Establishing the foundation for your Value Added PMO, is one of the key activities that is needed. Much thought and planning should go into this step, for without it, you are forever going to be going down the wrong road. However, planning the foundation is going to be based in large part, on the particular scenario that you are facing. What we will attempt to do here is cover several of the scenario’s, and make some recommendations both how and where you need to start. Common to virtually any scenario, is the first step that must be undertaken and agreed to.
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Laying the Foundation – Step 1 – Goals and Objectives
Establishing and gaining agreement on the type of PMO that you will put into place, is somewhat like laying the foundation for a new house that you might be building. You will need to establish the size or ‘footprint’ of your new organization and effort; the amount of size and capability that the foundation will support; and most importantly what that foundation is meant to achieve. In that light, we will first address the establishment of the foundation from a Department or larger Organization. Secondly, we will address what is needed to address the establishment of a PMO for a defined Program or group of Programs.
Establishing the Foundation for a Business Unit or Larger Organization
If you are establishing a Value Added PMO for a business unit or larger organization, your goals and objectives are meant to be defined and in place so that you will have the ability to perform at a high level for an extended period of time. It will setup and establish governance, oversight and value added services (such as mentoring, health checks and project rescue) that will serve many projects, programs and efforts for many different types of initiatives and projects. Taking those things into consideration, your foundation will not only have ‘width’, but also must have ‘depth’. So far, most everyone will likely not have too much disagreement in these steps, but there is a very evident trap that is out there that can and will ‘bite you’ severely, if you are not careful. What does upper management want in their Value Added PMO?
Once you have basic agreement on the establishment of a Value Added PMO, setting the Goals and Objectives for a department or larger organization will be critical and require the approval and guidance of Management. While it is necessary to get their input and guidance on what they want to accomplish with the PMO, it is also very critical that you as the PMO Manager/Director, make suggestions and lead them in the right direction. If a PMO is going to be established, and is going to simply be there to enforce rules and run ‘rough shod’ over the performing programs and projects, it will fail long term, and fail miserably. It is imperative that Governance and Oversight be established and put into place, but it has to be executed so that the organization fosters and allows the performing groups to grow and improve. If it does not establish an environment whereby measurable ’success and improvement’ are both expected and rewarded, all will be for naught. If the environment and culture that is established, simply encourages more and more rules; adherence to ever increasing demands; and a ‘win at all costs’ mindset – it will never be accepted and be successful at the performing levels of the organization.
Establishing the Foundation for a Department or specific Program/Client Activity
The same can generally be said for setting up a Value Added PMO for a particular department (within a larger organization), or when trying to establish a PMO for a particular endeavor or client interaction. The ‘Client Side Interaction’ type of PMO, is generally found in organizations/business that provide services to larger end users. A prime example is IT Hosting companies (IBM, EDS/HP, ACS and others) that offer both in house and remote hosting of a variety of IT Services. Generally speaking, when larger hosting contracts are agreed to, the establishment of some type of Project Management Governance will be part of the overall plan. While this type of situation is different from trying to establish a PMO in a large Company or Organization, it shares some of the same traits. One of the primary differences is that the that you will establish for this type of undertaking may not be as ‘wide’ as the foundation established for a company wide engagement, but it will still need to have depth.
Many times, the establishment of a PMO for a department or individual program, will focus heavily on governance and oversight. It will ‘inherit’ many traits from the larger organization along with the goals and objectives setup and established at higher levels. This will certainly be a balancing act, but the expectation is that it will be weighted more towards measuring and ensuring success, and not nearly as focused on ‘growing and fostering the overall capability of the Project Management organization’. That is not necessarily a detrimental thing, but rather the reality of the situation. On an program that must deliver specific items in a given time frame (say 18 months), and where the performing team will then not exist after the work is completed – goals and objectives will be very much aligned with governance and oversight, and not nearly as much on process improvement and growing the organization.
Suggestions for Establishing your Goals and Objectives
When most people start to lay the foundations for what they are trying to accomplish, they generally start in the wrong place. While this may surprise many people, it is unfortunately true in many situations. They try gathering up all the knowledge, pieces and parts they currently know about, and then figure out how to put them together in an overall methodology and process to be successful. Let’s look at a particular piece of what is generally found as common within the Project Management Community – Risk Management Process.
When many people look at putting together their Value Added PMO, and the Risk Process that will be used – the first thing they do is compare and look at a variety of the known risk processes that they have used or been exposed to, and make the decision on which one they want to use. What they have done on one hand, is lay the foundation and make what seems to be a good decision on a key Project Management Office Foundation. they have established a cornerstone of their ’structure’. They have also made a fundamental mistake. They have not established what is needed in the way of ‘Risk Management’, prior to making their suggestions and decisions. An improved approach, would be to leverage on a well know and successfully used technique that many in the DBMS (database) world have known and used for years.
To be Effective – Start from where the output is needed, and work backwards towards the foundation
That’s right, talk to the people and groups that will be the recipients of the reports, outputs and tracking information to find out what and how they need it. This does not necessarily mean that you start by designing all of the reports and tracking data completely, but rather start from the types of things that they might want to know. For a Risk Management PMO process, management may want to use a very common Green/Yellow/Red tracking indicator. On the other hand, they may well think that a more definitive ‘criteria based’ risk management process is in order, along with the ability to measure both at the Program and Project level independently. If you start at the output, and work backwards, you will find that you have built the best foundation that you can, given the circumstances and the ‘customer’ that you are dealing with. This works well, whether you are building a PMO for a Company, Department, or a particular effort or program.
Next week: Specific suggestions on Goals and Objectives
