colourful dashboards. But if you spot any of the following symptoms, it’s time to stop brushing them under the post-mortem carpet and run a proper maturity check.
Let’s start with the meetings. If your steering committees feel more like therapy sessions than decision forums, something’s wrong. If every project update turns into a blame game or an exercise in creative PowerPointing, the PMO might be managing perception, not performance.
Or take planning. Are your project timelines consistently “ambitious” (translation: imaginary)? Do you still use Excel to track milestones because the PPM tool is too clunky or nobody trusts the data? That’s a red flag with a loud horn attached.
Then there’s governance. If decision rights are vague, escalation paths are circular, and risk logs look suspiciously empty—despite everyone knowing that half the portfolio is on fire—your governance isn’t mature. It’s performative.
Culture offers another tell. If project managers dread PMO reviews, and business units see the PMO as “that compliance thing” rather than a partner, you’ve got a credibility gap. And if the same mistakes get repeated, year after year, with no institutional learning, that’s more than inefficient—it’s organisational amnesia.
And finally, strategy. If your portfolio of projects looks like a chaotic wishlist with no visible link to business goals, your PMO isn’t guiding the ship. It’s just keeping the engine room tidy.
If any of this feels familiar, don’t worry—you’re not alone. But it does mean the time is ripe for a maturity assessment. Because you can’t fix what you can’t see, and you definitely can’t lead what you don’t understand.
Who should be involved?
This isn’t a solo sport. A proper assessment gathers input across layers and silos. Think CEO and CIO for the strategic perspective. Head of PMO for process and capability insights. Project managers and programme leads for the ground truth. Business stakeholders for the reality check. Even finance, risk, HR, and ops may need a seat at the table depending on how embedded your PMO is. And if you have delivery teams using agile, product-based methods, they shouldn’t be left out either. PMO maturity touches everyone it serves—and irritates—so wide input means fewer blind spots.
Ok, you did the PMO Maturity test. Now what?
This is the awkward bit. Because it’s not enough to stick the results in a PowerPoint and call it a day. The assessment should be the starting point for a roadmap. One that says, “Here’s where we are. Here’s where we need to be. Here’s what it’ll take to get there.” It’s a springboard for action: building new capabilities, ditching outdated templates, investing in tools that people will actually use, and getting buy-in for cultural change. You prioritise the gaps with the biggest business impact. You benchmark against industry norms. You set clear, time-boxed goals—and you revisit the assessment periodically to track progress.
Think of it like a health check. You don’t get fitter by stepping on the scale once and then doing nothing. The PMO Maturity Assessment is your weight, your cholesterol, your blood pressure. The hard work comes after.
A PMO Maturity Level Test
Below is a practical, self-assessment-style test designed around a 5-level maturity model (based loosely on models such as CMMI, P3M3, and OPM3), with a scoring system to estimate maturity.
Please download the form and rate each area from 1 (Disagree) to 5 (Agree)