Simple Measures for Your PMO To Track
From the The Money Files Blog
by Elizabeth Harrin
A blog that looks at all aspects of project and program finances from budgets, estimating and accounting to getting a pay rise and managing contracts.
Written by Elizabeth Harrin from RebelsGuideToPM.com.
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What does your PMO track about the projects in your business? It’s often difficult to know where to start, especially when some of the measures you might hear about take a lot of data and relatively mature systems in place to start tracking them.
Here are some simple measures that you can track, and at the end of this article are some that are a little bit harder to put in place but are definitely worth the effort.
Number of projects stopped
You can track how many projects are put on hold, cancelled or otherwise stopped. As a number, it doesn’t give you the whole picture, but with some narrative as well it provides some information about how good you are getting as a business at choosing the right projects to do.
% Increase in projects delivering to time and scope
Hopefully you’ll see this number trend up. It speaks to predictability of delivery: how good you are at making sure projects do what they said they would.
% Increase in projects delivering on budget
Hopefully you’ll also see this number trend up. It speaks to predictability of cost: how good teams are at estimating and managing project budgets as they said they would. You could also look at tracking the % of projects with cost overruns and what these are – with a view that it should be going down as maturity improves.
Customer satisfaction
Whether you work for external clients or internal stakeholders, you can ask them how happy they are with your service! It’s easy to track customer satisfaction and the measures can tell an interesting story.
% of Projects on a Red/Amber Status
Measure the number of projects with a red or amber status at gate reviews, stage reviews or at monthly reporting. Alone, this number doesn’t tell you much, and you certainly don’t want to encourage project teams to under-report problems just so their projects aren’t counted in the monthly numbers. However, combined with other measures it can be an interesting (and easy) number to track. You might also want to add the time period that a project has been on the status of red as this would tell you that the issues are not being resolved, or that the project is hitting multiple issues time and time again – also good to know.
Project management skills
If you have a career path, or defined competencies for project managers, you can track the department’s overall growth in skills maturity. Measure competence at the beginning of the year, do your training programme or whatever, and then measure again at the end of the year. It’s a simple way to show that your staff are getting better and that should have an impact on the success of your project management delivery.
Organisational maturity
As you would for project managers, use one of the PMO maturity models or organisational project management maturity models to measure your business’ maturity when it comes to progress. Then take the measure again in 12 months.
This can be subjective, and it feels like ages before you can do the measure again, but it is certainly interesting to see how things have changed!
Here are some other measures, slightly harder to implement.
- Reduction in benefits loss
- % of actual benefits delivered compared to what was planned in the business case
- Reduction in projects started for the wrong reasons (you’ll have to work out what “wrong” means)
- Reduction in overall resource costs across the delivery portfolio (which is hard to do if you don’t track staff time on projects)
What other measures do you use?
Posted on: February 26, 2018 08:59 AM |
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Comments (10)
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Very interesting, thanks for sharing
Anish Abraham
Privacy Program Manager| University of Washington
Auburn, Wa, United States
There's some good metrics here Elizabeth, thanks.
Very well structured, Elizabeth.
I would recommend an alteration that puts customer satisfaction on the top. There would be no point in acing measures 1-4 if customer satisfaction is low. Conversely, if customer satisfaction is high, it helps alleviate the pressure that would otherwise be faced if the other measures weren't up to scratch.
Unless, of course, these measures are meant to be taken concurrently (even in which case, I would still say that customer - or sponsor - satisfaction needs to headline this list).
Patlolla Papireddy
Mr.Patlolla Papireddy| Galfar Engineering and Contracting SAOG
Zaheerbad, Telangana, India
Nice Article. Elizabeth.
Thanks
Karan - that's a good point. But I do think people should work on all of them at the same time.
Urban Urban
Project Manager| ABB Switzerland
Basel, Switzerland
Thanks for the Metrics. Customer satisfaction is good to measure, however it should be linked to the initial requirements (incl. change requests).
@Urban, I can see why that makes sense, but satisfaction is by its nature an elusive measure. If you can guide people to say that they are satisfied because the requirements are met, that's part of it, but satisfaction is also linked to the method of delivery, adequate engagement, and whether or not the requirements were the right requirements in the first place.
David Tunks
Senior Global Project Manager| CloudPay
España, Spain
very interesting! For service providers it would be useful to track client profitability. Many times products are sold and implemented at a loss with the aim of selling additional products later. It would be good to track if the future predicted benefits are obtained or not. As you mention in the last point a level of organisational maturity is needed
Michael Delaney
Partner| Delaney Management LLC
West Chester, Pa, United States
Well organized and I agree these are core measurements
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