I have been with my current company for around two years. My position, along with two others, has up until five months ago, consisted of requirement gathering & documentation, PM and testing.
The organization has matured and those functions seperated, which I believe is the correct direction, however we do not have a business analyst (this is covered jointly by IT, business members and myself as PM) and there is only one PM - yours truly.
We have established a fairly strong PMO with a stage gate process that will benefit all of our projects....with the proper resource support.
I need to know how to present to my executives that business analysts and PMs are needed to support our current efforts (nine projects with most around the 500 hour total project time) and especially to fit our strategic move to become a product leader over the next few years? My biggest fear is losing the little control that I do have over all that is going on and burning out trying to keep up.
Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated! Saving Changes...
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Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Dear Anonymous, I suspect that your executives don't care about your losing the little control that you do have nor about your burnout. That is a non-starter. So focus on what they do care about such as supporting the current project efforts and especially supporting the strategic move to become the product leader over the next few years. Toward that aim you are in an excellent position to be of value. Rather than thinking about control and burnout, you should focus on ways to contribute to the strategic objective. Dedicated analysts and PMs are resources, not objectives, so view them that way. If they happen to be a critical need that is required to achieve the objectives that the executives have established, then present the case in that context. Help your executives to understand the business impact and to make their decision of having or not having the dedicated analyst and PM. And be open and supportive to the timing and contraints they face. As a side note, have you looked at "Product to Market" and "Go to Market" project management models? These are, in essence, PLCs that are optimized for bringing new products to market and/or establish market leadership. More and more PMOs are providing strategic value by ensuring the business units have the processes and resources they need to achieve their objectives. This is an area that your project management skills and leadership positions you to be of great value to your executives and the organization. Good luck..! -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International Saving Changes...
It seems this is another stage of evaolution. I suspect the progression and enhancement of project capability is ad hoc rather than planned. It sounds like undertaking some stakeholder analysis and developing an evolution roadmap will help you to then determin how best to proesent the material to the executives which already includes their interests and endorsement.
As a matter of interest, what is your role to the PMO, and what is the PMO function with executives?
