Category Archives: Project Management

Setting up a PMO – Phase 4 – Continuous Improvement

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Congratulations! you have set-up your PMO successfully. You ran your pilot projects, set-up processes and dashboards. Figured out the risks/issues, metrics and set-up the systems to manage the processes, templates and project plans. 
You then managed to expand the PMO services across the org through all projects and programs being ran.
As you move forward and cruise along the ship, its important to note that you need to constantly watch out for any storms, sharks, islands, ice bergs and see how you can better manage the ship. Similarly, you need to constantly improvise in the PMO functioning. 
Here are a few tips that really help:
Stay Flexible, Stay Agile
Irrespective how well you have structured the PMO office and the work around it, the business and strategies in an organization constantly evolve. Accordingly, a lot can change in terms of the governance, the processes, methodologies, projects and programs. Ensure you keep a watch on your enterprise environmental factors and be flexible enough to re-invent the way you manage the programs, governance and projects. The key is to bring in those little changes effectively and keep moving forward.
Constant Feedback
To stay nimble and effective, the key is to have regular meetings with the sponsors, leadership and the project / program stakeholders and get constant feedback. Share the metrics and reports and listen to the changes that might be needed to maintain a positive outcome from the PMO office.
Prioritization
One thing that always helps being productive in general and specific to the team you represent is to prioritize the right things to be done. The prioritization would come as an outcome of keeping a flexible approach and taking critical feedbacks positively. Prioritization of the overall PMO functioning, roles and responsibilities, portfolio, programs and projects, processes and right up to the daily tasks and schedules is necessary.
Handle Changes Carefully
Finally, the key is people. We need to manage people effectively and carefully. The overall functioning of the PMO depends a lot on how you manage people effectively. So, when you manage change, manage it carefully. You would need to influence or convince the project teams based on the directives from the top leadership. You might need to maintain good relations with the group and teams you work with and yet ensure that the outcomes are reached. So, handle changes carefully and effectively.
PMO Set-up and functioning is always an ongoing process and can be daunting at times. But with the right phases and steps that I discussed in this and my previous articles, with the right knowledge, experience, attitude, skillset and tools, you can be successful in managing the PMO effectively.

Setting up a PMO – Phase 3 – Rolling out the Plan

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So you have the high level roadmap, a justified business case and a detailed plan to start executing the plan for setting up the PMO. So what are you waiting for? Lets start implementing the PMO Set-up.
Quick Wins

However, as discussed in the previous article, the things to take care during the roll out is to do a pilot with a limited set of projects and teams. Choose a portfolio of projects that are critical or rescue free mission projects coupled with a few simpler or smaller projects to have a good mix and match of the right set of projects. This will help you gauge the outcome or the results of the PMO execution better. This would help you get quick wins. 

1st 100 days

Remember that the 1st 100 days of the PMO roll out is key. DO NOT try to implement everything at one go. Prioritize the execution and send out periodic reports that will keep your stakeholders up to date on the progress done in terms of the project and / or process roll out. Select the right jargon free metrics in agreement with the stakeholders, project sponsors and the senior leadership. Keep regular status meetings with the sponsors and take feedbacks.

Trainings

It is important to keep the pilot project / program teams trained with the processes and the tools being used. If there are tweaks in the processes and / or minor tweaks in the tools, do not hesitate to communicate these to your stakeholders and the project teams that are involved in the pilot projects you are executing from the PMO. Ensure to record any lessons learnt or feedbacks from the team members. If you are going for new tools, ensure that the process and the help documents to use the tool is available. Set up training sessions for the teams to go learn how to use the project management tools. Keep a point of contact who can regularly resolve any issues that the pilot team may face in using the tools and executing the processes.

Status Reports & Metrics

Metrics and reporting are key while executing the projects and processes. Ensure that the metrics are simple, easy to get and communicate the correct status of the projects. Ensure that risks and pain points discussed by your stakeholders are covered and reported in the status reports. Call out the successfully executed projects and also discuss and record the lessons learnt.

Once you have the results from the pilot projects, both good and bad. Document the success as well as the failures. Present the successes, strengths and the lessons learnt to the project sponsors and the key stakeholders, based on which you can make changes in the PMO roll out plan. Its important to be flexible and creative in incorporating the changes and bringing in necessary changes before going all out in rolling out the PMO to the entire org.

Full Phase Roll Out

You executed the PMO rollout and tracked the pilot projects. There were successes, failures, good experience and the not so good experiences. You went back to the drawing board and made changes in the way you are going to execute the projects and/ or processes org wide. You hired the necessary resources in the PMO. You are now ready to roll out the PMO across the org. While you do execute the PMO roll out across the org, remember the basics of planning, flexible approach, training, processes and tools. You are now ready to take off…. but always keep in mind that you never stop learning.

Setting up a PMO – Phase 2 – The Planning Phase

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In my previous article, we talked briefly about the first phase of setting up the PMO where we understand the current state and have a high level discussion with the stake holders and senior leadership to understand what we want to achieve in the PMO and where do we want to reach.

In this article, we focus on the 2nd phase which is an important and crucial phase in building up the PMO… the Planning phase.

This is one phase that takes good amount of time and effort, as one needs to spend enough time to ensure that the plan is complete, thorough and revisited through number of iterations. If the planning is good, the execution of the PMO setup will give positive results.

The objective of this phase is to build a:

  • Business Justification for the PMO
  • Future plan with clear road map and key milestones.

These are the activities one must do in order for a good planning:

  • Come up with a broad level plan based on the previous meetings with the stakeholders.
  • Go back to the senior leadership and stakeholders with specific areas and pain points based on the previous discussions. Discussion category can include but not limited to:
    • How do we address delivery delay. Is it a discipline issue or is it to do with other factors such as lack of planning, attritions etc.?
    • How is the risk tolerance of the organization? What are the strategies to be used for risk management? Do we have a proper risk register?
    • What metrics are needed especially in the initial phases? What are the right metrics to focus on?
    • What tools are present and are needed to track project plans, and gather the right metrics?
    • What do we want to track in the dashboards?
    • What are the different level of metrics reporting and statuses needed?
  • Based on the answers received, create a PMO Business case which can include, but not limited to the following:
    • Purpose for the PMO. What key problems is the PMO going to address in terms of governance, project tracking, consultancy?
    • What methodology and process are proposed or need tweaking/ improvisations?
    • What are the business needs that the PMO is going to cater to?
    • Key benefits that will be achieved by setting up the PMO, such as:
      • Project delivery on time and with quality
      • Risk assessment, call out and mitigations
      • Standard reporting of metrics and project statuses across the organization.
      • Process improvements
    •  What are the assumptions made?
    • Recommendations:
      • Goals
      • Description
      • Geography and span of control
      • Time to roll out the PMO
      • Key metrics proposed
      • Cost benefit analysis of PMO
      • Risks/constraints
  • Finally create and present a PMO roll out project plan with a proper schedule, key milestones, cost involved, a baseline and a dedicated MS project or excel tracker in place.
  • The PMO rollout plan is the beginning of the excitement that awaits in actually executing the PMO. But wait, do you really want to go all the nine yards of implementation yet? Not really.
  • Make an internal assessment with your PMO team to see what are the quick wins in the next 100 days of PMO implementation.
  • List out some quick wins in the list of the pilot projects the team will start tracking. Low hanging, rescue mission projects can be a good example to implement the PMO strategies, metrics, tracking and process evaluation to clearly call out the advantage of a PMO setup.
  • At the same time, ensure that the pilot projects are a combination of easy, medium and complex projects where the span of pilot gives a good mix of results to depend on.
  • Make sure that any process and tools implementation training plan is on cards for the pilot projects’ team members.

Setting up a PMO – Phase 1 – Current State

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Alright!! So you are all looking forward to setting up the PMO in your org. So, how do you really go about it. As you would have read in my previous article on Setting up the PMO, the right way, there are steps and phases that can help guide you to successfully set-up and run the PMO.
In this article, lets focus on how to get started.
The 1st phase is crucial in the sense that we need to assess the current state or phase of the PMO. So we need to ask questions like do we have a PMO in place already? If yes, what is the maturity level of the PMO in terms of handling governance, Centre of Excellence or delivery of projects/programs. For this one needs to carry out certain activities to get a clear picture instead of going with a guess work or perceived idea.
So, here are a few guidelines to help assess the current phase:
  • What specific problems are being solved by the current PMO setup that exists (if that is the case). Else list out the expectations for the PMO. For this, one needs to have a series of discussions with senior leadership team.
  • Map and Understand your current stakeholders with respect to the expectations from PMO.
  • Understand the necessity of the PMO. This is crucial from the point of view of understanding the key objectives of the PMO and helps set the expectations clearly. This is where we delve deeper into the role of the PMO.
    • Is the PMO going to do governance only, or do consultancy and provide the right direction to the stakeholders in executing the projects, or will the PMO have a set of projects and/or program managers to actually do the planning, execution and reporting of the projects.
  • Specific problems that needs to be resolved or addressed by the PMO. As an example, delayed projects, risks not being recorded or addressed, processes not in place or defined.
Based on the above guidelines, make an AS IS (Current) and TO BE (Futuristic) scenario of the PMO.
Come up with a gap analysis and a proposed high level plan that can be used for detailed planning in the next Phase of Setting up the PMO.
In my next article, we will discuss the 2nd phase in setting up the PMO.
  
 

Setting up a PMO: The Right Way

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Every team, department or an organization grows over a period of time due to its well defined plan and path, execution and continuous improvement through regular and timely feedbacks.
Same is the case with PMO.
 
So, a PMO can be set-up by following the below mentioned phases:
Phase 1 – Evaluate the current state of PMO (As Is)
Phase 2 – Plan out the future state (where do you want the PMO to be in say, 6 months to 1 year time frame)
Phase 3 – PMO Rollout – (Roll out the PMO in stages or completely based on the plan you came up in Phase 2)
Phase 4 – Continuous improvement (Improvise the PMO based on the feedbacks from your stake holders)
 
Phase 1 – Evaluate the Current State of PMO (As Is)
 
In Phase 1, you try to understand and assess the current state of PMO in terms of the level of involvement of the PMO in executing projects, the maturity level in handling complex projects and the processes and tools in place to effectively execute the PMO. In case you are setting up a PMO from scratch, list down and brainstorm on the reasons you need the PMO. Is the PMO for governance, for consultancy as in a Centre of Excellence, or is it going to deep dive into the project planning, execution and reporting? These questions need to be answered in the beginning itself. This would also need you to interview the stakeholders and the senior management who are going to utilize your services of PMO. A clear goal setting from the project sponsor through multiple one on ones and meetings also help. The outcome of this phase would be to come up with a strong business case and goal for the PMO.
 
Phase 2 – Plan out for the future state
 
Based on the home work done in phase 1, come up with a plan on where do you want to see the PMO heading in the coming quarter, half year or even a year. It is prudent to have a quarterly goal neatly put down in detail and have higher milestones for futuristic goals. The plan should clearly bring out a road map as to how the PMO plans to address the concerns of the organization in terms of project delivery, revenue earning, cost benefits and process improvements. A brief set of tools and processes proposed should also be listed out. The ROI for the PMO can be put at a high level which can be relooked and assessed as the PMO rollout actually happens.
 
Phase 3 – PMO Roll out
 
The Roll out of the PMO is always inline with the first two phases after good amount of deliberation, planning and brainstorming. What is key here is to see to it that what is the approach taken for the Roll out. Here , a lot can depend on the maturity level of the organization, the organization’s risk appetite, and their familiarity with a PMO. Based on this, the PMO can be rolled out as pilots for smaller and less critical projects and their outcome observed. Accordingly, the Roll out can be extended to other projects and departments. This is typically followed in Agile methodology. Incase the organization already has a PMO and is expanding, then the PMO rollout can be executed at a larger scale.
An important factor to consider here is the need for training for the organization for following processes, using tools etc. This usually comes from governance and this is where the PMO wears multiple hats. Finally, the outcome helps decide on the improvements and changes needed in the PMO execution direction.
 
Phase 4 – Continuous Improvement
 
It’s great to have the PMO rollout. But then, it is extremely important to get feedbacks from the stakeholders who comprise the senior management, sponsors, delivery and technical managers and the teams. Apart from formal feedback session, a PMO has to be alert and listening to informal feedbacks received during project status meetings and make note of the changes or improvements needed to keep project management effective.
 
These four phases need not happen one after another. Usually there are overlaps to help minimize the execution time. For instance, while planning out the PMO, a quick feedback from a rollout in a pilot project can help constantly evolve the PMO roadmap plan.
 
Ultimately, the success of PMO depends on its team’s attitude, aptitude that has a strong influence on how the above phases are actually executed. So having the right people hired for PMO is crucial for its success.
 
In my next article, we will further deep dive into each of these phases.