Recommendations
IMPORTANT RECOMMENDATIONS BEFORE ANSWERING THE SURVEY
The core of this survey is a set of 40 questions to evaluate, in a very accurate way, the maturity of a department within an organization. The questionnaire will be available at this website every year from now on, thus making it possible for the surveyed organizations to design and follow-up an improvement plan along the next years. This is what makes us believe that the survey is important to your organization and to Brazil as well.
It is important that the questions are answered seriously and with honesty, and with consistent knowledge of the Project Management technics used in the department that is being evaluated.
Because of that, we strongly request the provided answers to be as close as possible to the reality, according to the answerer’s perception. Avoid being “Mr. Nice Guy” and providing answers different of the actual scenario just to obtain good results and make your department look good in the end. This behavior is harmful to this survey and to your department, because it becomes very difficult to trace an improvement plan and to compare your department maturity with the consolidated results of other similar departments in other companies.
It usually takes 30 to 90 minutes to answer all the questions. Before starting to answer, we suggest:
a) Read the “Information” section. If possible, download the texts and read them as proper preparation to the survey;
b) Avoid trying to answer this survey during busy moments;
c) If possible, have a co-worker in your department helping you answer the questions. Since it’s a broad subject, experience shows that two people can better analyse the questions.
CONTRACTORS
If the respondent is a contractor (consulting, engineering, computer science, etc.) working for another organization, the respondent should pay close attention to fill in the questionnaire. The answers HOMOGENEITY relative to the project portfolio and relative to which organization the answers refer to should be kept. In other words, one should not answer a certain question from the contractor’s point of view and another question from the client organization’s point of view.
For example, the respondent may be a professional from a small organization that works full time as a consultant within a large organization (eg. Petrobras) and is fully engaged with the projects of the large organization (Petrobras). To better clarify this, let us take Petrobras as an example:
a) The case is a sector where Petrobras has a service provider that is a small business. Thus, the respondent can choose to answer all questions from that Petrobras sector’s point of view, and not from her/his business’ point of view. That is, it is the case of a consultant working with Petrobras projects. In this case, for example:
– In answering about the annual revenues of the organization, she/he must provide data from Petrobras.
– In answering about the amount of projects of the respective portfolio, she/he must provide data from that sector of Petrobras.
– In answering about the average costs of projects, she/he must provide data from that sector of Petrobras.
– In any of the questions she/he will reference their own business.
Certainly, if data from Petrobras are not available or are confidential, the respondent can choose this option in each relevant question. Moreover, the respondent should be aware if that sector of Petrobras is already participating in this research. In this case, the service provider should not participate.
b) Another case is of a large contractor executing construction works (projects) within Petrobras. In this case, the respondent can answer all questions with data from his own company, considering the portfolio of projects being executed for Petrobras, and data from Petrobras will not be mentioned in any question of the research. By the way, most likely the contractor carries out other construction works for other organizations and its project portfolio is the group of projects in all organizations.
CONCLUSION: once the name of the organization is provided in question 4, every answers to the other questions should reference this same organization.