Managing a portfolio of a digital transformation project in mining companies of the Russian Federation: a maturity assessment model and factors of economic performance

<jats:p>The study addresses transition from the point-wise digitalisation to integrated portfolio management of digital transformation (DT) projects in the Russian mining companies. The research relevance is driven by sectoral investment growth (RUB 4.2 to 7.4 bn over 2019–2024, +76.2%), the IT investment share rising from 1.7% to 2.5%, and a persistent gap between the investment and economic performance: 43% of companies report growing solution complexity and 40% – a shortage of competences. The hypothesis is that the DT portfolio performance is determined not by capital investment volume, but by the project management maturity across the portfolio, programme and project management, risk management and financial management. The objective is to justify the maturity assessment model and quantitatively identify the economic performance drivers for the top-10 Russian mining companies. The empirical base comprises 10 sustainability reports for 2019–2024, Rosstat IT-expenditure statistics, and Yakov &amp; Partners / Zyfra industry surveys (130 respondents from 50 companies, 2023 and 2024). The methods include comparative analysis of P3M3, OPM3 and GOST R ISO 21500–2014, industry benchmarking, expert matrix assessment, regression modelling. The weighted-average maturity in the top-10 companies is 3.62 out of 5 (sd 0.49); the range is 2.90 (Raspadskaya) to 4.30 (Nornickel), with Polyus at 4.10; integrated solutions deliver a 10–15% OpEx reduction, an 8–12% productivity increase and a 25–30% cut in unplanned downtime at a 25.8-month payback; 81% of enterprises have implemented IoT-based safety systems, 72% – equipment monitoring; the maturity–ROI correlation is r = 0.827 (p &lt; 0.01). A six-level M_ZT-Mining maturity model is proposed with differentiation across five domains and three project states (“pilot”, “upscaling”, “industrial operation”). Three critical gaps are identified, i.e. the portfolio risk management, the cross-project data integration, and the competence profile of the DT teams.</jats:p>