Purpose Driven PMO – Online PMO

Purpose:

Deliver measurable business value, tangible and intangible, while aligning and improving the business and IT strategy.

Objective:

Building the IT portfolio should result in:

- Institutionalized management processes that are defined, documented, and easily accessible for creating, assessing, and balancing the portfolio. These processes can be repeated and are consistent
- Regularly validating costs, benefits, and risk data to support IT investment decisions. The information and data are accurate, reliable, and up-to-date, forming the basis for grounded decision-making
- Focusing on continuously measuring and evaluating progress and results
  - Assess the effectiveness of the IT portfolio management process
  - Determine the impact on performance
  - Evaluate the efficiency of the generation of relevant data and decision-making processes
  - Assess the completeness of how faithfully the processes, stages, and activities are being followed across the company and how often investments are being revisited

Description:

In the information age, knowledge provides a competitive edge that no business can ignore. The challenge, however, is that with all of the hype, complexity, and confusion around information technology (not to mention a healthy dose of jargon), it is often difficult to distinguish between good and bad technology investments. That’s problematic, or at least it should be, because information technology is the central nervous system of most organizations, providing the tools to act rapidly to changes in the business environment. If the information technology is optimized, the organization can thrive, even in the most chaotic times. Optimizing information technology investments is not an option – it is a business mandate.

Information technology investments currently account for the majority of capital expenditures within many organizations; therefore, it must be treated with at least the same due diligence rigor as any other capital investment. A sound business case must exist; it must support the strategy of the organization, and it must support and, in many ways, adhere to new legislation.

We are increasingly expected to provide accurate information to multiple shareholder and stakeholder groups at light speed. But that should not be a justification for throwing caution to the wind and spending whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. Like any other investment, information technology must be actively managed throughout its entire life cycle, ensuring that both its initial and ongoing costs do not exceed the benefits it provides. We cannot afford to treat investments in information technology as unmanaged operating expenses, as they provide far too many opportunities for value creation, cost savings, and relevant, timely, and accurate information that serve as critical elements of competitive advantage.

Portfolio management provides a sound and proven business approach to optimizing investments in information technology. The investment portfolio metaphor offers a mechanism to govern investments in information technology that accounts for their value, risks, costs, useful life, and interrelationships. Much the way an investment manager dynamically manages a portfolio of financial investments, business leaders must make an intelligent buy, sell, and hold decisions around their investments in information technology to optimize revenue and growth opportunities, improve customer experience, and streamline operations; when appropriately done, the productivity improvements and cost savings that result will positively impact the bottom line and allow us to fulfill our primary obligation: driving shareholder value. For example, automated transaction processing through online order-making and order taking has created opportunities to offer complex services through dynamically packaging new customized offerings, generating additional fees, and better meeting the customer needs of a global audience. The online travel business is a good example of how information technology has served as a powerful enabler, facilitating streamlined fee-for-service and inventory management models, and providing greater access to published air, car, cruise, and hotel fares, and travel packages worldwide for both leisure and business travelers.

With the growing investment in information technology and the profound contribution of information technology within many organizations, it is imperative that the interactions between risk, reward, and value for information technology investments are proactively identified, evaluated, prioritized, and managed. Portfolio Management makes this case firmly and logically, providing evidence and case studies to support this argument. Portfolio Management highlights the impact of adopting this technique, from organizational change to governance impacts down to the bottom line. Many books present approaches to effecting positive business change. Still, Portfolio Management presents the approach and provides the steps required to transform an organization from ad hoc information technology management to information technology optimization, replete with lessons learned. Portfolio Management is not a revolutionary approach. It is an evolutionary approach that works. Online-PMO thoughtfully provides tools to measure your organization’s abilities and to help it evolve to information technology excellence.

Organizations can evolve into adaptive real-time enterprises that thrive in a world of change. Portfolio Management provides an answer to every senior business leader’s questions around the black hole of the IT budget. Portfolio Management also offers solutions to how IT professionals should breakdown the barriers and effectively communicate with business leaders in their language. Maintaining a strong balance sheet, alignment of assets, occupying and sustaining a leadership position, and achieving a profitable and relevant return on investments cannot be separated from sound practices of portfolio management, and are the fiduciary responsibilities of leaders in an information technology era.

Entrance Criteria:

Enterprise Strategic Intent
Enterprise Business Objectives
Business Unit Objectives/Requirements
IT Plan (IT Policies, Principles, Roadmap, etc.)

Exit Criteria:

IT Balanced Scorecard

Process and Procedures:

Tailoring Guidelines:

None

Process Verification Record(s):

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Measure(s):

References:

What is Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) and why do you need it?
How PMOs Can Build a Talent Pipeline
Communication Barriers in the Modern WorkplaceSlow Down, Think Creatively, and Make Better Decisions
5 Tools to Gain Competitive Advantage
7 ways to assure employees their jobs are safe, employees are less likely to worry about their jobs when leaders are upfront about the business’s health, regularly recognize excellence and give people a say in how things are run. Being proactive rather than reactive is the name of the game with this one.
Cultivate connection to sustain innovation and trust , being open with others and listening to their ideas and stories can help us connect with them and nurture an atmosphere of creativity and innovation. Finding resonance with others in your personal life and in your work life … can create growth, success, and happiness that you cannot find any other way.
Healing Sick Projects and Programs: Information Executives Want
Program Portfolio Management Maturity Model
- Exploring Level 1
- Exploring Level 2
- Exploring Level 3
- Exploring Level 4
- Exploring Level 5
Your PMO at Hyper-speed
Performance Results of CMMI(R)-Based Process Improvement
The First and Most Important Skill of a Manager
Create a score card to keep strategy on track, using a color-coded scorecard can help keep teams on track when implementing strategies, along with clear guidance, deadlines, and constant communication from leaders. Successful execution relies on your team knowing their role and playing their role in achieving specific outcomes.
The PMO that delivers

Include OCM Techniques When Implementing Project Management Practices

Most organizations do not follow a consistent project management methodology of any kind. So, how do you proceed with an initiative to introduce project management within an organization? The key to a project like this is recognizing that a project management initiative requires project managers to do things differently. It requires them to manage larger projects more proactively, consistently, and rigorously. It also requires different behaviors of the people who work on projects and those who are the project’s stakeholders.

Because we are trying to change the way people do their jobs, this type of effort is known as an organizational change management initiative. It is all about trying to change the culture. Driving culture change requires much more than simply teaching new skills, although training certainly plays a part. You must evaluate various aspects of the organization that drives behaviors. Processes that drive good project management behaviors need to be reinforced. Processes that are barriers to good project management behaviors need to be changed or eliminated. Resistance to the change must be accounted for and expected. It must also be overcome.

The success criteria for implementing project management include the following.

- Stakeholder management. In any culture change initiative, it is crucial to recognize the various impacted stakeholder groups. You should then perform stakeholder analysis to understand their interest, power, and motivation. You can use this information to create a stakeholder management plan to engage stakeholders based on their specific characteristics.
- A multi-faceted approach. Recognize that implementation is more than introducing new templates and initial training. It requires a multi-faceted approach that includes long-term communication, a standard methodology, training for all stakeholders (project managers, team members, and managers), coaching services, repository management, etc.
- A long-term commitment. You must have long-term staying power. The project management initiative will likely take at least a year for a small organization and 3-5 years for a larger one.
- Strong sponsorship. You have to have robust and stable sponsorship. It is not uncommon for the CIO or an EVP to sponsor a project management initiative. It is common that when the sponsor is replaced, the new CIO or EVP does not share the passion for project management. The entire initiative was canceled before the culture change could be fully adopted.
- Manage as a project. The project management implementation work must be planned and managed as a project. This will help ensure the work is scheduled, budgeted, coordinated, etc.
- A scalable model. Implement the new processes in a scalable manner. In other words, do not require a lot of overhead for small projects, while at the same time, you need to ensure that there is much more rigor and structure for large projects. Over-applying mandatory project management processes on smaller projects is a common reason an organization does not adopt the culture change.

Deploying project management processes and building project management capability in the organization requires much more than simply training the staff and walking away. You need a holistic and multi-faceted plan to engage the stakeholders effectively so that the change can be adopted and utilized long-term.

The Rules for Creating a Yearly Project Portfolio Roadmap

Portfolio management is a process that ensures the organization’s scarce resources are allocated to the more critical work. There are two primary components required to carry this out. First, the management team completes a planning process to determine which work is most important. Second, the staffing managers ensure that the right resources are applied to execute the work as efficiently as possible.

The staffing process for projects looks something like this. Each year, staffing managers receive the list of approved projects for the coming year. These staffing managers then create a high-level schedule for the year that maps resources to work. They don’t need to plan the work on a detailed hour-by-hour basis. They only need to keep track of the projects, the estimated resources required, the likely candidates to fill the openings, and the likely start and end dates.

- Carry Over Projects. These projects are in progress at the end of one fiscal year. For the most part, the staff in place at the end of the fiscal year will be the same at the beginning of the new year.
- New projects. New projects must be slotted to start throughout the year based on the availability of resources and the dates that projects are due. From a scheduling perspective, keep the following items in mind.
  - Some projects have fixed start dates. These are staffed based on the start date.
  - Some projects have fixed end dates. The start date for these projects is flexible as long as the end date is met.
  - Slot the other projects based on priority and available staff. The best scenario is when projects are winding down and releasing resources that can be immediately applied to new projects starting up.
  - Staff’s highest priority work first. All things being equal, you would like to have all of your highest-priority projects started first. Of course, all things are not always equal, especially since the skill mix required to start projects may not be available.
  - Make sure the customer is ready. There may be instances where you have the available resources to start projects. Still, a customer department cannot support the necessary support then.
  - Avoid too much multitasking. Multitasking should be minimized so that each person is allocated to two projects or three maximum. It is not always possible to allocate people to only one major project at a time.

Establish Approved Work Schedule Baseline

The baseline is set when the staffing managers and the customers agree on the overall project schedule. Of course, the work schedule will change based on new projects that come up during the year and changes to existing projects. But these changes can now be managed proactively given the initially approved baseline work schedule.