The evaluation criteria developed by Andersen are discussed below in the context of adjusting them and developing evaluation criteria for benchmarking process models that would fit for a benchmarking study of project management processes.
Criteria 2 for the graphical model: Communicate the continuos nature of benchmarking did not match the view of this research. For the production environment, benchmarking may be of a continuos nature, but in the project environment, it is not.
For project management it is rather the improvement effort that should be continuos, i.e. always strive to be better in doing the project management processes.
Benchmarking is one way to now and then enhance this improvement, but benchmarking in the project environment is not likely to be a continuos ongoing effort.
Benchmarking is rather an event that is executed with varying frequency, and the graphic model should illustrate it as a temporary event rather than continuos.
Criteria 4 of the process: Focus on business processes needed a slight adjustment. As for the production environment, previous discussions argue for a process focus in benchmarking of project management as well. However, the term business processes is not proper in this research’s context, and the term is replaced by project management processes.
Criteria 3 for the benchmarking process: Link the benchmarking study to strategy, is a criteria that may be harder to apply within the project environment. That benchmarking must be tied to the organization’s strategy and other improvement efforts, is an very important issue. If a benchmarking study is conducted with focus on one organizations project management processes, to bring this issue in as part of the benchmarking process model seems proper. However, when many organizations are involved with varying strategies and improvement efforts, the strategy issue might split rather than unite the benchmarking team. It is important that the members of the benchmarking team know about each organization’s objective of the benchmarking study. However, this research is not certain that the strategy issue should be a part of the benchmarking process model. This research did therefore not include the strategy issue as part of the evaluation criteria.
Criteria 7: Be generic and flexible. The ultimate purpose of Andersen’s research was to create a generic model. The ultimate purpose of this part of this dissertation research was to evaluate if the models were fit for benchmarking of project management at a process level. A generic model is of course of interest of this research, but it does not have such a high priority that it will be among the evaluation criteria. That the model should be flexible enough to accommodate some level of variation, is however so important trait that it should be included in an evaluation. Still, it will not be an own criteria, but sought covered by other criteria, i.e. in Andersen’s criteria 1 and partly 8.
Criteria 5: Emphasize planning, is of course important. However, the planning focus will be taken care of by other criteria that this research suggest. The criteria will not be brought forward the way it was stated by Andersen.
The other evaluation criteria by Andersen, are definitely needed for the model in project environment as well. However, due to their general nature, for e.g. process criteria 1: Contain all necessary steps in a benchmarking study, what this study consider to belong within each criteria is different from Andersen’s view, while he looked at the production environment, not project management. The necessary steps for a benchmarking of project management processes are thus different from the necessary steps of benchmarking in production. The next pages will addressed this difference further. Other of Andersen’s criteria would have a similar shift of content, e.g. process criteria 2: Describe a logical sequence of activities. This research’s evaluation exercise of existing benchmarking process model will probably enhance a different logical sequence of activities from Andersen’s evaluation.
With this research’s focus on benchmarking process models’ fitness for studies of project management processes, Andersen’s criteria lack some issues previously discussed. These lacking issues are stated as additional criteria below:
• Focus on defining the organizational platform of the benchmarking study (and give guidance to address the organizational complexity/problems).
The complicated organizational structure of a project or project management, is
brought into the benchmarking study as well. As mentioned earlier, if many organizations are involved in the same benchmarking study, careful considerations must be made in e.g.: selecting benchmarking team members; defining the need/interests of each organization involved in the study; agreeing on how to store data; as well as handle improvement recommendations and implementations. The benchmarking process should give guidance and focus on addressing this organizational issue.
• Emphasize to get an overview of the involved organizations’ project management processes and practices, before deciding on one process for the benchmarking study. As mentioned earlier, deciding on the right thing (right process) to benchmark is hard in the production environment, and even harder in projects.
Projects have little focus on processes and little experience in improvement techniques. In addition there are usually many organizations involved. It is important for the success of the benchmarking study, that each organization map and know their own project management processes, and are able to decide on which process they have an interest in improving. One way to decide on what process to improve have been illustrated earlier in this research. This was in Part 1, where the perception of each project management process’ importance and performance have been mapped, thus making it possible to do a selection after improvement need. In a Statoil case study, Andersen and Pettersen (1996) inform that choosing the process was based on two main concerns: 1) The process must have an impact on customer satisfaction (external or internal customers); 2) The process must display a potential for improvement and cost reduction. With a sound knowledge of own processes, the organizations can decide on which process they jointly should pursue to improve.
• Emphasize the development of metrics and measures. Developing and defining metrics and measures have been mentioned earlier to be a major obstacle for benchmarking of project management processes. Consequently, to have proper metrics and measures are important for the success of the benchmarking, and should be included as a point in the evaluation of benchmarking process models.
The final adjusted criteria for evaluation of benchmarking process models fitness for a benchmarking study of project management processes, are listed in the next chapter where they are used to evaluate existing benchmarking process models.