HKSM
Benchmarking
A structured practice of comparing your actual or planned products, processes, and methods with those of similar organizations to uncover leading practices, spark improvement ideas, and establish objective measures of performance.
Key Points
- Looks outward to comparable peers or industry leaders to gauge performance and practices.
- Can be internal, competitive, or functional/industry-wide in scope.
- Helps set realistic targets, KPIs, and supports continuous improvement initiatives.
- Requires careful selection of relevant comparators and normalization to avoid apples-to-oranges comparisons.
Example
A PM analyzes change request cycle time and defect escape rate against published metrics from similar organizations. The team adopts identified best practices and sets a target to reduce cycle time by 25% over the next two releases.
PMP Example Question
A project manager studies how similar organizations manage schedule variance and resource utilization to set realistic targets for her project. Which technique is she using?
- Benchmarking
- Variance analysis
- Parametric estimating
- Sensitivity analysis
Correct Answer: A — Benchmarking
Explanation: Benchmarking compares products, processes, and practices to those of comparable organizations to identify best practices and set performance measures.
