Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 15:26:29 -0500
Mr. Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net
The Welch Company
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111 2496
| Subject: | Project Office, repositories, communication key factor |
Rod,
The report that I am putting together on the Project Office is attached. As I mentioned, this is a draft that still needs a lot of work. The initial effort is to be comprehensive, in the vein of an academic white paper that can support an actual proposal for management consideration.
Sincerely,
Owen R. Callahan
ORCALLAH@OutsourceIMSG.com
BSA Personal Lines, IMSG
727-823-4000 X4978
Project success, for a company that operates in a project-oriented environment, is one of its most strategic assets. It is a cornerstone for the company's financial health and the foundation for growth. In order to achieve project success, from an organizational perspective, success must be a repeatable process, from one project to the next. The environment in which projects are executed, however, makes it difficult to produce this type of success: typically, it is characterized by system and business practices that are integrated across business unit boundaries and by changing technology. These environmental conditions generate many management issues - among others, issues regarding staffing, ownership/accountability and process/procedure - which require management skills that are qualitatively different from those required for routine business operations management. In order to be successful in project business, organizations must identify a way to ensure that proven project management techniques are applied to the resolution of project issues, across all their projects. A Project Office (PO) is a management strategy that is used to formally incorporate project management into an organization's culture by providing the structure, support and expertise required to address project management issues and to successfully execute projects.
A PO can take different forms and have different levels of responsibilities within an organization depending on the size and scope that is defined of it. The intent of this report is to provide an overview of basic elements of a generic or full-service PO. It will include a discussion of the factors that contribute to the success of a PO, the key features of a PO - with an emphasis on how they benefit an organization in its effort to practice sound project management, and the functions that are performed by a PO. Many of the elements of project management will also be discussed because of the overlap between the functions and duties of a PO and the functions and duties of project management in general: this report is not, however, an attempt to identify all the elements required for sound project management within an organization.
Success factors
Sponsor commitment and engagement is not optional (they may require education regarding their role). The sponsor should be responsible for ensuring the successful implementation of a PO by:
In order for a PO implementation to be successful, employees at all levels of an organization must hold the highest of regard for the skills and abilities of PO members and for the PO as an management entity. Initially much of the respect required to gain acceptance of new management disciplines results from the respect that is held for the knowledge and experience of individual PO members who apply the new disciplines: therefore, it is important to staff a new PO with personnel who are perceived to possess superior project management expertise. Ultimately the strength and reputation of a PO rests on its ability to influence the project management process to effect the delivery of projects that produce quality products, on time and within budget. In order to sustain organizational support the PO must highlight its positive contributions within the organization.
Another key factor in the success of a PO is that it be established as a separate entity within the organizational reporting structure, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities. A distinct identity is crucial to the success of a PO for a number of reasons:
Over the long-term, the success of a PO is, in part, dependent on its ability to continuously develop its management expertise and to effect the evolution of standards and procedures within an organization. As a PO is an additional layer of management within an organization, whose expenses cannot be tied to particular projects (depending on the implementation approach selected), making the benefits of a PO more difficult to establish, it can be vulnerable in the budget review process. Therefore, in order to maintain the its legitimacy as an organizational structure, the PO must provide increasing levels of expertise and project input, as evidenced by continually improved project performance.
Ultimately, the success of a PO depends on its ability to change the habits and customs of an organization as they relate to project management. Unless organizational members use the project management practices that a PO espouses, no benefits can accrue to the organization from the establishment of project management best practices, which undermines the value of a PO. It is critical, therefore, for the PO to influence organizational thoughts, beliefs and attitudes by promoting the understanding, acceptance and use of project management practices. It is also important that the PO identify those parties that will be most impacted by proposed changes and solicit their buy-in and support.
One of the project management challenges that faces an organization is how to address issues that arise because projects impact, and are impacted by, other entities within the organization. The focus of a PO is to manage an organization's projects from the enterprise perspective. From this perspective, the PO is able to fully assess and manage the organizational factors that impact project success: it is also able to identify and manage the impact that project actions would have on the rest of the organization. This feature is especially critical to an organization with regards to the organization's ability to manage risk: because of the enterprise-level focus complete project risk assessments are possible.
One of the dangers of not employing a coordinated project management strategy, is that project managers can stagnate professionally because they are not challenged to systematically improve their project management skills and knowledge. The consequence for an organization of stagnated project management capability is the loss of the ability to compete in the delivery of projects. A PO provides, not only the structure and orientation required for the nurture of project management within an organization, but also the drive that promotes the development of project management professionalism.
Project managers improve their skills and knowledge by learning from other managers, either informally, e.g. through discussion, or formally, e.g. through training. It is part of the mandate of a PO to ensure that this learning experience occurs. A PO supports this process in the following ways:
A PO focuses much of its effort on the formalization of the project management and development processes that are to be used by projects within an organization. It does this by developing and implementing a base set of best practices, standards and methodologies. The use of these best practices, standards and methodologies form the basis for a consistent approach to implementing projects, and thereby, greater predictability of project success.
In the context of the SEI Capability Maturity Model, organizations without formalized project management and development processes depend on the abilities and drive of individual project team members to successfully complete projects. When this is the case, as those individuals with the ability to impact the success of a project, leaves the project, the likelihood of success for that project decreases. (Refer to CMM Model - both the graphic and the description in the appendix)
The SEI Capability Maturity Model outlines an evolutionary process whereby organizations slowly develop the process infrastructure required for effective development and management practices. Leading an organization through this maturation process is the mandate of a PO.
It is a typical human behavior to resist change. When change is being introduced into an organization, in order to ensure acceptance of the change, it is critical that ongoing efforts be expended to promote understanding and acceptance of the change. One of the roles of the PO is to promote the importance, and ultimately the institutionalization, of new project management standards and practices.
It is the responsibility of the PO to persuade organizational members, at all levels, of the importance of using sound project management disciplines.
Management must be persuaded that employing project management standards and practices add value to the organization. They also must be persuaded that to shortcut those practices negatively impacts project success.
Project management is a discipline that is often performed by professional project managers, whose activities are largely unexplained and, therefore, perceived to be irrelevant to non-management project personnel. The PO must persuade non-management personnel that project management is relevant to them and that they impact the project management process. They need to understand how projects will be run and how each project role is defined.
Critical to the process of sound decision making, in any context, is the ability to store (for later retrieval and use), organize (to reduce access time) and analyze (make connections of cause and effect) information. For efficiency, decision-makers often perform this process based on their own personal knowledge and experience, without the use of a formal documentation process. In those cases where the quantity of information to be analyzed is small, this approach can be used without much risk of compromise to the quality of subsequent decisions. However, in those cases where the quantity of information to be analyzed is large, it is difficult to use this approach without overlooking critical details, which can result in poor decision making. In these cases, it is important that the decision making process be supported with a formal information processing mechanism that aids the decision-maker with the storage, organization and analysis of information.
Projects typically generate large quantities of information in one form or another: this could include information from project documents (e.g. contracts, scope documents, requirements documents, sign-off documents, change documents), people (clients, organizational impact players, project team members), prior understandings, commitments, objectives and planned tasks. Most organizations store, and typically reference the information, at least during the life of the project, but few companies perform the level of systematic storage, organization and analysis of the project information required to adequately support project-related decision-making. PO responsibilities, as they relate to this process, include the development and execution of formal processes and procedures that ensure that this systematic accumulation and evaluation of information is performed at an appropriate level, and the management of the accumulated "Project Repository".
A PO "Project Repository" is essentially both the product and tool of the project management approach of investing time in analysis and planning, to prepare for future conditions. It would include data from all the projects within an organization, all the knowledge that is gained as a result of lessons learned and the standards and methodologies that are developed to improve project performance.
The project management administrative requirements of a project are considerable: as project size increases, so does the size of the effort required to perform project management administrative tasks. As these tasks can consume significant amounts of resource time and effort, either they do not get done, are done poorly, hence creating inefficiencies, or get done and take resources away from the project issues that relate to the skills for which they were assigned to the project.
One of the roles of the PO is to assume much of the burden for these project management administrative tasks, thereby, minimizing the effort that project team members must dedicate to them. In some cases, such as the maintenance of a project notebook, PO staff could assume all responsibility, for other cases, such as time reporting, the PO staff would support the project by minimizing the effort that would be required of project team members.
The role of the project communication function is to provide accurate and timely updates regarding project goals, status and accomplishments as input to the decision making process for all parties with a vested interest in the project. This function represents one of the biggest risks for a project because of the potential cost of inappropriate project activity that results from misinformation. The Project Office is in the best position to perform the communication function for the following reasons:
This provides the PO with both, the ready access that is required to produce timely updates and the control to ensure that the information is accurate. One of the challenges of project communication is that understandings and meanings tend to diffuse over time and to change as they are communicated from one person to another. It is the responsibility of the PO to ensure that the integrity of all communications is upheld in the maintenance of the project record.
Effective communication can also be hampered by the closeness of the communicator to the project, for example, project personnel may be fearful of the response to the communication of a negative status. This could result in the communication of an adjusted or false status. As the PO manages from an enterprise perspective, these type of concerns do not impact its ability to communicate effectively.
The effort required to collect input data, to verify the data and create reports is time consuming. As a project manager has many project tasks that compete for his time, some of these tasks can often be performed without due diligence, which increases the risk of miscommunication. The PO is more suited to perform these tasks because communication is one of the highest priorities and areas in which much effort is concentrated.
This functional area is responsible for the development and maintenance of objective performance metrics that are used to report project performance. It tracks performance against budget, ensures that delivery targets are met, and verifies performance against business objectives. These metrics are collected at the project level and then rolled up to the organizational level. This functional area is also responsible for forecasting future budget and resource requirements.
The responsibility of the Quality Assurance functional area is to ensure that the projects within the organization meet quality objectives. In the context of a PO, this means adherence to procedures and standards, and the completeness and quality of project deliverables. If business requirements change during the project, this functional area modifies its standards accordingly. It also researches methods for continuously improving quality and ensuring that quality is built into all deliverables from the start. It audits project practices and captures project quality and performance metrics. Project performance metrics measures the efficiency of project operations, enabling benchmarking of project activities against other projects.
Quality Assurance is not synonymous with Testing, although there are overlaps. It is the responsibility of the PO Quality Assurance to make sure that the Testing process utilized during the development life cycle meets quality standards. Depending on the size or number of engagements Testing is sometime broken out into a distinct functional area.
Procuring, training and managing project staff is a major responsibility of a PO. Consolidating resource management at the organizational level enables executives to optimally deploy staff resources across all projects. While the details of managing individual resources are handled at the project level, the PO is responsible for the complex logistics of ensuring that the right people are available at the right time and right place. This may include negotiating and managing relationships with third-party vendors and subcontractors and deploying internal and external resources. This function is responsible for properly training project staff in project processes, tools, and objectives.
The Delivery Management function ensures that projects complete on time, within budget, and according to plan. It oversees the operations of all the projects within the organization. While each project within the organization is responsible for achieving its own objectives, the Delivery Management function is responsible for ensuring that project performance fits within overall organizational objectives. As the keeper of the master project plan, this function knows all project interconnections and dependencies. It monitors project progress closely and addresses individual project delays before they impact other projects in the organization. When problems arise, this function adjusts and re-balances the project plan. In worst-case scenarios, it oversees the implementation of contingency plans.
It is a POs responsibility for ensuring that the physical and technical infrastructures requirements of the all the organizations projects are implemented and maintained. Responsibilities include managing processes, tools, computer capacity and facilities; performing capacity planning for the computer resources required for the project; and procuring the necessary resources. If additional office facilities are required the Infrastructure Management staff work with the appropriate corporate organizations to acquire them.
This function is responsible for optimizing productivity and quality by ensuring the use of best-in-class management processes, tools, and practices. The function ensures consistent implementation of methodology and best practices; captures and analyzes project experiences and data as a means for achieving continuous performance improvements; investigates alternative tools and processes available across the industry for improvement opportunities; and conducts industry benchmarking.
This function also rolls out new tools and techniques. It manages common processes such as configuration management and system testing, and monitors and adjusts the effectiveness of those processes. As already noted, the process knowledge captured by the PO is one of its most important assets and is maintained in the project repository and reflected in the project methodology.
This function is responsible for continuously ensuring that projects remain firmly aligned with business objectives. It works with business areas to anticipate and understand changing business requirements and new risks, modifying the project plan and contingency plans as needed. It evaluates the project plan and its impact on the business, identifies potential risks, and develops risk mitigation plans. It ensures the completeness of project plans and determines the relative priority of each component effort. Separate business and project risk assessments are performed to identify potential problem areas, determine the impact of those problems, and estimate the effort required mitigating them. Armed with this information, contingency plans are formulated.
This function communicates project status, issues, and impact at multiple levels. The function builds general awareness about the project and its business impact both internally and externally. It prepares briefing documents and data for the board, senior management, suppliers, and other critical participants. It facilitates communications between the project teams. It also informs external organizations about project progress, answers questions, and addresses issues. Effective communication of program benefits and status ensures proper organizational focus and buy-in.
Communication takes a large portion of a manager's time. The role of communication is to provide accurate and timely feedback regarding project goals, status and accomplishments
Project Office implementations range in complexity from simple support offices that are barely noticeable within the organizational structure, to full-service centers of project management, that represent a significant branch of the organizational structure. They range in size and scope, from small offices of 1 to 2 resources who perform a limited number of project management functions, to fully staffed organizations with 20 to 40 staff members, who handle all the PO-related project management functions within an organization. This section will outline some of the variations in implementation approaches at it relates to size, scope and organizational structure, and.(identify some of the considerations posed by each?). Figure 1 shows a generic model of PO functions.
The size of a PO is a factor of its budget and scope: the budget establishes the financial limits for hiring resources and the scope establishes the approximate cost of resources by identifying the type of resource expertise that is required. The number of PO staff, then, becomes a budgetary trade-off based on the cost of the different types of resources: the lower the allocated budget, the smaller the size of the staff. When considering the size of a PO ot This is significant . For those cases where there is sufficient budgetary resources to The size of a PO staff is issue for The issue with the size of a PO is only significant when there are a limited because of the For PO implementations with large budgets, this is not anIt is this trade-off that impacts that POs This is an issue
The size of a PO is especially significant in those cases where the budget is small, and, therefore, the resources limited. The size of a PO is significant because it can impact both the quantity and quality of work that it can perform. This especially significant for POs with small budgetse more high level functions thatThe larger the budget that is designated to the PO the larger the staff.must be hired therefore limiting the within which it must operate, thus limiting the . The number of resources that can be hired, and, irrespective of the defined scope, ultimately the number of functions that can be performed, can be determined with the application of simple math to the budget figures. Experts versus administrative
Size also has implications for visibility and imfluence. The size and scope of the PO determine the functions that will be handled by the PO and the number of people supporting each function: in smaller PO's of limited scope a single resource may handle a limited number of functions; in larger full service PO's small teams may handle a single function.
Support Office - note Dinsmore for this pp. 68-70
Center for Project Management Direct involvement The extent to which a PO is involved in the business cycle
A PO that is structured so that the PMs report to the PO provides the greatest opportunity for project managers to share and support each other continually to improve common processes and tools and support one another through the sharing of their experiences.
This report does not detail the temporary project office set up for the life of a single large project, with multiple sub-projects, that they manage.
From a PO perspective who does these tasks depends on the implementation approach. For example, if the PO is fully staffed much of the expertise required by a project may reside within the PO, if not it will likely reside outside the PO and the PO will have to arrange for the expert to contribute to the project.
The most important service provided by a PO is make qualified project managers available for the launching and running of projects. The expectation is that they be prepared to deliver projects that are on time, within budget and meet the quality expectations agreed to (this includes maintenance expectations that are often overlooked.)
A PO is a mechanism that helps focus the required the attention needed within an organization for project managers to develop professionally, stated another way for the profession of project management to develop within an organization.
This is the provision of project management expertise to project as needed. It can refer to everything from training, providing processes, assisting in project planning and tracking, performing the project reviews to managing a project from start to finish.
Project Scope Development
Challenge: with a start up PO, is to determine how to best deploy limited resources across an organization. The priority must go to the areas where the greatest positive impact to the company can be realized.
Mentoring would be provided by experienced project managers who can work side by side with juniors in order to develop their project management skills. Note: this should be provided by an expert who the individual being tutored should not be reporting to.
The PO creates and maintains a repository of documented project management processes, also called standards and procedures, for all projects to follow as needed. Standards and procedures form the basis for delivery of product of consistent and improving quality. These processes include those for defining organizational structure of projects (including the definition of roles and responsibilities), planning projects, tracking projects, escalating issues to higher levels of project leadership, performing project reviews, and performing postproject reviews.
The following is a list of some of the standards (often includes templates and sample documents) and procdurestemplates that might be provided by a PO:
This section is basically about the standardization of tools across an enterprise. The PO should decide on the project management tools that will be used and supported across the company. Once the tools have been selected and approved, compliance is essential. Having a standardized set of tools reduces costs for purchasing tools, reduces training costs, and increases the long-term productivity of the user of the tools and the benefits from sharing templates. The PO should be the liaison for purchasing tools and ensuring that users have the latest releases. The PO also could be responsible for working with tools vendors for reporting tool problems and identifying work-arounds. The PO should make sure that users have adequate training also should provide an interface to needed help when questions arise regarding the use of tools. To date we only have MS Project - it is not used very well - it is the responsibility of the PO to make sure that the tools are used consistently across the enterprise.
When a new project is started it is recommended that all project members received project orientation and culture training. Culture training provides all project member with a common understanding of how the project will run and the role that each project member is expected to play.
Suggested topics for culture training:
The PO should be willing and able to assist individual team members with the development of their individual project plan and then to help with the assembling of the overall project plan (this could include training, provision of samples, and revie of the finished products.
The project plans are owned by the project manager and administered by PO support personnel. The project plan would be updated with changes approved by the project manager. This saves the project manager from having to dedicate themselves to this time-intensive task.
Schedule maintenance - the data comes from the project manager or designate. The individual who does the updating is responsible for working continuously with project members to make sure that the plan reflects the reality of the project. Time sheet maintenance - this is handled exclusively by the PO. Members reports the number of hours they spend on each task
The exception could be small projects, many of the projects in this organization are small!
When a project is large a dedicated space should be set up for project tracking. It would contain the project notebook, which would include the most current status information.
The project notebook would include startup and current documentation which defines the project, e.g. the SOW, project schedule, status reports, project change documents. The project library would contain all the
It would also include information and documentation that would highlight risk and contingency plans, critical path activities, assigned action items, etc. One benefit i maintenance of project inventory
Minutes of the project-tracking meetings would be captured by PO support personnel. The project manager approves the minutes before distribution.
For large projects the project manager does not have enough time to be involved in all the required management activities. The PO would be used to support some of these activities, which would include among other meetings escalation and information meetings. In all cases the PO keeps the project manager informed of any developments.
This task is a collaborative effort between the PO and the project manager: the PO is responsible for the coordination and manual (includes composition/consolidation, production and distribution) effort required to assemble the documents, whereas the project manager is ultimately responsible for the content. This is especially importan for large projects. Graphics are important in communicating status messages that are easy to understand.
Establish trends that used to forecast. and performs the ongoing review of project performance metrics.
Typically performed every 3 to 4 months - so for projects that are shorter this function would be waived. It typically includes review of technical approach, business approach, project management approach and quality. The project manager is permitted to review the review before publication to identify any inaccuracies, etc that would compromise the integrity of the findings. The PO role in this process would be:
The manager of the project under review does not perform the post project review. The PO involvement is the same as that for the project review. These reviews feed into the project management improvement process.
Project reviews need to be included in a repository of project data - to make it available for easy retrieval and study. This data should be summarized over time and included in the on-going development of project management best practices. As the project office matures the overall project portfolio will be monitored and the naged.
The PO should make sure that as part of the review process that the project managers speaks to those activities that are being done differently on the new project versus what was done on previous projects as a result of the lessons learned. How this is addressed would be somewhat dependent on the involvement of the PO in selecting new approaches. The bottom line question is whether or not that the old processes are being followed or new processes.
A product review provides feedback for the ongoing process improvement cycle for the development and support groups. It helps to ensure the success of delivered products by identifying problems that need attention. The PO would support the process to identify the metrics that need to be gathered, then support the review process, etc. see reviews above.
The PO would support the process to review contract proposals for completeness, accuracy, realism and good business arrangements. As with other activities how this is accomplished depends on the PO organization that is established, if it is a large, fully staffed office, then the PO would use their own staff to do the review, otherwis they would assemble a team. Look at 2, these may need their own bullet.
The PO champions the proliferation and benefits of good project management. Project management education is one method of spreading project management knowledge and skills. The PO is responsible for identifying a series of training class and seminars and other events needed to institutionalize sound project management practices within its serving organization. Even if am education orgainization already exists within the company, the PO is accountable for ensuring that the right attention is focused on project management training.
Classes are targeted for many different audiences interested in project management such as project managers, team leaders, team members, resource managers, product managers, business and product architects, process architects, clients and others. The classes focus on fundamentals such as using project mangement tools, planning and tracking projects, and organizing projects - to more advanced topics of earned value, risk management, and learning from previous post project reviews - to further advanced topics incorporating project reviews as part of classroom instruction. Classes on leadership, the soft skills, and people communications are also included in the required curriculum
The PO is accountable for the professional development of project managers, including developing the curriculum, ensuring that project managers spend sufficient time on professional development, and ensuring that each project manager is meeting professional standards, be it certification or otherwise. This includes the PO identifying the knowledge, classes and experience that must be completed or attained for a manager to become certified. The certification can take the form of a company or university certification or a diploma or certification by a leading project management association.
See previous point. This repository of project documents are maintained for the following reasons:
This task involves the formalization and execution of a process for resource acquisition, which would include a process for the identification of required resource and a process for the negotiation of assignments if required.
This is accomplished through the development of a PO- led committee of project managers and technical architect type people who continually assess impact between existing systems and proposed systems.