Project, program maturity: why the move from Level 2 to Level 3 is the shift that matters most

Ask any EPMO Director about their maturity journey and you’ll hear a version of the same story. The organisation ran a maturity assessment a few years back. The results came back around Level 2. A roadmap was produced. Some process documentation got written. A few governance improvements were made. And then, somewhere in the eighteen months that followed, the momentum quietly ran out.

The projects kept delivering roughly as they always had. Some better, some worse. The PMO kept running. The roadmap sat in a SharePoint folder, periodically referenced and rarely acted on.

This pattern is not a failure of ambition. It’s a failure of understanding what the Level 2 to Level 3 shift actually requires and why it’s categorically different from any other move on the maturity ladder.

What project and program maturity actually means

Before going further, a brief framing note for readers less familiar with formal maturity models.

Project and program maturity describes the degree to which an organisation’s delivery capability is consistent, disciplined, and capable of producing predictable outcomes at scale. Low maturity doesn’t mean an organisation can’t deliver projects. It means delivery depends heavily on the individuals involved rather than on the systems and disciplines surrounding them. High maturity means the organisation delivers well across teams, programs and conditions — not because the right people showed up, but because the right disciplines are embedded.

The internationally recognised tool for benchmarking this is P3M3 — the Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model — a structured assessment framework developed and maintained by AXELOS. P3M3 assesses maturity across five levels and seven process perspectives. It gives organisations an evidence-based view of where they actually are and what would need to change to improve.

Most organisations that engage with maturity assessment find themselves somewhere between Level 2 and Level 3. And most of them find the space between those two levels harder to cross than they expected.

The five levels, just briefly

Level 1 organisations are aware that project management matters but have no consistent practice. Every project runs differently. Success is largely individual.

Level 2 organisations have repeatable processes. Project management practice exists, frameworks are in place, and most projects follow some version of a defined approach. Results are inconsistent across teams and conditions, but the baseline disciplines are there.

Level 3 organisations have defined, consistently applied practice across the organisation. Standards are embedded. Governance is functioning. Outcomes are more predictable because the approach doesn’t depend on who’s running the project.

Level 4 adds active measurement and management. Performance data drives decisions. Processes are continuously improved based on evidence.

Level 5 is the optimised apex — continuously learning, systematically improving, operating at peak efficiency across the portfolio. In practice, almost no organisation reaches Level 5. It’s a useful benchmark for the direction of travel rather than a realistic destination.

The realistic maturity journey for most organisations runs from Level 2 to Level 3, and for some from Level 3 to Level 4. The Level 2 to Level 3 shift is where the real work lives. It’s also where most uplift programs stall.

Why Level 2 to Level 3 is different from every other transition

Every other level transition on the maturity ladder is additive. You build measurement capability on top of defined practice (Level 3 to Level 4). You build optimisation on top of measurement (Level 4 to Level 5). Each transition extends and deepens what already exists.

Level 2 to Level 3 is not additive. It’s substitutive.

At Level 2, the organisation has processes but people follow them selectively. The experienced project manager runs their program their way, loosely shaped by the framework. The new PM follows the templates diligently. The program director with twenty years on large programs knows when to use governance and when to route around it. There’s practice across the organisation, but it’s inconsistent, personalised, and heavily dependent on individual judgement.

Moving to Level 3 requires replacing that inconsistency with consistent, disciplined application across the whole organisation. Not just better processes. Not just more documentation. Consistent behaviour by every project practitioner, in every project, across every team.

That’s a cultural change, not a process change. And cultural change in delivery organisations meets resistance that process change never does.

The senior PM who has delivered major programs for two decades doesn’t naturally welcome the suggestion that they should follow the standard framework rather than their own proven instincts. The program director who has built a career on personal credibility and professional judgement doesn’t easily subordinate that to standardised governance. The delivery team that has been trusted to run its own projects its own way doesn’t welcome increased visibility and accountability.

None of this resistance is unreasonable. It’s a rational response to a change that asks people to give up autonomy and flexibility in exchange for organisational consistency. The mistake most maturity uplift programs make is treating this resistance as an implementation problem when it’s actually a change management problem.

What the stall actually looks like

Most organisations that attempt the Level 2 to Level 3 shift do the same things in the same order.

They commission a maturity assessment. The assessment confirms they are at Level 2, with some pockets of stronger practice. A roadmap is produced. The roadmap focuses on process design — templates, frameworks, governance structures, assurance gates. A working group is established. The documentation gets written.

And then the stall arrives.

The documentation exists but isn’t used consistently. The templates are available but individual project managers continue to use their own versions. The governance gates are defined but senior stakeholders route around them when programs are under pressure. The assurance process is in place but the assessors don’t have the authority to act on what they find.

Six months later, the working group has wound down. The roadmap has been partially completed. The maturity score, if reassessed, has moved but usually less than expected. The organisation has moved from a weak Level 2 to a stronger Level 2, not to Level 3.

The gap between the two isn’t in the documentation. It’s in four places that most maturity uplift programs never properly address.

The four gaps that actually prevent Level 3

The first gap is capability, not process.

Most maturity uplift programs treat the Level 2 to Level 3 transition as a design problem. Write the right framework. Build the right templates. Define the right governance model. If the design is right, the delivery will follow.

It won’t. The design getting used incorrectly — or not at all — is almost always a capability problem underneath. Project managers who don’t fully understand the framework they’re asked to apply. Governance leads who can apply the process mechanically but not exercise judgement within it. PMO practitioners who can administer the system but not advise on it.

The process documentation tells people what to do. Capability development tells people how to do it well, and why it matters. Without the second, the first produces paper compliance rather than real change.

The second gap is leadership behaviour.

Project and program maturity is, ultimately, a leadership problem. The disciplines that define Level 3 — consistent governance, functioning assurance, standardised frameworks applied with rigour — require leaders to behave consistently themselves.

If the EPMO Director bypasses the governance gate when a program is behind schedule, every project manager in the organisation notices. What if the program sponsor doesn’t engage with assurance reviews, the assurance process quickly becomes theatre. Then if the executive team tolerates inconsistent practice because the inconsistency is coming from high performers, the organisation gets the message that standards are optional for people who deliver results.

No process design fixes leadership behaviour. Getting to Level 3 requires the senior leadership team to visibly, consistently model the disciplines they’re asking the rest of the organisation to adopt.

The third gap is accountability without authority.

The PMO in most Level 2 organisations has accountability for maturity improvement but limited authority to enforce it. Project managers can ignore the framework. Program directors can route around governance. Assurance recommendations can be noted and not acted on.

This produces a familiar and demoralising pattern. The PMO works hard to build the right processes. Those processes are selectively applied. The PMO raises the issue with leadership. Leadership acknowledges it and moves on. The PMO is held accountable for maturity outcomes it has no authority to drive.

Getting to Level 3 requires a deliberate decision about where authority lives. Not necessarily centralised authority — there are good reasons to keep delivery autonomy close to programs. But some authority must sit with the PMO or governance function, and that authority must be exercised consistently.

The fourth gap is time.

The Level 2 to Level 3 transition is typically underestimated by a factor of two to three in most business cases. Eighteen months is a common target. Two to three years is a more realistic expectation for an organisation that starts the journey seriously.

This isn’t a counsel of despair. It’s a realistic basis for resource allocation, stakeholder management and success measurement. An uplift program that sets a twelve-month target and hits sixty percent of it will be judged a failure. The same program with a three-year horizon and realistic milestones will be judged a success and will probably get further.

The organisations that sustain maturity improvement over time are the ones that treated it as a long-term capability investment from the start, rather than a project with a completion date.

What a successful Level 2 to Level 3 program actually looks like

The organisations that successfully make this transition share a recognisable set of characteristics. They aren’t the ones with the most sophisticated frameworks or the most comprehensive documentation. They’re the ones that got four things right.

They started with an honest baseline. Not a self-assessment or an internal review, but an independent, evidence-based benchmark of where they actually were. Most organisations significantly overestimate their own maturity. The gap between perceived Level 2 and actual Level 2 is often the first uncomfortable discovery. A credible baseline assessment sets the real starting point rather than the comfortable one.

They treated capability uplift and process design as equally important. For every process they designed, they built a corresponding capability development programme — contextualised to their frameworks, their environment, and the specific disciplines they were asking people to change. Templates and courses. Governance structures and coaching. Process documentation and embedded support. The two streams ran in parallel, not sequentially.

They built change management in from day one. The Level 2 to Level 3 shift asks experienced practitioners to change deeply personal working habits. That’s a change management challenge, not a communications challenge. The organisations that succeeded treated it accordingly with structured stakeholder engagement, deliberate leadership alignment, and a genuine change plan rather than a launch email.

They measured what mattered. Not the maturity score alone. Delivery outcomes. Application of practice. Quality of governance conversations. The maturity score is a lagging indicator. The organisations that sustained the journey measured leading indicators; are people actually using the framework? Are governance gates producing real decisions? Are assurance findings being acted on? and adjusted their programmes based on what they found.

The honest role of a maturity assessment in all of this

P3M3, or any credible maturity assessment or review, is not the driver of this journey. It’s the diagnostic instrument that tells you where you are and helps you have an honest conversation about what getting to the next level actually requires.

The value of an assessment isn’t the score. It’s the structured conversation it forces. A credible P3M3 assessment, conducted independently by experienced practitioners, surfaces what self-reporting doesn’t — the gap between what the organisation believes its maturity is and what the evidence shows it to be, the specific perspectives where practice is strongest and where it’s weakest, and the realistic distance between the current state and Level 3.

Used well, an assessment is the starting point for a serious maturity conversation. Used poorly, commissioned to validate a predetermined conclusion, or filed away without acting on the roadmap leads to an expensive document that changes nothing.

Certitude is an AXELOS Consulting Partner and accredited P3M3 assessor. We conduct independent maturity assessments and work alongside organisations to design and implement pragmatic improvement programmes that reflect how organisations actually operate. Our assessments are not a score-generating exercise. They’re the beginning of a working relationship aimed at moving the needle on real delivery outcomes.

Next steps

If you are beginning to think seriously about a project maturity journey, or you’ve been on it for a while and the momentum has stalled, we would welcome a conversation about what an independent baseline assessment would tell you, and what a realistic improvement programme looks like from where you actually are.

You can also download the P3M3 information for a deeper look at how the framework is put into practice.  If you are really interested in learning more there is a 1-hour podcast about the model from PeopleCert.

Learn more about our Project Management Capability Services or get in touch with our team to talk through your maturity situation.