Project management maturity on successful project execution in a municipality in the Western Cape Province

Abstract

Project management has been adopted by businesses in both the public and commercial sectors in an effort to ensure that projects achieve their intended goals. Projects are now increasingly common in the public sector, especially Municipalities, as a way to accomplish developmental objectives and provide services. As a result, businesses have spent a lot of money making sure they have the resources necessary to manage projects well. This investment typically takes the shape of project manager training and development programmes or the adoption and use of project management techniques that have defined procedures for managing projects. Analysing many facets of an organization's project management performance and exploring the best ways to enhance it to assure project success has been a significant focus of project management research. Project research and project management have advanced, but organisations still struggle with poor project success rates. Project management maturity is an organization's approach to project management and having certain standards and processes in place to manage projects successfully and efficiently. Project management maturity level and its link to project success for the specific organizations are not always known. Hence the objective of the study which was to determine the link between organizations’ Project Management Maturity and Project Success as it relates to successful project execution. The study used mixed methods research methodology because of its ability to provide both depth and breadth to the phenomenon under study, Project practitioners in the municipality who are routinely and directly associated with projects were the study's target population. These comprised project administrators, project team members, project managers and IT Technicians these are all internal stakeholders involved directly with project execution. They all have the lived experiences of failed and successful projects they were involved in and can state or analyse their organization’s project maturity levels. The prospective respondents were scattered throughout the municipality and work in environments with other people who are not involved with projects. Consequently, random sampling would include too many other people who are not related to project execution in the system. For this reason. Therefore, the researcher opted for purposive sampling (judgemental sampling) because the individual prospective respondents are distinguishable from the other employees. Respondents who were approached were issued with structured questionnaires with open-ended questions. Respondents were made aware that it is not compulsory to participate, and that respondents could withdraw whenever they felt uncomfortable or could omit any questions, they were not comfortable with. Data Analysis was conducted using SPSS and Excel and thematic analysis to construct illustrations for the comparison of the variables and to give a meaningful answer to the research question.