Introduction:
In the case of a major program with multiple projects the importance of defining the scope of delivery is clear, however the scope of service offered by the PMO is often overlooked. It is critically important to effectively scope the totality of responsibilities, including the PMO, particularly in an outsourcing arrangement. This ensures that requirements and specific tasks and ownerships are understood and appropriately costed.
Client Problem:
A large utilities provider had commenced implementation of a significant Enterprise Asset Management solution to transform the way they managed asset data, procurement and finance processes. The program comprised of ten major projects, some led by the solution integrator and others by the business.
The solution integrator provided PMO services as part of their scope, however this was functionally limited and was not effective to meet program needs. The existing internal PMO also did not have capacity to guide or support the PMO service provided by the solution integrator.
Key challenges faced included disparate schedules, unclear dependencies, over-complex and unreliable reporting, sub-optimal tracking of products quality and risks, and multiple information repositories.
The organisation sought an independent partner to bring rigor and consistency to the management and control across the breadth of the program and its projects.
Project Objective:
The primary objective was to implement and maintain a broad spectrum of improvements for end-to-end control for the life of the program, bridging the PMO functional gaps in responsibility between the solution integrator and the business teams to enable greater predictability of success.
Project Overview:
The scope of requirements and expertise for the PMO led to myP3’s engagement using our ‘PMO-as-a-Service’ model, allowing for a range of centre of excellence (CoE) and delivery support skills augmentation from our team. The areas of focus were:
- Project Online (POL) solution – temporary instance for duration of the program pre-configured for templated schedule management, controls registers, sharepoint and document repositories. Provided tailoring to meet specific business, program and projects information and reporting requirements.
- Schedule & Resources Management – consolidation of extensive solution delivery and organisational readiness (business change) schedules with resources, tasks and dependencies, and integrated with the products / deliverables register and key reportable milestones aggregated and maintained at program level.
- Dependencies management – tracking and management of internal and external dependencies, including sanity checks to identify timeliness of give / get inconsistencies and associated risks.
- Risks and issues management – provision of best practice advisory and training for cleansing of existing risks and issues, and appropriate identification and record descriptors for raising and maintaining future items. Developed a Risk Management Standard to ensure practices were consistent. Enabled recording of parent / child risks to alleviate duplications across projects.
- Products / Deliverables management – migration of multiple document repositories to single source of truth. Actively managed processes for cycling deliverables review and approvals, tracking and maintaining the status, rework / updates and RACI information. Performed draft reviews, significantly improving the quality of documentation.
- Weekly Reporting – inclusive of program schedule status, key milestones, program-level risks and issues, and baseline to forecast variances across delivery dates and products.
- Financials – performed a sanity check on budget, actuals and forecast review across the program on vendors and internal labour and non-labour costs.
- General Controls & Assurance – development, implementation and maintenance of document and project change processes, maintenance of daily logs, and ongoing internal health checks, including external assurance support.
Business satisfaction levels during our delivery of the above, and myP3’s extensive thought leadership provided to senior leadership on an ongoing basis, led to our services superseding the solution integrator’s PMO function entirely and that team was disbanded.
Outcome:
Senior executives in the client business gained substantially improved predictability leading up to successful completion of the program within the time, cost, and scope parameters, reversing an earlier low confidence in management control and quality of reported information.
The corporate internal PMO adopted many of myP3’s methods and practices that were introduced and used within the program, enhancing their capability in delivery of complex initiatives.
An overall reduction in the cost and effort by delivery teams and the solution integrator in operating the Program PMO functions due to myP3’s scope extension to fulfil the entire service through to program closure.