Establish a program management office

An example would be several IT projects being handled concurrently, yet independently from one another, by a single entity. There is yet another difference: Project portfolio management, in German-speaking regions, generally defines the overall strategic direction of the programs and projects. The difference between project portfolio management, multi-project management, and program management.

Any questions so far? Programs must be carefully controlled. Due to their complexity and scope, this requires the support of a centralized responsible entity: the program management office. The program management office PgrO generally has several members. Normally, more than one program manager is needed to handle all the demands.

The second step for successful program management is to firstly ensure that individual projects are controlled in your company. Before you can control an extensive program, you need to be capable of simultaneously handling a huge amount of information from individual projects. It therefore requires significant effort to prepare for a steering committee meeting. Define regular intervals for the dates of the steering committee meetings.

Sample steering committee meeting plan, showing the roles involved and meeting preparation times. Perhaps you already have a project management office PMO.

This office is usually responsible for the project management standards and project manager training see box above. To learn more, read How to successfully introduce a project management office.

However, each program is handled a bit differently. This is especially true when external people and entities are involved. Some of these guidelines will probably differ a bit from the PMO standards. So, make sure that every project manager is familiar with these guidelines and agrees to comply with them for a successful program management. This must allow the program to depict the interdependencies between projects with regard to content and time frame. To achieve this, you must define the important milestones for each project.

These milestones are later used to monitor the program. Our suggestion: Remember to create a master project for high-level information such as major milestones, etc. We also recommend that you create a separate master project for the program.

This program plan should contain all the control information. All the interfaces or partial deliveries should converge and be controlled from here. Doing so gives the steering committee a better overview and simplifies the handling, as the steering committee only needs to open and edit one single project plan.

The steering committee uses these to regularly issue milestone targets to the interfaces. These targets are assigned to the corresponding projects top-down , and the project managers are then responsible for meeting these targets.

Some companies fail to establish a PMO, while others report success in doing so. This raises the question of whether or not it is worthwhile to make the effort to establish a PMO. Does your company have any business reason for implementing this approach, especially when the organization wants to run more and more projects every year but has reached the glass ceiling?

It therefore becomes crucial for the company to acquire new skills or support in project management. The solution could be a PMO, but prepared and established in a proper way. Therefore, a set of extreme characteristics is proposed to describe PMO. The application of this approach is presented based on a case study. This should give us an idea of how difficult it is to establish a proper PMO that creates added value for the company.

However, there is also evidence that some aspects of the implementation of PMO are beneficial for companies. The study conducted by Yong , p. He points out that the activities done after establishing the PMO are performed with better efficiency compared with the period prior to the PMO's creation Exhibit 1. Yong, , Hawaii Pacific University, pp.

There are many approaches to project management offices PMOs and, even though there are different definitions of what constitutes a PMO, one could say that each PMO is as unique as the projects themselves. The responsibilities of a PMO can range from providing project management support functions to responsibility for the direct management of a project.

The projects supported or administered by the PMO may not be related other than by being managed together. The specific form, function, and structure of a PMO are dependent on the needs of the organization that it supports. A PMO may be delegated the authority to act as an integral stakeholder and a key decision maker during the beginning of each project, to make recommendations, or to terminate projects or take other actions as required to keep business objectives consistent.

Although this definition is rather lengthy, it shows how flexible the term PMO can be and how many different approaches to a PMO can be taken by a company. Copyright Adapted by J. In his study, Yong , p. Yong, , Hawaii Pacific University, p. All of these activities show how difficult it is to determine the final shape and functionality of a PMO, and PMOs can vary markedly while operating under the same name.

The above statements are so impressive that one can be confused as to the complexity of creating a PMO. To standardize all of the approaches and make them more systematic, it is proposed that a set of characteristic features CF each PMO could possess be defined. These characteristic features are defined between so-called extremes in the following areas:. There are two extremes in each of the areas mentioned above.

When deciding on the final shape of our PMO, we should consider its definition by referring to these extremes Exhibit 5. This does not mean, however, that we have to base it only on the edge values. Our definition could place some characteristics somewhere in between—e.

Once we have decided on the boundaries, we can establish the PMO knowing exactly what we should expect from this entity in terms of decisions, staffing, monitoring, control, and so on. When you present your plan to the management team, be ready to explain the prioritization and how you arrived at the implementation costs.

They may want to reprioritize the plan based on their strategic view of the organization. The key is to get buy-in and get ready for the next phase — Implementation!

I know — easier said than done. The value was bringing the various stakeholders together to confirm the team was ready to move forward. Implementing a PMO is an exercise in organizational change management. The road to project maturity is an iterative one. Perhaps the first year or two, you focus on project level maturity and then tackle program and portfolio management processes as the organization improves.

Nearly every maturity model has a final level of continuous improvement. This step is just an extension of evolving the value a PMO provides based on changing business needs. You can find a lot of presentations, white papers and books on PMO management with a quick Google search.

Ofcourse, each implementation looks best in their tool but their white papers provide a good framework. Take a look at:.