Project Management Office (PMO) fundamentals Part V

– – IDENTITY- Strategy & Structure: stakeholders need to know what the purpose of the PMO is, its value proposition, how it will impact current and future capabilities, and what products and services it will offer. This is the foundation of the PMO and failure to build a strong foundation can be catastrophic; as Gilbraith states “misalignment of strategy [and] structure, and processes will cause activities to conflict, units of work at cross-purposes, and organizational energy to dissipate over many frictions;” the PMO must be reconfigurable with “a series of short-term advantages” that quickly demonstrate business value and build credibility and sustainability (Designing Organizations, 2002, p.75). We begin with the PMO mission: a sample mission statement.

MISSION:
To improve capability in the delivery of products and services by reinforcing core competency with both assurance and governance in project management practices and principles.

Here Assurance means building confidence, building competence, capability and Governance instills sound management upon the expectations and performance in delivery. Certainly a PMO could have a mission that focuses on finance, continuous improvement, Six Sigma—this is a generic mission for this blogs illustration.

GOALS:
Effectiveness: The PMO will build and leverage customer capital, customer/market measures, ensuring an understanding of customer’s needs and wants, building those products and services, and ensuring satisfaction that builds loyalty and high retention.

Efficiency: The PMO will build and leverage process capital, process measures, in organizational efficiency and improvements understanding its capability internally and in the industry.

Evolvement: The PMO will build and leverage innovation capital, preparing for the future, in its strategic planning, alliances and partnerships, change management and investments with foresight into the future.

Expertise: The PMO will build and leverage human capital, people development, in personnel development, leadership, readiness in understanding current capability and capacity and future state to drive organizational success.

Execution: The PMO will build and leverage financial capital, financial measures, in driving business value, profitability, return on investment, to drive organizational success.

– – Our goals provide a high level understanding of what we wish to accomplish, our objectives must be more specific, i.e. according to Pearce & Robinson, they must “clearly and concisely state what will be achieved and when it will be achieved. Thus, objectives should be measureable over time” (Strategic Management, 2007, p. 193). On technique used to delineate objects is called SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable/Achievable, Realistic and Timebound. In this blog I will not go delineating objectives as it would directly relate to the PMO products and services. With goals and objectives written with alignment to strategic initiatives and metrics considered, we can think of measuring the current organizational capability.

– – Two industry services in measuring organizational capability have been available for several years now proving their test of time: here are two.

MEASURING PROJECT MANAGEMENT CAPABILITY
Kerzner Project Management Maturity Model Online Assessment

PMI's Organizational Project Management Maturity Model - OPM3

Both models provide a diagnostic tool that provides an understanding of current capability and with consulting, to understand your organizations desired future state, a structured development plan can be created to determine both cost, schedule, resources and risk in implementation. I am pleased to state that I wrote the forward for Dr. Kerzner’s 2nd edition to his companion text as well as implemented his approach at Microsoft Services. One additional mention is Carnegie Mellon’s People Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI): another innovation with emphasis in software systems and processes. Know we have the ability to understand what the PMO will be dealing with, the advantages of leading indicators and opportunities for growth on the lagging.

– – The last area within Identity is stating the products and services the PMO will offer and when they will be available. With our goals in mind, our products and services have a focus on: outcome; productivity; growth; people; and valuation in terms of the customer and the organization. Each of these categories, as a product aligns to the Dynamic Multi-Dimensional Performance (DMP) framework for organizational performance (a derivative of the balanced scorecard). Moreover, each also aligns to Edvinsson & Malones extensive research on intellectual capital at Skandia which published its first IC Annual Report in 1995; and Shenhar & Dvir’s extensive research in reinventing project management with their diamond approach to successful growth and innovation. It is important to note that I have created a menu approach for the senior management level that combines this research with additional references creating a simple pick-list that should satisify many C-Level executives in meeting their enterprise PMO needs (too detailed for this blog, but will be introduced subsequently). Here are a sample of three:

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
1) Project Management Methodology: establish, implement, and manage maturity of practices and methodology; develop and manage life cycle solutions.
2) Project Management Tools: evaluate, select, implement projecttools and job aides.
3) Standards and Metrics: Implement standards; determine project metrics requirements; introduce and use metrics

– – This completes our discussion on Identity-Strategy & Structure and in Part VI I will focus on Relationships-People.

Project Management Office (PMO) fundamentals Part IV

– – The PMO has emerged from the construction and defense sectors providing a half century of services to its customers. However, PMOs are not always well built or well understood, i.e. according to the PMO Executive Council (A function in transition: emerging organizational models for the PMO, 2006, V), “more than 70% of PMOs have reorganized in the past three years” illustrating a need to better understand and explore their organizational posture, or as the Random House Dictionary states, the PMOs “position, condition, or state, as of affairs.” Reflecting back on the PMO Supplier-Customer Relationships (Part II) recall the five PMOs aligned within the value chain. Our drawing (upper right) illustrates three primary domains: identity, relationships, and information. Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers state that “from these simple dynamics emerge widely different expressions of organization;” and from my work with PMOs over the last 15 years it is these expressions that can cause a PMO to fail or succeed. As they also assert: “the domains of identity, information, and relationships operate in a dynamic cycle so intertwined that it becomes difficult to distinguish among the three elements.” I’ve broken down each of the three domains to contains three areas of focus: three activities that will build structural capital that is clearly discerned by its stakeholders (sponsors, supporters, users and representatives). Weaknesses in efficiently executing these activities will impact the PMOs effectiveness and ultimately the interpretation of its outcomes and satisfaction ratings.

“Almost all work today is organized into bite-sized packets called projects…today you have to think, breathe, act, and work in projects." Tom Peters
Think of your PMO as a project—here are three bite-sized packets!

– – Identity: stakeholders need to know what the purpose of the PMO is, its value proposition, how it will impact current and future capabilities, and what products and services it will offer. This is marketing 101—if customers don’t perceive value they will not buy into the PMO, you need to deliver products and services customers will value.

– – Relationships: who are your stakeholders, who is funding the PMO, who is critical to its success, who do you need to keep satisfied, informed and engaged? Are there standards organizations and communities of practice to support the PMO to build credibility and critical mass? If you haven’t identified those critical to your success and are not talking to those that could value you most—the PMO may be destined to be out of commission before the ink is dry on its business plan. It is imperative that the PMO work closely with business stakeholders to help align to a strategy that meets its customer’s needs while satisfying scalability, reliability, performance, and cost.

– – Information: it has been said, is the “medium of the organization.” How will you communicate with your stakeholders, where is the information to help create the basis for making decisions, and the nuggets of knowledge that can be used and reused to improve margins and satisfaction metrics? Knowledge is power and according to Bill Gates, “every new project should directly build on the learning from any similar project undertaken anywhere else in the world.” The PMO should help “raise your corporate IQ.”

– –In Fundamentals Part V we will focus on Identity with a sample mission statement, goals and objectives, an easy approach to measuring organizational capability and suggested PMO services.