Tài liệu Creating the project office 20 ppt

The results identified specific areas where the project culture was weak: • No holistic view of the project portfolio • Lack of knowledge or access to reuse previous work • No consistent a

At the beginning of the project, Bucero—the assigned senior program man-ager—ran a survey to determine how well HPC supported project management Sixty-five percent of the staff answered the survey The results identified specific areas where the project culture was weak:

• No holistic view of the project portfolio

• Lack of knowledge or access to reuse previous work

• No consistent approach for complex projects

• Lack of project culture

• No consistent PM skills

• Poor scope definition, validation, and management

• Bad risk identification

• Lack of sponsorship

• Project closing delays

The results indicated HP needed an effective infrastructure for people, processes, and tools in the project office

Mission and Objectives

People who have never worked on a project have difficulty understanding that, to achieve project success, the organization must support the project manager It took almost six weeks to get an agreement with the management team about the rea-son for this project

Establish sense of urgency— clear danger

• establish infrastructure:

• people, processes,

and tools

• manage stakeholders

• evolve capabilities

and capacity

• review case studies

Leading Organizational Change

to PBO

Create guiding coalition— powerful forces

Develop vision and strategy—focus

Manage the change—

short-term wins, broad-based action, consolidate gains

Develop broad-based action—

keep moving, implementing

Make change stick—

new PBO culture

The tale we tell

Communicate the change vision—tell the tale Staff and operate—

In or out?

The big question Bucero had to deal with was, “Why do we need a project of-fice at all?” He explained to the management team that the project ofof-fice adds value to project team members by providing mentors, consultants, training, struc-tured intellectual capital, and tools to be more effective The project office also adds value to HPC by providing culture shift to project management, reusable tools and techniques, document and methodology support, global recognition, profitability improvement, and quality support And the project office adds value to customers

by providing visible signs of HP commitment, competent HP team support, and quicker and more effective answers The key to setting upper management sup-port at this point was showing how the PMO solved current problems and pro-vided immense business impact A complete business case was presented to the management team in the language and format of “management think.”

The business case presented tangible benefits that could be achieved in a short time The content of that presentation was to explain the PMO value to the or-ganization, cost, flexibility and creativity obstacles, PMO functions, staffing, loca-tion, virtual teams, and establishing the project office

Bucero defended the value of a PMO to project team members, providing mentoring and consulting services, training, tools to be more effective, a project library, global recognition, profitability improvement, and organizational im-provement and quality support

Explaining the value to the organization, he described the benefits of the cul-tural shift to project management, in terms of reusable tools and techniques, ad-ministrative support, visible signs of management commitment, competent project team support, and quicker and more effective answers to questions

In terms of cost, he argued that although establishing and running a PMO would not be cheap, it would be worthwhile because it would be no more expen-sive than the cumulative cost of conducting project efforts without such an office, and might well cost less in the long run A major feature of a PMO would be a com-prehensive approach to PM, and it would pay for itself very soon The PMO would help project managers feel they were not alone on the customer site Somebody was supporting them from the HP organization in a way that would make them feel more comfortable not only to implement and execute projects but also to sell more The business case also included a role for the PMO to support creativity, re-flecting a bias toward centralized decision making, and supporting team members

to be more effective The PMO team would be there to help project managers and project teams, not thwart their efforts to do the right thing The first key suc-cess factor is to support project managers

In terms of services, he proposed to start with a Document Management Sys-tem group (DMS) as a first priority, helping PMs and consultants to generate bids faster and with higher quality

Regarding PMO staff he proposed two alternatives:

• To serve in a simple support and facilitation role, the PMO would only need three or four people

• To play a central role in guiding an organization’s project efforts, the PMO would need up to a dozen people

He argued the approach selected would make a big difference to the kinds of efforts the office would carry out

One key factor considered was the visibility and accessibility of this group of people The PMO should be located where it made most sense, in this case inside the existing department where it is accessible by all project managers and con-sultants The HPC Project Office belongs to the Business Operation group at HP Consulting They assigned a physical location for the office at the beginning of the project and hung up a poster with the words “Project Office” above the phys-ical space designated for the office The advantages were that everybody could see where the project office was located and identify where to go to request ser-vices Eventually the team members all added a PMO logo on their badges Project office members identified as a team and worked in that way

He also included comments about their virtual world, arguing most projects are in remote sites The PMO, as the link between project managers and the rest

of the organization, greatly facilitates the reuse of libraries, methods, and stan-dards He told them establishing a PMO requires a lot of effort, and it demands thorough and careful planning

Finally he got management agreement about the mission and objectives for this project Some discussions were kept between the management team and him-self to achieve this agreement because some people perceived the PMO was a bu-reaucratic organism He demonstrated there were more and more projects under way; lack of knowledge about project management existed; and new people in the organization had little experience in project management Following the ap-proach in Figure 7.1, the proposal was presented, studied, discussed and finally accepted by the management team in February 2000 The PMO project started

on March 1 at the Madrid office

Progress was aided by collecting data on current projects that encountered extreme deviations and showing this information at management meetings He audited projects that suffered from lack of scope and risk planning, noting the cost impact on the organization He demonstrated that most projects had no formal sponsor and explained that impact on the organization Making a presentation to the management team and setting clear expectations and deliverables at the be-ginning were key to achieving the go-ahead decision

Because project managers were used to doing all the work themselves, in-cluding documentation and project file archiving, and did not know that help was available, a marketing campaign was necessary to communicate the existence of the PO and sell its benefits to the whole organization

Bucero announced the PO’s mission statement: To support HP Project Managers during the project selling and delivery processes so they can focus on high-quality project man-agement and added value He followed up by describing its objectives as follows:

• Relieve HP consultants of standard activities (low added value)

• Provide quality assurance within the project delivery process

• Serve as a breeding ground for knowledge sharing, conducting project snapshots

• Be the home front for all PM initiatives

Scope

The project office was born to relieve consultants and project managers of some administrative activities in the delivery of customer projects, helping them to focus

on project management activities Project office duties include managing the

FIGURE 7.1 APPROACH TO PROPOSING AND IMPLEMENTING A PMO.

Conduct

assessment

Obtain funding and staffing

Conduct pilot test

Roll out

Determine functions and staffing

Identify sponsor

Prepare communications plan

Prepare plan and budget

project file—the documents to be authorized during the project life cycle—as well

as supporting proposal development, taking project meeting minutes, distributing documentation, managing labor time registration, assuring invoicing schedule is followed, and backing up the project manager

After breaking down the first objective into smaller activities, one question came to mind:

How did the end users feel about it?

The program manager had several meetings with consultants and project managers to verify the initial scope Figure 7.2 shows the different types of meet-ings he conducted

These meetings were extremely valuable Getting these people involved from the beginning was the only way to convince them to use the project office Bucero notes that being aligned with real user needs was his personal objective during the whole project

PMO Meetings

These meetings were conducted on a monthly basis and tremendously aided the scope verification and management processes “All the time invested preparing

FIGURE 7.2 SCHEDULE OF MEETINGS.

Presenter

Management

Meetings

PMO lead

Duration

1 hour

Preparation Effort

2 hours preparing strategy and material

Material Delivered

Objective

Slides copy and PMO white paper

Inform and get upper management commitment

Attendees Meeting

Type

Management team

PM

Meetings

PMO lead 2 hours 4 hours

preparing material and examples

Slides copy and PMO proposed services

Share plans and ideas and ask for feedback

Project managers

Presales

Consultants

Meetings

PMO lead and PMO coordinator

1 hour 3 hours

preparing material and slides

Slides copy and presales PMO services

Share information and ask for feedback and validation

Senior consultants

in presales activities

and running these meetings was extremely helpful for me to implement the PMO,” says Bucero

Participants in these meetings defined the following responsibilities for the project office throughout the project delivery process:

• Make sure that mandatory documents are used

• Improve quality system

• Guide project manager through PM methodology

• Report to project manager about project status and progress (alerts!)

• Monitor outstanding actions

• Track labor time

• Provide third-party and subcontractor management

Knowledge sharing is another key element in project office success; it is even more relevant when the project culture level is very low The PO also needed to support project snapshots and establish a PM coaching program

The project office advises Resource Management personnel regarding project manager allocation This includes sharing knowledge about PM soft skills and best practices in conjunction with the Human Resource manager It acts as a central-ized organ that collects documentation for reuse and provides collected docu-mentation when needed in other projects

The project office is the home front for all PM initiatives, facilitating PM Fo-rums and establishing a PM coaching and mentoring program

Outside the Scope

The project office must not be a black hole that absorbs everyone’s project prob-lems, logistical glitches, and other difficult issues This group is not covering non-operational activities, not doing all activities presently executed by administrative people, not substituting PM work, and not curing all the organization’s ills It is providing support and information for project managers, and needs to keep the difference straight

Critical Success Factors

Bucero sums up his experience as follows:

In all the projects I managed in my professional career, I found that project suc-cess depends on how well you work with and lead people The project office approach must be aligned with the culture of the organization Technical prob-lems can be solved with new releases or different hardware or software, but it is

different when we talk about people interactions and relationships among team members Although we identified some factors as critical in the PMO implementation project, one of the most important things is to focus on being prepared to answer questions and demands Each consultant and PM expects the PMO to be there to help them on a daily basis and that means to be pre-pared for a world of uncertainty Many times the type of demand is driven by pressure in terms of time or expectations, and we as PMO members need to transmit feasibility and security I always ask for proactive behavior from each PMO team member

Bucero’s critical factors:

• Scope agreement and setting clear expectations between all users and stake-holders (This took some weeks of meetings and validations.)

• Forming, storming, and norming the PMO team (In this case, 80 percent of the team were contractors rather than employees This required additional time for initial training on methods, tools, and procedures.)

• Clearly defined functions, roles, and responsibilities for the PMO (Bucero ver-ified each person’s expectations in one-to-one talks.)

• Sponsorship from upper-level management (Bucero asked the general man-ager to request that people use the project office services.)

• Clear communication plan deployment (A stakeholder map guided this activity.)

• Periodic communications to the management team and to the end users about project status (Bucero participated in meetings at all levels of the organization.)

The Plan

Starting with a deliverables-oriented work breakdown structure (WBS), Bucero elaborated a plan among team members Elapsed time for completing the imple-mentation plan was eighteen months, but he had to demonstrate that the PMO added value to the business month by month That made the two first months dif-ficult as it was hard to come up with concrete results so quickly, especially given that all team members were new hires He received much pressure from the whole organization Reducing the time to prepare proposals and clarifying scope helped

to ease the pressure

He organized the PMO project in the four stages outlined in the center of Figure 7.3 and described in subsequent sections

Stage 1: Set-Up and Rollout Project managers know that starting up a project

is always hard First, you have to “create the basement for the building.” The first

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activity was to establish the necessary infrastructure, staff the PMO, and define roles and responsibilities with clear objectives for all team members

Due to internal resource restrictions, Bucero had to use outsourced people

As soon as the PMO project was approved, he asked the project sponsor for six resources to staff the PMO Management suggested they start with three people and look at the results He then asked for three people but started with two, fol-lowing this process:

After explaining the main functions and responsibilities to each candidate, questions that helped understand their people skills were “Will you be able to con-tribute added value?” and “What does customer service mean to you?”

Team member selection followed these steps:

1 People solicitation from third parties according to document management skills (office skills were previously defined)

2 People interviews (face-to-face interviews with the PMO lead)

3 Dry run test (documents and presentation elaboration)

Initially Bucero focused on finding people with office and administrative skills because the document management system was their first priority for PMO im-plementation He also observed desire for the job, looking for assertive and proac-tive people “I appreciate the attitude of people during the interviews more than having the best skills I selected open-minded people who are ready for action I try to transmit the need for proactive behavior and transparent communication Sentences like ‘passion, persistence, and patience’ were ways to involve new peo-ple in the PMO We are customer focus-oriented Since the PMO must help proj-ect managers to focus on projproj-ect management practices, PMO team members cannot wait around; they need to move forward.”

This process worked during the first six months; acquisition of the three ini-tial members enabled Bucero to demonstrate performance improvements to the management team in the process of generating project documentation “That fact proved PMO people were adding value to the organization and enabled me to ask for more resources.”

Sharing the PMO project vision among team members was another key to project success Every team member knew project goals before starting their tasks Bucero delivered presentations to the whole team that shared the project mission, the objectives, the stakeholders, and the environment In that way people took project ownership and felt more identified with the main objectives

Since most people staffing the PMO were outsourced, he provided them with internal training to get them more involved and prepared in terms of tools and

internal organizational procedures These circumstances required him to put a lot of care into the team-building process People came from different organiza-tions with different skills and patterns of behavior “I had to establish clear and simple rules from the beginning to work quickly among team members to define

‘how to understand and serve our customers.’”

He employed these tips during the PMO implementation project:

• I always assumed that people working in the project know more about how to

do their job than I do I listened to their ideas and suggestions

• While team members planned for execution, I as program manager planned for contingencies

• When my team did good work, I told them

• I never delayed dealing with bad news; tomorrow might be too late to address critical issues

• I never delegated tough decisions

• I communicated, communicated, and communicated, having lunch with my team, meeting them weekly

• When people came with a problem, I asked them for a solution I empowered people because they usually know better what needs to be done than I do

• When I observed bad performance I spoke directly with the person who was not performing well

At the end of this stage the group published a PMO Services Bulletin that was

distributed to the whole organization The elapsed time for this stage was two months

Stage 2 Operational This stage started as soon the team started to work

to-gether and all the initial PMO services were defined, published, and distributed The elapsed time for Stage 2 was four months

As a team the group delineated the structure of the PMO and used the PM software defined at corporate level for assigning communication, methodology, training, and tracking processes One key activity during this period was defining PMO success metrics Bucero attended most management meetings and dealt with the critical stakeholders In those meetings he requested feedback from all attendees in order to address problems and fine-tune the affected processes The establishment of priorities was another important activity Bucero used

a stakeholder analysis tool to find out where and for whom priorities existed, ap-plying his best efforts The final objective for this phase was to have a database with historical data, which helped show results to upper management