Our organisation has just set up a Project Office and I have been asked to come up with some ideas on how to measure its success/value. I was wondering if anyone could offer me some ideas on simple measurements that I could implement. Saving Changes...
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Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
Ask yourself these questions: What outcomes does the Project Office produce? Why was the Project Office formed? What value-gap was perceived that motivated management to create the Project Office? If the Project Office did not exist what problems or reductions in value would surface?
I find it interesting that management creates a new department without having answered these questions first. I would be inclined to ask them to define the department's mission and as stakeholders what their expectations are. Saving Changes...
We are in the beginning stages of creating a PMO/PSO entity. This is in response to the perception of IT as the "black box"; a lack of communicable forecasts for manpower and other $$ resources. We also want to bring project managers with diverse skill sets and backgrounds under a single umbrella for consistent planning and tracking. Saving Changes...
I think measurements are the current "new toy". We have also been asked to come up with "KPI's" for our program office. I actually had a post under program management in June on this very question.
Our program office has limited scope at the moment with our prime functionality in the following areas: - Performance management (tracking programs under our "umbrella" - risk/issue/scope management - resource management (currently not defined) - Planning (transformation of the business)
We are working towards developing more, but here's what we've come up with for now: - response time - measuring how quickly we address a risk/issue/sc once it's been escalated to the Program Office - # of risks/issues/sc's being tracked - closure time - how quickly do issues get resolved - earned value of each of the programs - benefits identified in the business case(s) are tracked for one year once a program is implemented
Our executive sponsors have the following metrics defined as part of their variable pay: - Cost, - schedule, - resourcing (# assigned vs planned), - sponsor satisfaction, - team satisfaction - management support
Over the next few weeks we'll be working in broader teams to determine the value/availability of these metrics and developing our dashboard. I'll let you know how it goes if you're interested. Saving Changes...
Ernest BakerCEO| Start to Finish PM Inc.Verona, Nj, United States
I have a question that is similar to this topic, but varies on the PMO side. Does anyone have any metrics where they compared project success rates before and after establishing a project management "Culture". In other words, if a company invested in training and nuturing project management as a discpline, what was the payoff? Do projects get done on time, within budget and meeting requirements? Are there less surprises, re-work and scope creep? DO we now save money (reduce cost) or create more (increase revenue)? Saving Changes...
John ZacharProduct Dev Manager| Association for Project Management (APM)Brackley,, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
The responses here can, and probably will go on forever! POs/PMOs/PSOs all live an evolutionary existence. Handled well, they can grow and progress - handled wrongly, they will stall or fail.
Usually the spur for an organisation to create a PO/PSO/PMO is somewhere around not knowing what the projects are doing, uncertainty about their status and therefore an inability to predict. Thats what a good project office should be able to do - produce predictability. That is a funciton of collecting and reporting - which is an oversimplification of the 'determine the quality / reliability of the data' / 'analyse it' / produce the report syndrome.
If that is all any PO does, then it will eventually fail, and it will probably happen within the first year. Value must be provided to the senior mangers, but without providing value to the project management community the same failure will occur.
Support or nurturing aroudn method, skill, process, etc. can provide that value. The coment just prior to this one is so valid that the questions shouldn't even have to be asked - yet I haven't been able to find any historical information in any organisation I've visited. But I do collect before and after.
Generally poor project performance is caused by poor (read lousy) planning. Using a product based planning method, like Prince2 for example, can go a long way to driving out the uncertainty in a project. Coupleing the method with the appropriate level of detail is the key.
I could go on forever; hope this helps. Saving Changes...
