Your partner powering change – Great PMO and what it can do for you

Tick, Tick, Tick, Time marches relentlessly forwards. Moving at its uniform pace the world moves with it. But time feels different now. The pace of modern life is frenetic. Instant news, notifications, updates, trends all vying for our attention. As life has sped up. So has the world of business. To keep up businesses need Change, and they need it a pace.

Now more than ever your change portfolio is critical for your business’ success. Being left standing at the side of the road with old, outdated practices, tools or products isn’t an option.

Delivering change isn’t easy. Delivering complex change is even more difficult. With many interconnected moving parts, stakeholders with conflicting opinions and the pressure to deliver value quickly. The challenges handed to change leaders are vast. As experts in change, we know just how hard it can be. We also know that many change leaders don’t have the support they need to successfully deliver their change portfolios at the pace the business demands.

Without the right delivery fundamentals to make your change a success the hard work of the change team, and the investment the business makes in transformation are at risk of being squandered. Having the right delivery foundations in place, and the change supported right through its lifecycle you will have the best chance of delivery success.

How do you give your change programme the best chance of success?

PMOs are your partners for change. With an effective PMO you will have the greatest chance of delivery success.

The badge of PMO is applied to a huge range of functions at different levels and with very different scopes. We know that PMOs are often perceived as an overhead, administrative or even a cottage industry. Addressing this objection can be a challenge for any change leader – because for many organisations it’s true. While one PMO may just book the meetings for a project and nothing more, others may focus on status reporting and bring little value to the delivery organisation beyond collating information. While keeping on top of the admin for a delivery, booking meetings, filing paperwork and, organising the go-live party are all important, they aren’t what makes a PMO. A great PMO, delivered by real specialists with real-world experience powering controlled, predictable change. We’ll share through this series of articles how great PMO can practically take steps to maximise the chances of successful delivery. With a great PMO in place you’ll see the value which any significant investment in change demands.

Your PMO should be a centre of excellence for change management.

Great PMO will set the standards for delivery management, own the governance and control procedures and aid the team in their use. As experts in the ‘how’ of change delivery they coach, guide and advise the team and senior leadership to get the most out of their investment in change while protecting what matters for delivery success. They are a powerful, experienced and supportive partner to your change delivery, they will:

• Partner with you to guide, coach and support change teams

• Keep you in control of delivery with the right governance

• Ensure clear decisions are taken by the right people to keep change on track

• Drive prioritisation and change management keeping the portfolio appropriate as business context alters​

• Optimise plans and resourcing giving a clear route through change complexity

• Establish early risk management systems to prevent a crisis​

• Manage the single version of the truth bringing clarity to change

Without a strong and efficient PMO your changes are more likely to go off track, stakeholders to be unclear on the progress and decisions and will lose faith in your delivery team. An effective and efficient PMO will be a catalyst for the change team, governing each delivery in the right way and underpinning successful and safe delivery.

The use of PMO is already widespread, 85% of firms have at least 1 PMO function, this number rises to over 95% in companies with revenues over a billion dollars. The use of PMO also looks set to grow, as nearly a third of companies without a PMO plan to establish one in the coming year.

Despite being commonplace, many PMOs are immature with more than a quarter being less than 2 years old. With this immaturity many existing PMOs are seen as not adding value often with the perception that they are an overhead, administrative, or a cottage industry.

It’s important to understand the strengths, weaknesses and maturity of your PMOs to make sure the maximum possible value is delivered. There is no ‘one size fits all’ PMO. The type of PMO, its size, its maturity and how it underpins your company strategy and vision all need to be agreed, implemented and nurtured.​

Different Levels of PMO – Project, Programme, Portfolio or Enterprise

Your PMO creates maximum value by helping your change leaders be successful, as well as enabling senior managers to run the organisation effectively and take the right, well informed key decisions. PMOs commonly exist at different levels of the change organisation, each with its own unique functions. Understanding the right PMO for each level of the change organisation will help you create the PMO function to drive change forwards: 

• At Project or Programme level, the PMO usually offers tactical services to support delivery and execution. This should be delivered in a consistent way across the change portfolio so Projects and Programmes can; be mobilised quickly with known controls, resources can easily move between deliveries without learning new approaches, and key messages aggregated without being re-written. Often this isn’t the case with Projects and Programmes developing their own governance and control silos, limiting the effectiveness of the delivery organisation as a whole. 

1. The Project or Programme PMO should oversee all governance and control across the specific delivery. This will include reporting, risk and issue management, and planning. They will need to interface with the wider Portfolio and Enterprise PMO teams to ensure the right hand-offs are in place.

2. Using the organisations standard tools and processes a Project or Programme PMO should enable an individual well-managed change that achieves deliverables on time and in budget. 

• Looking across the entire Portfolio of change for a particular area of the business or department the Portfolio PMO deliver a centralised service focusing on strategic goals and benefits for the department. The Portfolio PMO collects, consolidates, and summarises information from the different Projects and Programmes within the Portfolio. 

Using well understood processes and tools, with metrics and data, a Portfolio PMO can quickly combine information, distil the messages and spot leading indicators of trouble to allow the Portfolio Leadership to take action. A Portfolio PMO is unlikely to succeed if they: 

1. Don’t have the buy-in from the Project and Programme teams to standard processes and tools to gather the useful information and identify insights. This can easily happen with the Portfolio PMO only supports passing information and reports upwards to leadership and doesn’t support the teams who create the information or do the actual delivery. 

2. Are not sufficiently close to the changes in the Portfolio or experienced in delivery to understand the context of the messages. 

• Building a Portfolio level PMO which serves both the Projects and Programmes within it, and the leadership team, will result in a function which gives real insight and Portfolio wide control to change. 

• A PMO which covers the entire enterprise allows for flexible and scalable capability across the whole organisation. The Enterprise PMO enables change demands to be balanced and the change needs of the organisation to be co-ordinated. By identifying and pursuing the best, most valuable change, optimal delivery portfolios can be executed. With standard, enterprise-wide tools, processes and techniques the Enterprise PMO can foster cross-departmental collaboration helping the organisation reach its strategic goals. 

Having the different levels of PMO working hand-in-hand to power delivery of optimised portfolios of change with clear information, efficient processes and, predictable outcomes helps the change teams deliver the maximum value possible to an organisation. Remember ‘there is nothing permanent except change’ so it’s wise to make sure you’re getting the most value, and moving at pace in your delivery of change…

You’ll need the right PMO with you, so are your PMO change zeros or heroes? If you would like to discuss the status of your PMO, please get in touch via theteam@projectone.com.