The client's business was requesting new systems and procedures from IT and operations without approval from senior managers, resulting in a lack of planning and oversight over multiple projects. To address this structural issue, Maven conducted a project maturity assessment comparing the client's current project management capabilities to best practices. Maven produced a report that identified improvements that could be implemented quickly to provide the client's executive team with clearer authorization over changes and expected results.

1. Project maturity assessment - a top law firm
The client believed that it was not working optimally in identifying and managing projects.
The business approached IT and operational resources for new systems and new procedures
without first getting authorisation from senior managers. IT and operations would attempt
to comply with all requests but there was no real plan of who was doing what as workloads
were driven directly from the business without management guidance. In some cases
individuals were working on several projects for the business that their line manager was not
aware of.
Clearly this was a structural issue about who had the power to authorise projects and how
these projects were to be planned and resourced. While there were suggestions as to how
to improve the situation, no consensus on which improvements would be most worthwhile
had been reached.
To help the client identify and prioritise improvements to their project approach Maven
carried out a project maturity assessment, comparing their existing current capability for
project management with UK best practice including alignment to strategic objectives and
organisational governance. We produced a report and recommendations that identified
what positive outcome would be reached by replacing the existing project management
approach with best practice standards.
This has given the client a roadmap of project management improvements that we believe
can be implemented within a short timescale. The Executive Team are now much clearer
about what changes to authorise and what the likely results will be.
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