Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Turn planning into action with a realistic PMO timeline.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Prepare an actionable roadmap for your PMO.

We all have junk drawers somewhere in our homes, and we probably try not to think about what’s going on in there. We’re just happy that they close and that the contents are concealed from anyone living in or passing through the house.

What goes in these junk drawers? Things that don’t have a home, things you don’t know what to do with, and things you don’t have the time or desire to deal with. Eventually, the drawer gets full, and it doesn’t serve you anymore because you can’t add anything else to it. Instead of cleaning the drawer and keeping the things you need, you throw everything away in one sweep. One day you will start the process again.

The junk drawer is like your project management office (PMO). The PMO is given projects that are barely scoped, projects that don’t have clear sponsors, and ad hoc administrative tasks you don’t have the time or desire to deal with. Inevitably, your PMO is out of capacity. This happens rather quickly, since it’s understaffed. You question its purpose because you made it a junk drawer. You even think about closing it. One day you will start the process again.

Use this blueprint to stop the madness. Learn how to properly define, staff, and plan a roadmap of a PMO that will actually serve your organization.

Ugbad Farah, PMP
Senior Research Analyst, PPM
Info-Tech Research Group

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations that are facing these challenges:

• No visibility into projects
• The organization views the PMO as unnecessary overhead
• The PMO is not properly staffed to support the organization’s needs
• Project managers/staff aren’t providing information or following processes
• Leadership and sponsors are disengaged

IT is responsible for many different business services. The data from Info-Tech’s IT Staffing diagnostic shows that 11.5% of staff time is spent on projects and project portfolio management. (Source: Info-Tech IT Staffing Benchmark Report)

PMOs can’t do everything and be all things to all people. Define limits with a strong mandate and effective staffing. Make sure you have the skills and capacity to support required PMO functions.

Project management chaos

PMOs get pulled into the day-to-day project and resourcing issues, making it difficult to focus on running a portfolio:

1. Teammates seem unphased by overdue tasks and missed milestones.
2. Fire drills may happen more often than planned projects.
3. Resources are allocated and then redirected to something more urgent.
4. Communication that’s stuck in silos, leading to confusion about priorities.
5. Due dates mysteriously shift without explanation.
6. Project teams are more focused on the due date than adoption and outcomes.

Common obstacles

IT and PMO leaders face several challenges.

• Many people see the PMO as nothing more than the “project document police,” i.e. a source of red tape rather than a helpful support system. This impacts staffing and hiring.
• The PMO is often misunderstood as a center for project management governance, when it also needs to facilitate the communication of project data from project teams to decision makers to ensure that appropriate decisions get made around resourcing, approval of new projects, etc.
• Accountability is something that is not clearly defined for many activities that flow through the PMO. Business leaders, project workers, and project managers are rarely as aligned as they need to be.

The Reality

68% — Sixty-eight percent of stakeholders see their PMOs as sources of unnecessary bureaucratic red tape. (Source: KeyedIn, 2014)

50% — Fifty percent of PMOs close within the first three years due to such things as poorly defined mandates and poor leadership. (Source: KeyedIn, 2014)

Info-Tech’s approach

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Get a departmental job description first. Defining your PMO may not be as simple as it seems. Explore the boundaries of portfolio, project, resource, and organizational change management before jumping ahead with processes and tools.
2. The staffing plan should come before your long-term plan. Get buy-in around your definition of the roles needed to run your PMO before articulating a long-term plan. Too often, plans have been accepted without the commensurate level of staffing. Our approach gives you a chance to put hiring on the roadmap as a predecessor to accountability.
3. Keep your eye on the ball. Build your PMO around the operational imperative to recognize completed projects as an early milestone in broader changes. In other words, projects exist to create change.

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for your PMO

Turn planning into action with a realistic PMO timeline.

50% of PMOs close within the first 3 years.

01 Define DEFINE THE RIGHT KIND OF PMO Establish the purpose of your PMO. Identify organizational needs to fill in gaps instead of duplicating efforts. LOGICAL FALLACY “If we approve more work, we'll get more done.” A properly run portfolio reconciles demand (project requests) to supply (available people) and drives throughput by approving the amount of projects that can get done.	02 Staff STAFF THE PMO FOR RESILIENCE Analyze the staffing requirements for your PMOs mandate. Create purpose-built role descriptions. FALSE ASSUMPTION “Our best project manager should run the PMO.” Your best project manager should be running projects and, no, they shouldn't do both.	03 Plan PREPARE AN ACTIONABLE ROADMAP The difference in a winning PMO is determined by a roadmap or plan created at the beginning. Leaders should understand the full scope of the plan before committing their teams to the project. COMMON MISTAKE “We'll get great at project management now and worry about portfolio management later.” Too often, PMOs focus on project management rigor and plan to do portfolio management after that's done. But few successfully maintain the process long enough to get there. If you start with portfolio management, leadership might soften their demands for project management rigor.	04 Execute ALIGN TO STRATEGIC PLAN Use the power of organizational change management to ensure success and adoption. Iterate through the finer points of planning and execution to deploy the kind of PMO defined in step 1, with the people described in step 2, and the strategic roadmap articulated in step 3. PROJECT MYOPIA “Let's focus on delivering the project on time so we can move on to our next project.” Don't forget why the idea got approved in the first place. The goal is to sustain beneficial business outcomes well beyond the completion of your project.

Info-Tech’s methodology for Preparing an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Insight summary

Overarching insight

There is a gap in the perception of the actual role of the PMO in many organizations by different stakeholder groups. Many people see the PMO police that produce red tape rather than a helpful support system. Those that need to present a coherent plan to leadership championing the need for a PMO often have an uphill battle.

Phase 1 insight

Determine the PMO’s role and needs and then determine your staff needs based on that PMO.

PMO leaders are all too often set up to fail, left to make successes out of PMOs that:

1. have poorly defined mandates;
2. lack the proper resourcing to support the services the organization requires; or
3. lack executive leadership, vision, and backing.

Phase 2 insight

Staff the PMO according to its actual role and needs. Don’t rush to the assumption that PMO staff starts with accomplished project managers.

Many organizations have PMOs of one person, and it is simply not a long-term recipe for success. People in this situation have a lot of weight on their shoulders and feel like they are being set up to fail. It is very challenging for anyone to run a PMO alone without support or administrative help.

Phase 3 insight

The difference in a winning PMO is determined by a roadmap or plan created at the beginning.

When you are determining what your PMO will provide in the future, it is important to align the ambition of the PMO with the maturity of the business. Too often, a lot of effort is spent trying to convince businesses of the value of a PMO.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

PMO Role Definition Tool				PMO Project Charter Template
Blank Job Description Template		Sample Job Descriptions		PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

PMO Strategic Plan

PMO MS Project Plan Sample

Organizational Change Impact Analysis Tool

Benefits

IT Benefits

• Determine how you can fill gaps and not duplicate efforts to bring value to your organization.
• Ensure that key PMO capabilities like portfolio management, project management, and organizational change management are in balance.
• Staffing is purpose-driven. Avoid putting good people in the wrong role.

Business Benefits

• Intake and governance have a primary focus and are not merely afterthoughts of someone primarily focused on project management methodology.
• Avoid unrealistic commitments by ensuring better upfront analysis of ability to execute.
• Ensure appropriately mandated sponsor management.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

• Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
• Call #2: Assess current state and determine PMO role/type.
• Call #3: Complete job description survey.

Phase 2

• Call #4: Analyze survey results and complete FTE analysis.
• Call #5: Discuss necessary roles and create job descriptions.

Phase 3

• Call #6: Discuss business goals and priorities.
• Call #7: Identify and prioritize initiatives on roadmap.
• Call #8: Discuss governance and organizational change.
• Call #9: Summarize results in strategic plan and discuss next steps.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com1-888-670-8889

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Phase 1

Define the Right Kind of PMO

A PMO may not simply be an office of project managers

Project management offices are evolving and taking on activities that differ from company to company.

Organizations are confused about what a PMO is, whether they should have one, and what it should do

PMBOK

The responsibilities of a PMO can range from providing project management support functions to the direct management of one or more projects. The PMO is an organizational body assigned with various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of those projects under its domain.

The PMO may play a role in supporting strategic alignment and delivering organizational value, integrating data and information for organizational strategic projects, and evaluating how higher-level strategic objectives are being fulfilled.

COBIT

The PMO can be responsible for portfolio maintenance, setting a standard approach for project and program and portfolio management.

OPM

The PMO is an organizational body assigned with various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of those projects under its domain.

In an effort to set a standard, the governance frameworks have over complicated it for most of us.

Use Info-Tech’s framework to create the PMO that works for your organization

Determine the Services Your PMO Will Provide Manage your PMO services in alignment with your mandate and your organization’s needs. Establish Your PMO’s Mandate Figure out the purpose of your PMO and write it down so it’s clear to your leadership. Align your mandate to the organization’s needs. Ensure Organizational Needs Are Being Met Before you can decide on what your PMO will do, find out who’s doing what in your organization so you can fill gaps instead of duplicating efforts.

Hierarchy of PMO Needs

Info-Tech Insight

Consider the principles of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which view the lower tiers of the hierarchy as fundamentally required to validate the pursuit of the higher tiers.

Step 1.1

Get a Common Understanding of Your PMO Options

Activities

• 1.1.1 Review PMO Types
• 1.1.2 SWOT Analysis

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Review Info-Tech’s PMO Types
• Complete a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO director and/or portfolio manager
• PMO staff/stakeholders
• Project managers

Outcomes of this step

• Current state analysis