Project management maturity of fundamental local government units in Poland

Modern organizations operating in a highly changeable and increasingly more competitive environment are forced to continually self-improve, with a view to boosting their competitive positions. The said desires manifest themselves in managers' attempts at implementing the methods and tools for increasing the effectiveness of an organization's operations into the management system. At the same time, the pressure for continuous change in an organization combined with the dynamics of the environment translate into a growing need for unique, one-off actions, calling for the use of project management methods and knowledge. An effective and efficient project implementation cannot be regarded as an immanent feature typical of any organization making use of project management. Some organizations have a fragmentary knowledge and understanding of what projects are and how they should be managed, others, on the other hand, have implemented project management methods and are capable of using them for all the projects they implement. Therefore, it can be assumed that organizations are characterized by a varying degree of project management knowledge and skills, which means that they are at different levels of project management maturity. The goal of the article is to present the results of research of the project management maturity of the fundamental local government units in Poland. The text is based on literature studies, and questionnaire research performed in 580 organizations. Conduction of research procedure based on a standardized questionnaire with unit scale responses resulted with a quantitative answers, enabling derivation of general conclusions.