Just watched a webinar on Increasing Program Management Office Collaboration to Improve IT Portfolio Management from www.qsm.com.
Here's a summary of how we've installed and operated Progam Management Offices in a variety of domains, from Federal Agencies to commercial firms
The Program Management Office provides the following services to the organization and its customers and stakeholders
- Scope management – capture scope in project schedules and supporting documents. Provide scope control through regular project management meetings and intervention. Provide scope review and concurrence through meeting with stakeholders and other participants.
- Change Management – provide a formal mechanism for control of scope change. Publish and notify impacts of scope change on stakeholders and service providers. Providing tracking and notification of scope as well as resources change.
- Resource Planning – provide a central repository for resources. Assign resources to projects and notify managers of resource loading.
- Cost Management and Reporting – identify labor and direct costs for project execution. Report cost absorption as a function of time to stakeholders and functional managers. Provide other project and program management reports for internal and external use.
- Project Review – provide real-time labor and direct cost information. Conduct periodic review of project progress according to the project type milestone template.
- Issue Management – provide a centralized issue management system. Maintain the issues, coordinate with assigned staff for resolving issues, and report removal of issues from the system.
- Risk Management – provide centralized risk assessment and management service. Assess project risks through standard reporting processes. Maintain a centralized database of risks and mitigation actions for “lessons learned.”
- Earned Value Management – provide earned value reporting for individual projects and portfolios of projects. Using physical percent complete to produce an Estimate to Complete and an Estimate at Completion.
- Portfolio Management – provide a centralized portfolio management system.
- Scheduling – provide detailed project scheduling processes. Gather and maintain schedule information from functional managers. Maintain the integrity of this information through periodic reviews and project updates.
With these services, the Program Management Office can increase the probability of program success by providing these business processes and values
- Knowledge Broker – Ensures all project critical data and information necessary for process implementation and decision making are available to all stakeholders. This includes analysis and reporting of project metrics and quantitative and qualitative analyses: variance analysis, critical path analysis, and trend analysis.
- Facilitator – Work directly with project teams and conduct project workshops design to gain consensus on key parameters such as scope, resource requirements, plans, and schedule dependencies.
- Mentor and Coach – Assume an active role in promoting knowledge, understanding processes, and achieving buy-in from stakeholders. Focus on promoting an understanding of relevant PMO processes. Provide resources for the general understanding of project management and its relevance to the stakeholder. Develop and implement project management training.
- Process Champion – Develop, implement, and continuously improve project management processes based on organizational feedback, management requirements, and industry best practices. Project value to the project and senior management stakeholders.
With These Concepts, Here's how to provide value from a Program Management Office
Here are the drivers of a Program Management Office.
And the participants in the PMO and the users of the PMO
With the participants and users, the Type of PMO needs to be determined. There are Five core types shown below. The choice of classifications or a mixture of classification is made during the initial assessment, gap analysis, and planning processes for deploying the PMO. Each classification has its strengths and weaknesses.
For each of these activities performed by the Program Management Office, involving Strategy, People, Processes, and Tools
