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p3m global PMO Roundtable 2016 Report

PMO Careers, Demonstrating Value and Bringing Agile out of the Basement: A report on p3mg’s first PMO Roundtable. 

By Ray Mead, CEO, p3m global

On 30^th June we at p3m global hosted our inaugural PMO Roundtable event at Brown’s Hotel in London. The format, where attendees set their own agenda under Chatham House rules, has been very popular for some time with our Australian sister company and I’m pleased to report a similar experience here in the UK.

The conversation was lively, informed and centred around several key themes: PMO as an emerging career choice, the lack of investment in genuine PMOs and, finally, the rise of Agile and the need for ‘multimodal’ governance.

The first two are easily summarised. We have seen, when working with our clients on the development of P3M career pathways, that working in a PMO is increasingly popular with project managers as they plan their career paths. For some it offers a different perspective, a big picture view that enhances their appreciation of good governance. For some, it is a route into portfolio management and others again see it as a career path in its own right. This is to be welcomed and we at p3mg have certainly been at the forefront of this, developing with our clients, PMO-specific competencies and training programmes that are not found amongst the main PM standards. A voice of experience did remind us, however, that the competencies required in PMO set up are not necessarily the same as those required to run it, so a ‘PMO life cycle’ requires careful resource planning.

The lack of investment in PMOs is more worrying and comes back to the perennial inability of PMOs to demonstrate their value, both to the business and to the PM community they serve. All too often we, as consultants, are called in to ‘rescue’ a PMO that has fallen into one of the classic traps of over-reliance on compliance or the pathologically blunt implementation of an enterprise PPM tool. Interestingly, one of our participants who had recently set up a PMO had deliberately left compliance out of its remit and had seen the resulting benefits through the positive engagement levels of the PMs. Other solutions offered by the participants where to ensure that financial data (and finance people) were at the heart of PMO activity. If the PMO can demonstrate a positive impact in financial terms, said one participant, it will win more friends at the executive level. A word of caution was then added by p3mg’s Conor Gourley who reminded the team that, as demonstrated in our very own research, the most successful PMOs were found to report into a strategic function, not a financial one.

Finally, a subject close to my own heart, how do PMOs that have spent the last 10 years gaining control and encouraging predictability deal with the rise of agile? The answer, according to the group, lies in moving away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ governance approach and moving toward a new, evolved understanding of P3M maturity; one that adopts the right governance style for the right initiative. Bimodal is too simplistic – multimodal is the future.

Again, this is certainly the direction we are seeing in the market as we undertake agile transformation programmes with our clients.

It was perhaps fitting that the Roundtable took place in the very room at Brown’s where Alexander Graham Bell first used his ‘telephone’ in the UK. There was a distinct connection made between practitioners, consultants and academics who came together to tackle issues facing us all but they came from different perspectives. If you would like to participate in future PMO Roundtable events or suggest future topics for us to address, please contact us on info@p3mglobal.com We would love to hear from you.

PMO Roles Available

As a result of several new PMO mobilisations out of our UK & Middle East hubs, p3m global are searching for specialists in the following fields: 

Head of PMO Planners (scheduling & delivery coordination) 

RAID management Quality assurance Change controller 

Benefits Manager Project Administration PMO Analysts

 ...and a selection of Programme Management / Senior PM roles Sector specialists in government or defence/aviation will be an advantage currently but not essential. 

If you are interested, or can share to anyone else who might be interested, we will be accepting CVs at recruitment@p3mglobal.com

Every Journey needs a Roadmap

Maturity models are extremely valuable in establishing an organisation’s current capabilities in project, programme and portfolio management (P3M) and providing a roadmap for future improvement. With uncertainty still hanging over the PMI’s OPM3 model, AXELOS’ Project, Programme and Portfolio Management Maturity Model (P3M3^®) is now the leading global P3M maturity framework and p3m global, an AXELOS Consulting Partner (ACP), have discovered a bitesized way for you to benefit from it.

Last year (2015), AXELOS made some major revisions to P3M3, expanding it in both breadth and depth by including such additional elements as commercial management, asset management and behaviours. It has also been restructured to enable common ‘Threads’ across each of the Project, Programme and Portfolio models to be evaluated, in order to better diagnose areas of improvement across the Seven Perspectives. Lastly, the authors have deliberately improved alignment with other (non-AXELOS) methodologies and bodies of knowledge to make it more appealing for PMI/IPMA aligned organisations.

At a high level this new version (v3) is compatible with the previous version (v2) such that scores from 0 to 5 across each of the Perspectives remain valid. It is at this high level where significant value can be obtained from very little investment.

The AXELOS P3M3 Model

Within a few days, a facilitated self-assessment from p3m global can provide a good initial evaluation of an organisation’s capabilities in project, programme and portfolio management ensuring that it doesn’t have to cost a lot to find out where you are.

So why do one?

• ​Map your route (and know why you’re going!): Evaluating and benchmarking current levels of P3M by discipline (Perspectives and Threads) can help justify the business case for improvement initiatives and provide clear performance metrics for these improvements in the future. Moreover, its structure can provide a convenient roadmap to success.
• Stick to what’s important to YOU: Focus the improvements required to achieve levels that are desirable and appropriate to your particular organisation. There is no point in investing in the parts of P3M3 that your organisation does not value.
• Wear the badge: a rapid, facilitated self-assessment can quickly establish a P3M3 maturity score for your organisation that can be easily translated to a full, official certification when you are ready, showing your customers and partners that you are serious about P3M.
• Unlock the benefits of improved P3M maturity:
• improved selection and delivery of the organisation's portfolio of projects and programmes ('doing the right projects and programmes' and 'doing the projects and programmes right')
• improved realisation of value from investments
• improved quality of deliverables leading to improved customer satisfaction
• easier to maintain control of projects and programmes leading to improved employee satisfaction
• improved predictability leading to better financial forecasting 

Will all this on offer for a fraction of the cost of a traditional CMMI or OPM3 assessment it’s not surprising that P3M3 is starting to take off.

Contact the p3m global team for details on +44 (0)1962 676 321 or email sales@p3mglobal.com

1 week assessment slots are currently available throughout June and July, contact the team today to ensure you don't miss the opportunity!

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What Makes p3mg Different? - Full Video

At p3m global we believe P3M capability relies on 3 key areas:

People | Process | Technology

Below in our full video of the series "What Makes p3mg Different?" CEO, Ray Mead talks about how p3m global can help you and your organisation enable these capabilities through 3 crucial principles:

Assess | Develop | Engage

Visit http://p3m.global/#what-we-do to understand the different P3M services delivered in 

Assess | Develop | Engage 

These principles are taken from our PADET model, a comprehensive life cycle designed by p3m global, to take organisations through a comprehensive and integrated implementation of a PMO or P3M methodology. 

PADET - Plan | Assess | Develop | Engage | Transfer 

Contact the p3m global team today to discuss how we can enable P3M capability in your organisation. 

http://p3m.global/ | info@p3mglobal.com | +44 (0)1962 676 321