Over the past seven weeks, we have talked about many different topics. Today, we end this series with a short summary and review of the key points that we have covered, and also we will talk about how to measure your progress and success. While we have talked about many items here, it is important to note that there are many other items that will go into both your toolkit and management bag, when setting up and running a Value Added PMO. My suggestion is to find and locate someone that can help you work through the details and problems that you will encounter. If nothing else, find someone that is a good sounding board, and will listen and suggest alternate solutions to situations that you will encounter. Now, on to our review.
A PMO Organization can provide very effective way to enhance and contribute to your overall Project Management Methodology, Practices and Execution – when done properly. It can also simply be a way for the organization to have an Iron Fisted reporting and control group, that sits back and simply tells many people what is wrong without any assistance or real help to make those corrections. Additionally, it is far too common of an occurrence, to find a PMO setup and running, that does nothing at all but collect information and pass it on to someone else. In short, to have a PMO be effective, it must be setup and organized to provide practical knowledge, experience and leadership to achieve greater results.
An Effective PMO must deliver Value Added Service to the entire organization.
Week 2 – Establishing the Foundation for your PMO
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.
Laying the Foundation – Step 1 – Goals and Objectives
Week 3 – Specific Goals and Objectives for your Value Added PMO
We have talked about some of the general Foundations that need to be established in order for you to have a Value Added PMO. During setup and initial planning, you need to establish the ‘footprint’ of your organization; determine the size and capability of what you will support; and most importantly, what it will achieve. In addition, we talked about the need to start from where the output is needed, and work backward towards the foundation. This week, we will work on some specific suggestions for your Goals and Objectives.
While goals and objectives in many organizations and areas are generally nice to have and make great posters for the wall, here we are going to talk about Goals and Objectives that will help make your PMO Organization effective. Far too many times, goals and objectives are constructed and put together so that look very good, but really do not meet the test of the three main criteria that you must meet.
Goals and Objectives must be tangible, measurable and most importantly - achievable.
Week 4 – Weekly Status and Reporting
During the build out of the foundation for a Value Added PMO, one of the frequently and most consistent uses of information exchange is with the development, maintenance and ongoing reporting of the dreaded ‘Weekly Status Report’. Done correctly, with the proper foundations put into place, it can and will serve as a critical communication vehicle between the Project Manager, Project Team and of course Management and the Business Sponsors. On the other hand, if it is put together and managed like most weekly reporting is – it will simply become another one of those reports that is a nuisance and also serves no real purpose. The weekly Status Report should serve as the single document that is used to reflect what has been ‘accomplished’; what will be ‘accomplished’; and areas that may need attention including the key Issues and Risks that are being tracked.
It is important not to throw up your hands at this point, with the overall thought that reporting in your organization is ‘dictated’, and management will not be receptive to change. Bull! Let’s talk about a real world scenario that happened several years ago. Our PM group filled out and filed somewhere between 3-5 project status reports each week. There was the one for the Functional Manager; one for the Program Manager; another for the PMO and of course the one that was needed by the Business. That, and whatever other ’status’ reporting that might come down at any given time. Each of the 8-10 PM’s that we had in our group, were spending 1-2 hours per week on each of the status reports. Multiply that out and we were allocating 60-80 Man Hours per week on a task that did nothing to advance the actual deliverables to the project towards successful completion.
Weekly Reporting – Developing the Content
is probably the single most difficult area for the PMO and the PM’s that are in the performing organization to address. How do you effectively setup, control and report on overall project schedule progress, without seeming like a Motorcycle Officer that has just pulled someone over on the freeway and already has the ticket book out. Before we talk about the things that should be done to provide Value Added Service in regards to scheduling, lets talk a little about what not to do. I’m absolutely certain, that we all have our horror stories, but this is more about attitude and teamwork, than it is about process and control in the performing organization.
If you setup rigid formats and rules associated with the development and eventual maintenance of a group of project schedules, and expect that everyone will perform to the same standard, you will have started out on the wrong foot. Having standards and guidelines are certainly important, but the PMO must work with each of the performing PM’s and teams to make sure that the finished product satisfies the needs of management, the PMO and be such that the project team can work with it and recognize that their plan is truly theirs. Having clear guidelines on the deliverables that are expected, along with the proper reviews and approvals necessary, are certainly warranted. In addition, how the general flow of the project will be detailed out is also appropriate. If there is not ’some commonality and purpose’ to your organizations schedules and plans, it will make it very difficult for both the PMO and Management to properly review and analyze progress across many different project types.
Some areas that you also need to have commonality in is the approach and methods that will be used to ‘progress’ your schedule. This is an area whereby many tools (such as MS Project and others) have the ability to automatically schedule and progress your schedule based upon manual updates that you have made and the amount of work left to be done. While this functionality does exist, it brings us to one of the key points that must be considered, when making decisions on how and when updates and complexity in your schedules will be used.
Advanced methodology and tool usage is directly proportional to the PM Maturity Level of your organization.
Week 6 – Selecting the Proper Staff
we have talked about a variety of subjects along the way to building our ‘Value Added PMO’, no subject or topic can be of more importance than Selecting the Proper Staff for Value Added Performance. It’s not just about selecting and staffing your PMO, but it is also about continuing the work and effort that has already been put in setting the correct tone and mindset for the day to day work that the PMO organization will turn out. While you are going to need different skills for your PMO, you are also going to need different levels of leadership and independent thinking within your PMO. All must share this same trait.
Staff within the PMO Organization must be able to both Mentor and Assist the performing organization.
Week 7 – Managing your Extended Team
We have talked about the style, setup and formation of your Value Added PMO. During this time, we have discussed many of the principles that will be established and guide you along the way in setting the proper tone; selecting your team that will facilitate and deliver the ‘value’ that your PMO has chosen and the service oriented approach that should be taken. This weeks discussion will center upon how to best manage that team, identify problem areas, and really bring the PMO into ‘Effective Execution’. When discussing the day to day management of the team, it does not mean simply managing your direct reports, it also means that you need to manage the entire team, from top to bottom.
As the PMO Manager – you must deliver the leadership and management to the entire extended team.
How to Measure your Progress and Success
While there are many different ways to measure both Progress and Success, we will not take a metric based view of these goals, but rather look at both goals from a ‘Practical Method’ that allow you to get a far better read on where you are at. Progress can be measured by comparing the deliverables (tools, techniques, processes and reporting) that have been rolled out and are being used against the plan(s) that you have had in getting them to the customer base that you serve. In addition, Progress can also be measured by how much of your intended organization is utilizing these tools and processes that have been rolled out.
Measuring success, reminds me of a conversation that I had some years ago with an IT Manager – concerning a major Deliverable that we were working on to be delivered to a Key Customer. I asked this manager, what she would consider success. The reply I got was a standard Project Management answer: ‘Success will be measured by whether or not we deliver a quality project within the timeframe of the schedule and the contract’. The part of the answer that this manager missed should have also included: ‘and accepted by the Customer’. It is always important to keep the end user in mind. However, this answer does not actually give the true way to measure success. The customer should both accept and use effectively, the product and/or service – to be judged successful.
While with the ‘airlines’ many years ago, we analyzed and purchased an ‘Enterprise Level Project Scheduling Tool’ from a respected supplier. We worked with that package for over 6 months, trying to get it to do what was promised. At long last, as we were nearing the end of our Initial Trial Period whereby we could return it for a full refund and decided that it would not do what we needed it to do. We returned the product to the significant disatisfication of our team, and of course the supplier. Neither were ’successful’.
So we now ask ourself , how do we really measure success within our extended team and organization? How many of the PM’s and/or projects are using the tools and following the prescribed standards that have been rolled out? Has upper Management come looking for ‘additional reports or metrics’ , to help evaluate progress and solve problems? How many questions do you commonly field from the PM’s on a weekly basis? In summary, the more calls and requests that you get for help in SOLVING PROBLEMS, the more that you will know you are on the right track. The PMO within your organization should be the FIRST THOUGHT when tough problems come up within the Project Management Discipline, and not the stop of last resort.
I sincerely hope that my outlook and experiences have been a benefit to all those that have read this series. There can be no greater thanks, than the many, many people that have taken their time to follow along and spend part of their busy lives to read and comment on this subject. That’s how I measure how ’successful’ I have been with my articles – actual readership and time spent on our site.
