An Assessment of Software Project Management Maturity in Mauritius

It is sometimes very difficult for an organization to adopt a specific software project managementmethodology in a short space of time. It requires sufficient time, adequate financial support andskilled human resources in order to start with a comprehensive methodology. It is, however, oftenmore appropriate to use a maturity model so as to progress from one maturity level to the next.Assessment of the maturity level of an organization provides a good benchmark to rate the successof its operations. One such exercise was carried out in South Africa in 2003, and the overallaverage project management maturity was found to be 2.92 (Sonnekus & Labuschagne, 2004) ona scale of 1 to 5. The maturity level was found to be closely linked to the success rate of projects.In this paper we report on a similar exercise conducted in Mauritius regarding the maturity levelof software development projects. The average maturity of software development companies inMauritius can provide a useful indication of, among others, the current status of software projectmanagement with a view of bringing about improvement in this sector.Given that Mauritian software development companies are making use of European/Westernsoftware project management methodologies, this study has been carried out and a preliminaryattempt was made to also assess their ability to deal with factors related to cultural, social, economicand political situation within the local context. These factors, when incorporated into existingproject management methodologies, can bridge the gap between developing and developedcountries and also contribute towards the globalization of software project management.