Upskilling the PMO for effective project delivery support

Having taken over from the interim support that was providing partial assistance at the time, the initial work focused on starting up and laying the foundation for the PMO in preparation for initiation. This involved designing templates, establishing and documenting processes, setting up governance and reporting forums, and managing the on/offboarding of resources on the programme.

The internal team were just at the point of getting funding approval for the project and needed to transition to a PMO ready to start Design. This became more critical with the appointment and onboarding of the systems integrator (SI).

Without a solid PMO set up, the programme was faced with high costs, longer onboarding timelines and a lack of governance and control.

To deliver on the above, it was key to understand where the current challenges and gaps were and what was required to fill those gaps to deliver an effective and efficient PMO.

A PMO project plan was constructed and prioritised with the Leadership team. Actions were assigned to systematically work through the prioritised challenges and gaps, defining or improving existing processes and then implementing them to become part of the natural PMO cadence and ensuring that the team was aligned with the process.

As expected with large projects, the key challenges were people based. For instance, due to the heavy workload across the team, it was often difficult to secure time calendars, there were inconsistencies in approach and everchanging competing priorities. However, all of these issues were overcome resulting in the PMO plan being delivered.

The LCM aspects were simple and minor given the point in the lifecycle the project was at. By the end of the assignment the PMO project plan had been effectively completed and the processes essentially moved into the PMO BAU process.

The organisation benefitted from a fully formed PMO, fit for purpose processes, appropriate governance cycles in place and an effective PMO function.

Existing PMO processes were reviewed and gaps were either filled and material created or existing processes were revamped and reinvigorated.

The whole governance process was improved with formal reporting put in place as per the customer’s PMO processes. Governance sessions were planned, along with any supporting preparation sessions and appropriate material produced with the PMO supporting and creating some of the slides.

All the RAID (DAREOC) processes were improved, and formal sessions executed and commenced in some instances. The programme plan was developed and enhanced in conjunction with the SI and baselined, subject to some dependencies.

Organisation charts, distribution lists and onboarding statuses were enhanced and the PMO Operating Model was updated.

Without the formalisation of these process and completion of gaps in the PMO, the project would have struggled to mobilise efficiently and there would be no governance control in place.

Additionally, Project One was responsible for the ongoing management of the LCM (Lifecycle Management) processes and we successfully executed and passed gate 2B.

There was also continuous improvement and streamlining, resulting in:

• a seamless and efficient on/offboarding process that moved and tracked circa over 200 resources in/out of the programme

• a well-documented PMO Operating Model

• a streamlined and easy to navigate SharePoint site

• the migration of programme logs from Excel to Jira

• a well-supported programme team with standardised ways of working.