Promoting Your Project in the Organization

An organization with a PMO may have just a few or as many as a few hundred projects going at any given time at various stages of starting and completing.  Priorities are set, projects are assigned, and project resources are divvied up by the powers that be and as the project manager you may have no say other than maybe what kinds of key skill sets you need on the projects that are eventually assigned to you.

So, how do you go about making your project visible?  Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, right?  How do you ensure that your project gets the proper executive attention?  Gets the right resources assigned?  Gets funding if it grows through project need or customer request?  Gets needed cooperation and resources from outlying business units if the project ends up calling for it?  Those are all big tasks and if your project isn’t visible enough and some or all of these things are needed, then you may be sunk before you even get started.

Here are a few steps I’ve taken on projects or in preparation for projects that have seemed to help promote the projects that I am leading to a point of visibility necessary to smooth the process somewhat:

Generate pre-kickoff interest

Once the project is assigned to you work hard to generate some pre-kickoff buzz.  Run through the statement of work and verify any critical items that may need special team member skill sets.  This will allow you to campaign very early about getting the proper resources assigned to your project.  I don’t know about you, but in most professional services organizations, getting the right resources at the right time and with the right experience is always a struggle.  Plus, any pre-kickoff buzz you can create with upper management will only help serve your interests in gaining project visibility with this group later on.

Involve executive management in your project

Get your executive leadership involved in your project.  Invite them to the kickoff meeting and to several weekly status meetings with the customer.  The customer will think they are a very important customer and your leadership will be well versed in the project when you come asking for funds or resources or some other favor for the project.

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Criteria for Successful Project Management Offices

I was recently reviewing articles that I’ve written about successes and failures of Project Management Offices (PMOs) and some of the things that make that success or failure happen. I started making a list of these items and thought it might be helpful to share that info with the readers here on PM Tips again in this very condensed format. Remember, these are just my opinions that I’ve expressed in some of my articles along the way.

For PMO to be Effective:

• Director must be a key role in the organization
  • Must have backing and support of executive management
• Director must champion the efforts of the PMs
  • Don’t take credit for their actions
  • Provide ongoing support
  • Assist on critical/visible projects
  • Help breakdown resource acquisition barriers
• Director must run the PMO, not many projects
  • Project focus for the director should mainly be on the highly visible projects where exec decision-making is going to be needed on a regular basis or the business is extremely critical to the organization
  • Organization must value the PMO enough to ensure the director is not bogged down too much to be a successful leader

PMO Promotion

It is the responsibility of the PMO leadership to properly promote the PMO and help ensure its viability and visibility. Its viability is maintained by doing the following:

• Implementing proper and repeatable processes to consistently and successfully manage projects
• Implementing consistent templates for managing project and reporting status to customers and executive management
• Hiring competent, experienced Project Managers to lead projects for the organization
• Implementing proper compensation plans to retain good PM resources
• Implementing adequate training and on-boarding programs and processes to ensure that PMs are well-trained and up to speed on the PMO processes and practices

The PMO’s visibility is maintained by doing the following:

• Reporting project portfolio status on a regular basis and in a meaningful and useful format so that executive management realizes the PMO’s value
• Implementing solid PMO practices to ensure that the high-visibility customers are happy and referencable and the high-visibility projects are successful
• Inviting executive leadership to regularly attend weekly PMO meetings and sit in on project status meetings for the critical, high-visibility projects
• Managing project budgets thoroughly and reporting budget status up through executive leadership to show bottom-line PMO and Project Manager value

The PMO Director, as the leader of the PMO, must be a strong leader with pull inside the organization to ensure that these things happen. Otherwise, the PMO runs the danger of becoming obsolete or, at the very least, insignificant…and the mission critical projects will pass right by the PMO to special teams outside the PMO’s jurisdiction. Executive leadership must see value and ensuring that happens begins with the PMO leadership.

PMOs fail usually for one of the following three reasons:

• Lack of strong, focused leadership
• Lack of repeatable process
• Lack of executive leadership support

Five Signs Your PMO is not Meeting Your Organization’s Needs:

• Executive Management is not Included in the PMO Process
• Training Plans are Non-Existent
• Common Templates and Processes do not Exist
• Poor Upward Project Reporting
• Major Projects Circumvent the Process

All successful PMOs feature four basic components:

• The right processes
• The right tools
• The right people
• Executive level organization support

You can always hire different people. You can bring in consultants to help define better processes or identify better tracking tools. But without the executive-level support, none of it will happen or at least it won’t succeed.

Successful PMOs make an impact on organizational success by performing the following tasks:

• Aligning project delivery with strategic business goals and priorities
• Requiring that every project have an effective PM
• Implementing an appropriate PM methodology
• Consistent management and oversight of the project portfolio
• Obtaining and maintaining company leadership support

How to Make Your PMO More Visible

Visible? Did I say visible? What I think I really mean is viable. We all want our Project Management Office (PMO) to be visible, right? And, if the projects are flowing through it like they should be, then it probably is visible. The scary part is when some projects flow through it and others – possibly the big ticket, high dollar projects – aren’t.

Separate is Not Equal

It’s not wise to segregate like that. I worked at one very large aviation and engineering company in the late 90’s and early 2000’s leading all internal web development projects just prior to helping them build their PMO. There was an internal struggle to be the web project provider between our group, the Internet Team, and the other group, the Graphic Design Team. I truly was some strange internal political struggle. Our team eventually came out on top meaning all web development projects were channeled through us, but it was strange to see such an internal battle going on like that.

The same can be said for the PMO and the projects that are allowed to run through it. If you have a PMO in place, or are building one, then all projects should at least run THROUGH it – if not all are run BY it. All projects should be tracked by the PMO and status reporting should be run up through the PMO, even if the project ends up being managed elsewhere within the organization. If the high visibility projects aren’t even being channeled through the PMO for documentation and tracking, then you have a real problem brewing.

PMO Promotion

It is the responsibility of the PMO leadership to properly promote the PMO and help ensure its viability and visibility. Its viability is maintained by doing the following:

• Implementing proper and repeatable processes to consistently and successfully manage projects
• Implementing consistent templates for managing project and reporting status to customers and executive management
• Hiring competent, experienced Project Managers to lead projects for the organization
• Implementing proper compensation plans to retain good PM resources
• Implementing adequate training and on-boarding programs and processes to ensure that PMs are well-trained and up to speed on the PMO processes and practices

The PMO’s visibility is maintained by doing the following:

• Reporting project portfolio status on a regular basis and in a meaningful and useful format so that executive management realizes the PMO’s value
• Implementing solid PMO practices to ensure that the high-visibility customers are happy and referencable and the high-visibility projects are successful
• Inviting executive leadership to regularly attend weekly PMO meetings and sit in on project status meetings for the critical, high-visibility projects
• Managing project budgets thoroughly and reporting budget status up through executive leadership to show bottom-line PMO and Project Manager value

The PMO Director, as the leader of the PMO, must be a strong leader with pull inside the organization to ensure that these things happen. Otherwise, the PMO runs the danger of becoming obsolete or, at the very least, insignificant…and the mission critical projects will pass right by the PMO to special teams outside the PMO’s jurisdiction. Executive leadership must see value and ensuring that happens begins with the PMO leadership.

Summary

I’ve personally helped setup PMO’s and I’ve personally watched PMO’s fail. They’ve always failed for one of the following three reasons:

• Lack of strong, focused leadership
• Lack of repeatable process
• Lack of executive leadership support

The PMO must be formed and move forward with all three of these in place to ensure it’s success.

Four Key Areas Where a Business Consultant Can Save Your Organization

We’ve started our business, we’re growing our business and everything appears to be on the right track, correct? At first, we do everything ourselves. We wear every hat imaginable. When the time is right, we hire employees, we watch our business grow and stress over whether it’s growing too fast or too slow.

Does this sound familiar? But there is another side – the uncertainty for the small business owner of whether or not they’re doing the right things at the right time. Is now the time to bring on new employees, seek out this large customer or project, or launch this expensive marketing campaign?

For many organizations, this may be the point your business either makes it or ‘jumps the shark.’ It may be the exact right time to bring in a consultant who can help you in some of the following key areas for your business. I am of the opinion that there are four key areas that an outside consultant can come in and bring immediate aid to your organization. If you have a need in one of these key areas, then this is likely the right time to call for help:

• Resource Management
• Business Process Engineering or Re-Engineering
• Leading a New Strategic Project
• Strategic Planning

Resource Management

If you’ve grown to the point of having a decent sized customer base, but are uncertain at any given time whether your current resources can meet your current needs as well as your planned needs for the next few weeks, then it’s time to do serious work on your resource management techniques.

If you have the expertise to do this, that’s great. If not, then an outside consultant – such as an experienced project manager – can come in, utilize existing tools, and help you build processes to manage and forecast your resource needs across all of your current and future commitments. Ensuring you can keep your customers happy by having the proper resource – both personnel and equipment – ready when needed will go a long way in ensuring the success of your business.

Business Process Engineering

Your business processes can be anything. How you hire and onboard new staff, how you let staff go, how you process your monthly financials, how you forecast your work out over the next 6 months, how you manage your projects with your customer, and even how you manage your network security.

For any business – even the small business – processes need to be reviewed regularly because as the business grows, the processes that support that business will likely need to change. And with startups, the processes aren’t even there – they’re often ‘made up’ as you go along and what worked last week even may not work this week.

There’s no shame in calling in a business consultant who either has general expertise or specific expertise in your current area of need.

Leading a New Strategic Project

You’ve gotten your small company’s feet wet with a few small customer projects and you’ve been successful. Now you’re faced with your biggest challenge – a ‘name’ customer has heard about you and is coming your way with their business. Failure is not always a bad thing because we can learn a lot from our mistakes. See my article on “We Learn from What We Screw Up.” But we don’t really want to start by experiencing failure with our first high-visibility customer because that kind of bad press can kill the small business and even bring down a larger organization.

It’s ok to bring in an expert to handle the first large initiative. I’ve personally been called in to help startups in this very scenario and I see them now successfully managing high-visibility implementations a few years later with the same processes we setup to save them the first time around.

What your organization can learn from the consultant’s expertise and the processes that can get set in motion can potentially carry you for years. Or you may find you need this person as a permanent part of your organization. Either way you win.

Strategic Planning

Likewise, strategically planning where your organization is right now and where it is going in the next 6 months or 6 years is critical. Getting ‘outside eyes’ to look at the market, the competition, the potential customer base and consulting with you to help determine the best courses of action to take to get you to that 6 month and 6 year goal can be a real lifesaver.

Especially for the small business owner who has been the lifeblood of the organization since it’s inception, it’s easy to have blinders on. An individual with expert knowledge in customer relationship management, strategic planning, and managing large and long-term initiatives can provide very valuable insight into how to grow your business, stay on track and successfully move forward to even more profitability.

Summary

Sometimes we don’t like to ask for help. Actually, most of us never like to ask for help. But when we’re trying to help our organizations – whether it’s our own small business or a much larger organization that we are a part of – it’s ok to seek wise counsel from the ‘outside.’ An experienced business or IT or project management consultant can end up saving you thousands of dollars in the long run and quite possibly save your business (or your job!).

Shell re-organises management and IT functions

Shell is reorganizing its information technology workforce in a move that could see further heavy job cuts.

The move is part of a company-wide overhaul that will reportedly see up to 24,000 jobs moved into shared business areas, and overlapping roles may be cut altogether.

Information technology is expected to be heavily affected, and may be combined with other functions including finance and human resources.

The oil giant has already announced plans to lay off 3,200 staff after signing a £2 billion (US$3.24 billion) outsourcing deal with EDS, T-Systems and AT&T. It also has an application support deal running with IBM, Logica, Wipro and Accenture.

But it wants to do more to achieve cost savings, as well as improve its ability to react to changes in the market.

Additionally, the company is attempting to make individuals more accountable for successful project delivery and for the performance of different functions.

Shell will create a new arm, focused on project management and delivery. The new Projects & Technology operation will combine all of its project capabilities, including the services and technology focused on individual projects. The division will be led by Matthias Bichsel, Shell executive VP for exploration and production technology.

In contrast, back office IT functions servicing the whole group, from networking to standard applications, are expected to come under the umbrella of finance, eventually reporting to chief financial officer Simon Henry for board-level representation. Some functions may be pushed out to individual areas of Shell’s business.

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