Project Management Office (PMO) Services

Many businesses let common challenges act as a roadblock to a mature PMO when in fact, understanding the issues inherent in an evolving PMO is the number one step to overcoming them. Project Management Office (PMO) Survey conducted by expert reveals five core challenges for PMOs over the next 24 months. These include:

1. Benefits realisation
2. Supply and demand planning
3. Project and program prioritisation
4. Organisational alignment
5. Resource management

Establishing a project management office (PMO) is a challenging endeavour. Many organizations that have tried to establish a PMO have either not been as successful as they could have been, or they have failed entirely. It is not uncommon for an organization to eventually phase out their PMO because it did not live up to its original promise. Although there is no way to guarantee that you will be successful in implementing a PMO into your organization, careful planning and following a few basic guidelines can help avoid many common pitfalls.

Typical Challenges When Planning How to Implement a PMO

• Uncertainty in the optimal configuration of the PMO.
• The PMO needs to provide a variety of capabilities, but is not sure how to implement these.
• Project management is being carried out inconsistently and driving consistent project management practices and standards is a big challenge.
• Stovepipes of interests are causing resistance to the PMO implementation and are introducing risk to overall success.
• Once the implementation is underway, the company will recognize that Organizational Change Management should have been addressed up front as part of the implementation planning.

PMO Implementation Planning

AT PCSS we implement PMO’s based on the project management principles of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) published by Project Management Institute (PMI).Based on our extensive experience working with companies to implement and support their PMOs, we work with you to custom build tailored implementation plans to rapidly activate your PMO. Ideally we conduct this planning session by working closely with the stakeholders who need to be engaged and supportive of this endeavor’s success.

The recommended PMO development roadmap consists of three primary phases: Plan, Implement and Manage. Each phase is broken in down into a number of sequential steps. This document will walk through each step individually and elaborates as necessary on the various concepts and recommendations presented. Benefits

One of the main challenges in implementing a PMO, aside from introducing tools, systems and processes, is dealing with the “people side” of change. Often companies don’t even think about how the changes being introduced will affect the organization, it’s people, and culture. Moving into a project-based business or deepening the reach of the PMO if it is already established, often has effects on many aspects of the business. It is essential to make explicit the aim to address organizational change management at the outset of the implementation or when the PMO’s function is being changed.

Often the size of the investment in a PMO is substantial. And, it can be sabotaged to operate sub optimally or fail if the Organization Change Management (OCM) aspects are ignored or overlooked. Addressing the OCM issues from the outset of any PMO implementation or change increases the likelihood of its success.

Typical OCM Challenges When Implementing a PMO

• Finding “stovepipes” in the organization that inhibit or prevent the development of information needed to make decisions.
• Implementing a PMO for the first time – and not knowing how much the organization can or will be affected.
• Not understanding the pace and absorption rate of change the organization can take.
• Resistance to the idea of a PMO or strengthening the PMO by senior leaders, mid-level managers and/or staff to the changes and accountability that comes from a project-based organization.

During the establishment of the PMO, clients typically enhance the organisation planning capabilities by putting together end user training for planning & scheduling best practice. An essential element to the success of any project is the monitoring and controlling to ensure accurate progress measurement to-date and the forecast to completion of the remaining work to ensure early detection of any divergence from the approved baseline allowing for appropriate intervention.

Some organizations also encourage also encourage the outsourcing of Project controls. PCSS can provide this service from the tendering phase to the early conceptual phase of the project through until commissioning has been achieved. Our service includes the use of Primavera software and is tailored to meet the needs of the individual clients’ requirements. All our planning consultants are fully trained in the use of all our tools and have a wide experience in a variety of industries whether it is for long term or short term assignments.

Some organizations also encourage their end user community to pursue their PMP certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI) to deepen their understanding and increase project management maturity. However, this isn’t something that is accomplished overnight as it takes time for people to achieve PMI certification and not all users are interested in following this path.

Having the processes and understanding of project management is often no guarantee that the schedules produced are the right level of quality. In fact, we often see a very common problem with schedule quality. This quality gap between what is expected and what is needed can has a dramatic and negative effect on achieving the organizations project management goals. In fact, it can take months to fully understand the longer-term impact of poor schedule quality because, in the early days of deployment, end users are given months to fully ramp up.

Common Challenges With Schedule Quality

It is essential for organisations that want to increase their profit margins by completing projects on time using critical path method (CPM).

It serves as a basis for managers and supervisors in determining and understanding the projects performance to enable better decision making in controlling the project duration costs.

It also serves as a basis for the project planning role, to ensure the incumbent understands the processes required to generate decision making information without the aid of computer software. PMO’s that struggle with end user challenges related to schedule quality, experience issues including:

• Schedules will not support rapid analysis of project status and are not well suited to “what if” analysis of project changes.
• Inconsistent use of the tool and lack of adherence to standards.
• PMO resources spend too much time on schedule improvements and corrections.
• PMO resources are constantly badgering end users for better data.
• Poor data quality, which negatively affects management decision-making.
• Scheduling principles are not well understood by end users.

Improving Schedule Quality

At PCSS, we provided Principles of Project Planning, Scheduling & Controlling courses which are simple and very pragmatic training in improving schedule quality.

Through this course , participants are given t the knowledge of how to increase profit margins through project controls and fundamental understanding of the inputs, processes and outputs of project planning, scheduling and controlling.

The course also give participants an understanding of how project management software performs a critical path method (CPM), therefore better enabling them to analyse the CPM results and give the fundamental framework to participants an understanding of the inputs, processes and outputs of earned value management (EVM). In short, this is one of those low hanging fruits that an enterprise implementation can pick off. Making this happen can dramatically improve the quality of project information and it substantially improves the quality of information available to the PMs, the PMO, and the CXO’s who rely on project schedule information.

Benefits

Organizations can get a quick boost to their enterprise project management implementations by addressing the knowledge gaps end users have in applying scheduling best practices. Some of the immediate benefits include:

• Management receives much higher quality information to support improved decision-making.
• The scarce PMO resources can be applied to higher priority tasks instead of dealing with schedule quality issues.
• End users see real benefits in using more realistic and accurate schedules.
• Organizational project management maturity increases for very little effort and cost.

An integral part of any PMO is a centralized tool suite, most commonly, enterprise tool suites from Oracle Primavera, Deltek and Microsoft. These tools enable the PMO to create a central repository of all projects within an organization, often termed as a single source of truth for project information. These enterprise project management tools also offer extensive reporting and portfolio management capabilities.

Software Tools Issues We Often See When Implementing PMO

• Each project manager is using the tools in his/her own way and is not adhering to any corporate standard, making it difficult or impossible to get aggregated and summarized information.
• It’s impossible to understand how resources are being utilized.
• If tools are deployed centrally, individual styles and abilities often preclude getting the best from the tools. This puts any project management software implementation at risk because of user frustration born out of incomplete understanding of the tools and standards.
• User adoption is low due to lack of emphasis on change management combined with an incomplete approach to training end users.
• Training offered is often generic and taught by individuals who have not used the tools to actually build schedules and manage projects in the organizations environment.

Part of a PMO implementation, and a significant part of its ongoing role, typically requires the PMO to provide carefully designed and well-managed tools deployment and training in these enterprise tool suites.

PCSS helps the different roles within your organization understand what it is they need to do, how to do it and why it needs to be done. We can cover the fundamentals, intermediate, advanced topics, administrative tasks by user role using the most widely respected and used enterprise tool suites on the market including:

Oracle Primavera and Synchro 4D planning

Training How You Want It

PCSS offers training in these enterprise tools through a variety of different delivery methods including:

• Open Public Classroom based training
• Onsite Training (customized or standard)
• Offsite training at PCSS training Centre across Malaysia and Singapore

Our classes combine project scheduling best practices with the scheduling software instruction. Our pragmatic approach doesn’t just teach students how a feature works, but why it’s there and how it helps them with real world examples and exercises. Maximum of 10 pax per class to maximise and ensuring each trainee get the highest attention from the training during the training.

Process Training

PCSS is certified PMI Registry Consultant hence to benefit of engaging our training are our training courses are thoroughly researched and carefully structured to provide practical and exclusive training to address current market concerns.

The benefits of engaging PCSS to facilitate your training are that all our trainers have been approved by Primavera Systems Inc and are experienced users of the software in Project Control and Execution environment. We therefore offer added benefits of using anecdotes to reinforce the methodologies promoted during the training sessions, advise which functionality is best suited to your particular industry and upon successful completion we will provide telephone user support.

Having a solid grounding in project management, scheduling methodologies organizational processes and procedures is absolutely critical to ensuring robust, high-quality information. Successful organizations place a higher importance on training their teams in these areas, resulting in the improved management and delivery of their projects.

PCSS combines tool training with best practices project management and scheduling techniques together with organizational processes and procedures. This powerful approach ensures that attendees leave the training class without having to bridge the gaps between their day-to-day role and the training content delivered.

Process Training

Global Registered Education Provider for the PMI

PCSS is one of the few Global Registered Education Providers for the Project Management Institute (PMI) having met the PMI’s rigorous quality criteria for course content, instructor qualification, and instructional design. We develop our own training materials and do not use any off-the-shelf training materials provided by tool vendors. Every PCSS class offers one Category A PDU for every hour of training to help attendees maintain their PMI certification.

Enterprise Tools

PCSS is able to cover a wide range of enterprise tools from multiple vendors so customers can enjoy an all-encompassing, integrated training program that is focused on the user and making the organization successful.