Created to demonstrate how an organization can improve the delivery of project management services both internally and externally using best practices. A project management office, empowered to govern a project portfolio, including the prioritization process that selects projects for the portfolio, can demonstrate measurable benefits by implementing a project management office using best practices. This presentation explains the roles, functions and benefits of such an office.
2. Project Governance/Oversight & Risk Management Facilitate project prioritization & approval process Perform risk assessments, tracking & communication Manage pipeline, consulting with teams and leaders to determine optimal project start dates Portfolio Active management of portfolio Guide issue impact assessment & resolution planning Aggregation of project data, perform analysis, identify trends & make recommendations Methodology Ultimate Accountability: Define tools, templates & process; Ensure its use is effective; Solicit feedback Govern its application to validate it is achieving stated purpose Functions Performed
3. Financial Aggregate project costs and benefits Facilitate timely calculation of accruals, forecasts and anticipated cash flow Maintain details of project credit transfers between business units Gather, review and edit project submissions for budget cycles Maintain details of additions to budget baseline through acquisition of new technology, people or process change Resource Manage resource pool of project managers, program managers and sometimes business analysts Real Time coaching of project managers, technical resources, business resources and executives Functions Performed
4. Communication (to leadership & enterprise) Project & portfolio health, accomplishments & milestones Project & portfolio issues (with action plans) Project & portfolio risks (with mitigation strategies) Project & portfolio budget vs. forecast variances Resource requirements and forecasts Risk assessment results Manage data repositories of project archives Facilitate audits by internal & external auditors Functions Performed
5. Increase in number of projects achieving expected benefits, on time, on budget & within scope Alignment of project investment to corporate strategy More efficient management of company resources: human, technical and financial Decreased risk exposure, fewer incidents of reportable incidents Increase in accuracy of P&L & balance sheets Reduction in project overhead/bureaucracy & elimination of heavy process for its own sake Increase in organization’s ability to plan using future project deliverables Benefits
7. Manage Supply & Demand Typical scenario: growth is causing a lot of demand to flow into IT, and IT doesn’t have enough resources to fulfill all the demand. Prioritize Project Portfolio Typical scenario: accomplishing and completing IT initiatives is necessary to bring to the organization new services that are critical to meeting company growth plans. IT is already overcommitted, but short of getting all the project managers in one room, there is no easy way to conduct a business discussion about priorities and trade-offs. Deliver Projects & Applications Organization is about to embark on a strategic “bet the company” project and failure is not an option. Projects are chronically late and over budget, there is little accountability, and nobody can tell what the status of a project really is or who is doing what Identify Most Critical Need
9. Work Request Management Implement work flows, forms, categorization, assignments/approvals, changes, escalations, reports & dashboards for all types of IT Demand Project proposals, enhancements, bug fixes, service requests, change requests Time Management Resource Allocation & Utilization Budgeting of costs, resources, and effort Change Control Board Supply & Demand
10. Prioritize the Project Portfolio Inventory & classify projects and applications Match business objectives to projects and applications Enforce a stage-gate process for assessing projects Develop an approval process for incoming demand of application maintenance & projects Standardize business cases including cost, resource and effort estimates Prioritize the Portfolio Activate portfolio reports and dashboards Implement PPM –Prioritzation
11. Activate project dashboards and reports for summary, dates, owners, objectives, etc Perform project team assignments by roles, skills, and individuals Define project schedule ( work breakdown structures — WBS), baselines, and stage gates Implement schedule and cost health metrics Assign resources to tasks Manage issues and risks Manage time tracking Implement project cost estimations and accounting Establish alerts Implement document management Implement PPM - Deliver