Ian SutherlandIan J Sutherland| Kellian ConsultingBroxbourne, Herts, United Kingdom
Currently I head a corporate programme office that is an embedded part of the change community. My challenge is how independent should it be, what should that independence mean and thus where should it report.
In 18 months since I arrived we have lifted the visibility and contribution through a common methodology and loads of support. My brief was to bring the various change communities together and "raise the bar" in terms of project, programme and portfolio management. As I say we are embedded within the change community, my peers are the heads of the delivery teams. Our manager reports into the COO, but the Programme Office produces reports for use by various governance committees including the Executive Management Board.
Now the challenge! The organisation has one "difficult child" project, which is also its biggest. It is creating tension at senior executive level and tainting the general view of project success. Questions like "Why didn't we know before?" are being asked.
Hand on heart I can say they had the information they needed (regularly!) and enough had insight to know, but there was a "hopeful ostrich" approach by many. That is until they cannot ignore it any longer. The Jack Nicholson quote from A Few Good Men comes to mind ie "You can't handle the truth!"
As a result the CFO is on a roll about independence. He seems to want "independent reporting" and the real possibility of a landgrab exists ie move the Programme Office to report into Finance, but not the CFO himself.
Anyway back to my question. The ToR of the Programme Office were established as:
* Providing the Executive and Senior Management with consolidated project information to facilitate informed decision making
* Co-ordinating the planning and prioritisation of strategic projects
* Acting as custodians of the Projects budget, exercising appropriate financial controls
* Providing robust challenge in the approval process for the initiation of projects
* Implementing and maintaining a corporate wide project management methodology
* Providing support to the project management community and others involved in projects
* Enabling consistency of project delivery approach
I have been considering 3 "locations" for the Programme Office; within a business unit, within the business community and within Finance.
It seems to me that for all but the control of budget the preferred location is "within the change community" as it helps enrich communication and avoids being unduly adversarial and by and large avoids accusations of bias. Location in a business unit would be so open to perceived or real bias that it is not worth considering.
Even control of the budget is not necessarily better handled with Finance. While access "finance central" may be some advantage it will create an adversarial envionment. In addition they currently demonstrate a poor understanding of project accounting.
So if we stay with the change community how independent are we or should we be? This seems to focus on reporting. Currently we take monthly reports from projects and a) make the key elelemnts readable by management (how many project managers can;t write??!?) and be use our general knowledge of each project (btw we all reside in one building on 3 floors!) to assess if we agree withh RAG ratings and comments. If we disagree we will challenge and flag where we disagree, but we do not provide an independent report on each project each month.
Well I have rambled, but would appreciate any experiences or insights you may have.
I don't want to become a bean counter!
Sorry all my paragraphs seem to have disappeared! Saving Changes...
