JUSTIFICATION OF THE CHOICE AND APPLICATION OF A MODEL FOR EVALUATING PROJECT ACTIVITIES IN UNIVERSITIES

The role of project activities in higher education institutions is increasing every year, given the increasing coverage of projects in many areas of educational and industrial activities. In this regard, there is a need for methods for evaluating project activities and managing their processes. It is proposed to use project management maturity models as similar techniques. A study of the most popular project management maturity models has shown that they have certain advantages and disadvantages. The result of the study also led to the conclusion that it is necessary to carry out a certain adaptation of these models to educational organizations due to the specifics of their activities. The main feature is the wide variety of project types in educational organizations, which leads to difficulties in unifying project accounting and project management bodies. The Kerzner model was chosen for adaptation. The main difference between the adapted Kerzner model is the rejection of unified accounting and greater attention to specialized indicators that make it possible to evaluate the management of project activities in universities, taking into account the specifics of their activities. As an example, the authors assessed the maturity of project management of a particular university, which is a typical representative of state universities located in the regions of Russia, namely Pskov State University. The use of the Kerzner model for evaluation revealed that this university does not pay enough attention to the development of professional development plans for personnel involved in the university's project activities, and there are no procedures for accumulating and applying the most proven project management practices.