Project Management Office (PMO) fundamentals Part III

– – According to Tenner & DeToro (Process Redesign, 1997, 17), organizations “can be described as a network of processes that can be identified, documented, controlled, and improved…a network of processes identifies the internal as well as external supplier-customer relationships that generate products or services.” Reflecting back on the PMO Supplier-Customer Relationships from the previous discussion, our drawing (upper right) illustrates the business process model—a process, according to Wesner, Hiatt, & Trimble (Winning with Quality, 1994, 38) define a process as “one or more tasks that transform a set of inputs into a specified set of outputs (goods or services) for another person [customer] or process via a combination of people, procedures, and tools.” If we look back to the operations PMO-Services which spanned into finance and marketing we could see several processes this PMO might focus, e.g. Proposal Management in order to staff, build, and publish while optimizing the Cost of Sales (marketing); moreover, the monitoring and control of pro-forma invoicing to ensure accurate time and expenses and acceptable variance to safeguard gross margin (finance). These two processes initially could observe levels of efficiency and effectiveness. Burton, DeSanctis, & Obel (Organizational Design, 2006, 11) state: “efficiency is a primary focus on inputs, use of resources, and costs…focusing on minimizing the costs of producing goods or services [and] effectiveness is a focus more on outputs, products, services, and revenues…focusing on generating revenues or seizing leading edge innovation in the marketplace.”

– – While the Director of Microsoft Consulting Services worldwide PMO I had the opportunity to work with the People & Organizational Capability organization, as I was the owner for the Consulting Project Management role/discipline. With over one hundred accredited project managers globally Microsoft needed to determine high-value or essential-to-the-business processes. RoleGuide was then created out of this need, i.e. roles would have 3 to 7 processes with identified deliverables broken into tasks, and mapped to competencies and success criteria—all of this inside an e-business portal that project managers could use, anywhere, anytime. RoleGuide allowed self assessment on these processes and was capable of provided suggested structured development to help build capability, just-in-time. Imagine an inventory by role of what your current capabilities and capacity to deliver are! I also worked with ESI International, the International Institute for Learning (IIL), and Novations Services to map their curriculum to these processes which allowed project managers’ on-demand and scheduled on-site courses—continuous learning supporting process excellence.

Example for Process X
Deliverable + Success Criteria
Task 1 + Success Criteria
Competency + Level
Task 2 + Success Criteria
Competency + Level

– – Quick wins for the enterprise PMO could be as simple as focusing on a few pain-points in the business, processes that are either broken or don’t exist, that once addressed could improve efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction metrics. In Fundamentals Part IV we will discuss organizational posture fundamentals, i.e. value-chain alignment by creating the enterprise PMO identity, relationships, and information components—nine minimum areas to success.