Problem: Establishing a Project Management Office (PMO) can be challenging for any organisation where there is a lack of experience and understanding of core requirements and frameworks.
The role of the PMO principally is to define, maintain and ensure project management standards across an organisation and provide project management support.
A Queensland manufacturing business embarked on new internal Information Communications Technology (ICT) projects to provide a significant capability uplift as well as replace some existing ICT assets. Their newly formed PMO largely comprised of previously employed operational staff who had recently transitioned for career development into project management and associated specialist disciplines.
The issue was that their staff did not have the required skills and lacked the required frameworks, methods, practice knowledge and tools.
Objective: The business approached myP3 to rapidly implement and expand their capability through providing formal governance arrangements, a functioning PMO and skilled resources to identify, enable, deliver, and support the intended annual ICT portfolio development.
myP3’s key role was to provide their expertise and knowledge and grow the client’s own capability over time until the business could function independently.
Project Management Office as a Service
Overview: The engagement model employed from myP3 was PMO-as-a-Service (PMOaaS). Given the ‘greenfield’ nature of the engagement, myP3’s initial approach was to implement its own managed service with the establishment of a formal portfolio governance model, framework, and PMO service catalogue. Then, from our own ‘lift and drop’ best practice library, we implemented methodologies for portfolio, program and project management – supplemented with fit-for-purpose standards, templates, guidance, and tools for scheduling, and management control.
myP3’s portfolio management service commenced with the year one investment prioritisation and selection culminating in the portfolio delivery plan (the ‘master plan’). This also involved pipeline management for new initiative ideas’ consideration for the portfolio inclusion and appraisal of each initiative’s strategic value and benefits. Upon commencement of delivery of the portfolio, myP3 conducted ongoing performance monitoring and resource capacity planning.
Setting the rhythm for governance meetings and delivery of reporting across the portfolio, program and projects for the newly formed Initiative Boards and Portfolio Steering Committee was important. This was enabled through the implementation of the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool for the capture of all initiative schedules, controls, documentation, and status information.
To ensure reported information was accurate and reliable, our managed service provision of Delivery Support included project setup and closure, planning and estimating, project and finance administration, governance support and secretariat, risk and issue control, deliverables, and quality administration. At each reporting period, myP3’s team scrutinised the validity of status and progress commentary to ensure that it correctly reflected underpinning information.
Within the Centre of Excellence function of the service, myP3 provided a Practice Centre library of methods, techniques, standards, templates, gate checklists and good practice exemplars as reference material. The latter being of particular good use for the client’s entry-level project managers along with our coaching, guidance, factsheets, competency assessments, peer reviews and advisory.
myP3 also conducted an internal P3M3® (Portfolio, Program and Project) maturity assessment of their capability upon commencement, at mid-points, and upon completion of the managed service.
Successful Implementation Key to Enterprise Transformation
Outcome: The PMOaaS successfully supported the organisation’s largest business transformation program through to completion of an Enterprise Resource Planning implementation.
Upon completion of the service, their program and portfolio management competency and capability was improved to a level that portfolio delivery was predictable and controlled resulting in increased senior management confidence in ICT.
An uplift in capability was achieved from P3M3® Maturity Model rating level 0 to 2 under self-assessment after just one year, noting that significant progress continued in year 3 with an overall estimated achievement of 2.7. (Note P3M3 maturity model optimized score is 5.)
A basis was established for continuous improvement of the framework, methods and PPM tool used in the delivery of the ICT portfolio. This included expansion of the PMO scope and services more broadly across the business to non-ICT investments.
The PMO was sufficiently embedded within the organisation to enable the client to continue operating without ongoing support from myP3.