Project Management Maturity Profiles in Turkish Shipyards: A P3M3® Assessment

Shipbuilding is a complex project-based production environment in which maturity scores averaged across shipyards can obscure important organizational differences.This study assesses project management maturity in 32 Turkish shipyards using the Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3 ® ) version 2.1 Self-Assessment Tool and examines whether an aggregate result conceals distinct maturity configurations.One manager from each participating shipyard completed a Turkish questionnaire distributed through the Turkish Shipbuilders' Association (GİSBİR).The analysis covered 24 assessment items across project, programme and portfolio lenses and eight study dimensions, comprising the seven official process perspectives and an additional process/general dimension.Composite scores were descriptive arithmetic means used in this study, not official combinations of P3M3 maturity ratings.Besides descriptive statistics, internal consistency analysis, Friedman tests, and Spearman correlations, an exploratory hierarchical cluster analysis was performed using the Euclidean distance measure and Ward's method.The sample mean composite score was 3.06 on the five-point scale, with a standard deviation of 0.93.Three profiles emerged: lower maturity with 15 shipyards and a mean of approximately 2.24; intermediate maturity with 8 shipyards and a mean of 3.35; and higher maturity with 9 shipyards and a mean of 4.18.Financial Management had the highest descriptive score, and Management Control had the lowest, although differences among dimensions were not statistically significant.The three lens scores were strongly correlated, and no statistically significant difference among them was detected.These findings suggest that capability development among participating shipyards may benefit from differentiated, rather than uniform, improvement priorities.Given the single-respondent, voluntary-participation design, the profiles should be read as an exploratory picture rather than a validated sector-wide typology.The study offers an empirical application of P3M3 in shipbuilding and illustrates the value of examining maturity profiles alongside aggregate scores for capability-development planning.