This spectrum introduced in the last blog entries could easily be labelled a project management maturity model. OK - stop giving me a hard time - so the spectrums are only illustrative and not well developed - but you get the idea!! While this "project management maturity model" is an accurate label some folks might find that tag a tad heavy! I like to think of it as simply right sizing project management. Not super-sizing like you do at McDonalds because you can do so cheaply or not down-sizing like in a large corporation because your revenue is not in line to your expense line. Nope - this is right-sizing … delivering and then using the right amount of project management for a given situation.

As you can see the acronym for right sizing project management is "RPM" … and this of course also stands for revs per minute like on the dashboard of a car.

By the way I recently bought a biofuel car … runs on a fuel mixture that is 85% ethanol and is so environmentally friendly!! I love it! The source of the biofuel is milk - yes milk!! Milk contains protein, fat, lactose (carbohydrate or energy source) as well as minerals and vitamins. During cheese & food ingredient production all the proteins, fat and other components are removed except for the lactose. The lactose is present in a water solution which when fermented with yeast produces a 3.5% alcohol solution. This is then distilled to 96% v/v ethanol. However to use as a fuel an increase of the strength to 99.9% is achieved by passing the ethanol over a molecular bead bed which takes out the residual water and gives the desired ethanol strength. The cows which produce the milk are 90% grass fed with the balance made up of cereals. On this basis the ethanol is derived from renewable source i.e. grass and cereals. How cool is this?!

I digressed, didn't I!! OK back to project management and RPM! You know how you increase and decrease the speed or RPM as you drive - you dial it up or down depending on the driving situation. Same need is there for project and portfolio management.

Exercise for the reader - I know this is getting ridiculous! - how can / should you right size your project management process?