Starting a Project Management Office: A Case Study (207834831)

8/13/2019 Starting a Project Management Office: A Case Study (207834831)

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Starting a PMO at BabsonEducause Connect – Portland

February 11, 2014Robyn Betts, Director, PMO



AUDIENCE POLL

Doing our best to make this interactive…



Raise your hand if you…

1. Currently don’t have a PMO, but need one

2. Have approval to start a PMO / in planning

3. Recently started a PMO4. Sustaining a PMO currently

5. Tried unsuccessfully to start a PMO



Who is Babson?



Distance and F2F

International Student Body

~3500 Students

~800 Staff

IT

Library and IT Together

~85 people

Software Dev

Ops and Security

Curriculum Dev

Multimedia

Helpdesk



• Initiation / Getting Approval

• Defining PMO Strategy and Scope• Creating the PMO / Organizational Change

• Sustaining the PMO

Capture Challenges in

Each Area of PMO Startup



WHAT DID THE ENVIRONMENT ATBABSON LOOK LIKE IN 2010?



New-ish President Reactive IT Low Turnover

Process Scrutiny

New CIO

Tech Drives Strategy Increasing Demand Big Project

Staff Stretched!



WHY START A PMO AT BABSON?



When People Requested Projects, Who Knew Where it Went?



“Toss it Over The Fence” Phenomenon



No Consistency In Project Management



High Demand for Low Supply of Resources…



…Customers Not Getting What They Need



Project Decisions Were Not As Systematically Made As They Could Have Been…



No Ability to Report On Output



CHALLENGES YOU CURRENTLY FACEWITH INITIATION?

Your turn…



DEFINING THE PMO

How do we fix this?



Planning for the PMO

10 Strategic IT Priorities

(IMPs)

Project

Mgmt

Defined PM roadmap; not quite a charter, but close!



Drive Successful Project Planning andExecution at Babson

PMO Mission



How Will We Attack This?

Plan

Streamline Process for how all projects come in, get

prioritized, and get completed

Focus Focus our limited resources on only the most high

priority and strategically aligned projects

Use Project Management best practices to track and

measure projects so we can plan better in the future



Or at least closer to this.



• New Project Intake

• Business Analysis

• Portfolio Prioritization

• Scheduling and Resource

Allocation

•PM Standards

• Templates/Toolkit

• Project Management

Accountable for success of

all IT projects at Babson

Scope of the PMO



SETTING UP THE PMO

The hard part…



Understanding the Problem

Right PMO Model?

Staffing?

Resource Management?

Get Buy-In?

Project Definition?

Governance?

Tools?



Time to Research, and “Get Out of the Building”



Information Overload

• Gartner Research

• Endless Blogs, Podcasts & Twitter

• PMHut, Girl’s guide to PM, Drunken PM, PMO

Podcast, gantthead, #pmchat, #pmot, #PMP

• The Program Management Office Advantage

• Creating the Project Office

• Project Management Metrics

• PMI / EDUCAUSE Forums / Networking

•

LinkedIn Forums



How will we be structured?

Model

ConsideredStaff

Responsibilities

Standards &

Templates

Project

Mgmt

Portfolio

Mgmt

Direct PMO Director has all PMs and BAs

as direct reports

Matrixed Some PMs and BAs report into

PMO, others are in other depts.

Decentralized PMO has limited staff; PMs and BAs

report elsewhere



Initial Structure

CIO

SoftwareDevelopment

PM

Ops andNetworking

BA

LearningTechnologies

PM

MultimediaServices

PM

Helpdesk

PM

PMO

PM

Directors

That’s Me

“SME” PMs



What type of people needed?

• How many Sr. PMs?

• BAs?

•Jr. PMs?

• Project Coordinators?



THE APPROACH



Will it blend?



JUST ENOUGH PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Large Projects

Small Projects/

Initiatives

What Kind of Blender Do You Need?



CHALLENGES YOU FACE WITHPLANNING, SCOPE, AND STRATEGY?

Your turn…



MAKING IT REAL



Concept of a Project

Temporary effort to create

something unique.

ProjectOngoing

Operations

It has a beginning and an end; It does

not continue on indefinitely.

Examples: Redesign website; Create new web form;

Select & implement new quiz tool; Create data

warehouse; Set up telepresence room.

Work is continuous

with no end date

Repeat the same processes

Examples: Tickets; Weekly team meetings; Respond

to email; Walk-in hours; Monthly server patching;

Run weekly reports.

Purpose to keep Babson runningMeets stakeholder goals and then

concludes; tangible or intangible

deliverable



Defining a Project

Project

40+ Hours of IT Staff Work

High Risk

Costs > $10K

- OR -

- OR -

Initiative

Smaller, cheaper, or less risky than a

project, but still unique work



Defining a Project

Project

Managed by a PM

Initiative

Managed by a developer, or primary

resource doing the work

Not terribly

popular…



How Do We Manage Operational Work??



M o r a l e , C

o m p e t e n c e

Time

Shock

Denial

Frustration

Depression

Experiment

Decision

Integration

Recognitionthat things are

different



Side Effects

• People Put Everything (Everything!) in the

system

– The new “over the fence” mentality emerged

• Functional Manager Identity Crisis

• Ops Group Frustration

• PMO Staff is Very Slim

Response so far is mixed, but mostly positive, patient



Not bad, considering what we’d just done…



Growing…

CIO

SoftwareDevelopment

PM

Ops andNetworking

BA


PM

MultimediaServices

PM

Helpdesk

PM

PMO

PM

BA

Directors

That’s Me

“Accidental” PMs



CUSTOMERS

UgradGraduate School Alumni & FriendsITSD /



School

Center For

Career Dev

Academic

Services

/ Vice Provost

Int’l

Education

Enrollment

and

Admissions

Student

Financial

Services

Registrar

Network

Alumni and

Friends

Network

Events

Management

Office

Executive

Education

CIMS BEE

Administration

Summer

programs /

Space

usageFaculty

FacultyCutler

Center

Blank

Center

Case

Center

GEM STEP

Facilities

Instructional

Technologies

IT ServiceCenter

Security and

Operations

Library

College Marketing

Instit.

Comm.

Babson

Magazine

Digital

Marketing

Creative

Services

Glavin BECC

Babson-

Olin-

Wellesley

Application

DevelopmentPMO

Development

AdvancementDevelopment

Business Affairs

BudgetFinancial

Services

Business

Services

Human Resources

CompensationBenefits

EmploymentOrg.

Learning

and Dev

Payroll

Facilities

Student

AffairsPublic

SafetyAthletics

YouthPrograms

Risk Mgmt

HRIS



How to Request Work?

• What will people be willing to do?

• What does the PMO provide vs. Customer?

• What are our SLAs?

• Business-focused, relatively simple online

form via Jira• Business Analyst works with customer

• Enough sizing/scoping to make decision



Project Lifecycle

PMO

Project

Intake



Prioritization

• Steering Committee for each area

• High-level decision makers

– Strategic awareness

• Monthly meetings

• Intros were made by CIO

• Monthly portfolio reports



Project Lifecycle

PMO

Ugrad

Grad/

Prov

Admin

Alumni

Exec Ed

IT/Fac

Faculty

Inst. Adv.

UpdateProject

List

S c h e

d ul eP r o j e c t s

• Assign PM

• Assemble team

• Create SP site

• Execute using Project

Mgmt. best practices

Project

Intake

Project

Prioritization

Project

Scheduling

Project

Execution

Bus. Aff Stu. Aff.

HRMktg



• Presented the PMO

mission

• Benefits to him/her

• Benefits to area

• Described new

processes:

– Intake

– Prioritization

– Decision-making

– Project Execution

Taking the PMO Out On the Road!



Quick Wins

• What you get when you get a PM

• Big-picture thinking

• Connecting dots across departments

• Perspective and transparency!

• Trust in Process & in IT

• My projects get discussed and prioritized

Very positive response!



Afterall, we’re going from this…



Grad/

Prov

IT/Fac

Project Lifecycle

PMO

Ugrad

Admin

Alumni

Exec Ed

Faculty

Inst. Adv.

UpdateProject

List

S c h e

d ul eP r o j e c t s

• Assign PM

• Assemble team

• Create SP site



Project

Intake

Project

Prioritization

Project

Scheduling

Project

Execution

Bus. Aff Stu. Aff.

HRMktg

To this. Huge improvement!



WHERE ARE WE IN THE TIMELINE?

So…



March

•PMO IMP

•Define

“Project”

May

• PMO Formed• Define workflow

• SP site created

• Start resource toolkit of

templates

June - July

• All Projects into Jira

• Templates/infrastructure created

• Using several parts of PMO methodology on new

projects

• Started PMO Roadshow

• Business unit prioritization team identified

August

• Started dev sprints & task tracking

• Leveraging PMs from around ITSD

• Introduce prioritization to prioritization owners

• Resource mgmt process definition

• 15 projects using PMO

Timeline of Rollout



AND ON THE FRUSTRATION CURVE?

Integration



M o r a l e , C o m p e t e n c e

Time

Shock

Denial

Frustration

Depression

Experiment

Decision

Integration

Learning how towork in new

system; feeling

more positive



Timeline of Rollout

September

• First round of prioritization process

• Refine JIRA project intake form

• Expand resource planning sessions to

include CITG

• Internal PMO Roadshow

October

• Augment the template toolkit

• Create transparent project listing for

stakeholders and other views

January 2011

Official Launch!

November - December

• Finalize Jira for stakeholders

• Finalize intake form

• Finalize template toolkit



Have we gone crazy yet?



THORNS IN OUR SIDEAT THAT POINT



Project Lifecycle

PMO

Ugrad

Grad/

Prov

Admin

Alumni

Exec Ed

IT

Faculty

Inst. Adv.

UpdateProject

List

S c h e d ul eP r o j e c t s

• Assign PM

• Assemble team

• Create SP site



Project

Intake

Project

Prioritization

Project

Scheduling

Project

Execution

Bus. Aff Stu. Aff.

HRMktg



Scheduling and Resources

• Priorities can shift so frequently, hard to plan

• Limited staffing in PMO, focus on getting other

areas up and running

– PM Best Practices*, Intake, Prioritization!

• Top-down resource planning is a challenge

• Functional managers don’t have sense of staff

obligations/bandwidth

* At this point, even weekly status reports are novel and inconsistent.



Other Challenges

• Not enough training

– PMs, Accidental PMs and Customers need more

• Player-coach model

– PMO Director is also managing most visible/complexprojects

• Accidental PMs – NOT going well!

– Varying degrees of skill and interest*

– Ignore PM work, focus on project work

– Bandwidth for mentoring is limited

• Eating our own dog food

* No interest is most difficult to overcome!!



DESPITE ALL THAT, PROGRESS!



People feel we are rowing in the same and right direction



Other Good Things

• Customers are very on board

• People are using the new tools, starting to rely

on them

• The vocabulary is starting to stick

• Executive support is VERY strong

• Successful Projects!



CHALLENGES YOU’VE HAD WITHEXECUTION?

Your turn…



• Still up and running!

• 215 projects in queue

• Resource and portfolio planning is continual

challenge, but evolving

• Probably a 3 – 4 on the PM Maturity Scale

• Very business-focused



People

Process Technology

Strategic

Alignment



Still a few naysayers in IT, but some changes in staffing are helping



Growing…

CIO

SoftwareDevelopment

PM

Ops andNetworking

BA


PM

MultimediaServices

PM

Helpdesk

PM

PMO

PM

Assoc. PM

Assoc. PM

Co-ops

Directors

That’s Me

“Accidental” PMs



CHALLENGES YOU’VE HAD WITHSUSTAINING A PMO?

Your turn…



Thank you!

Starting a Project Management Office: A Case Study (207834831)

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