Why Sharing Lessons Learned Is Key For Matured PMO

#SridharPeddisetty #Agile #PMO #LessonsLearned #AgilePMO #ProjectManagementOffice #Project #PMI #BestPractices 

A farmer grew award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won a blue ribbon. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him and learned something interesting about how he grew it. The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his seed corn with his neighbors.
“How can you afford to share your best seed corn with your neighbors when they are entering corn in competition with yours each year?” the reporter asked.
“Why sir,” said the farmer, “didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field. If my neighbors grow inferior corn, cross-pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.”

Farmer is very much aware of the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor's corn also improves. So it is with our lives. Those who choose to succeed must help others to succeed. Those who want to live meaningfully and well must help enrich the lives of others, for the value of a life is measured by the lives it touches. And those who choose to be happy must help others to find happiness, for the welfare of each is bound up with the welfare of all. If we are to grow good corn, we must help our neighbors grow good corn. Call it mutualism. Call it a principle of success. Call it a law of life. The fact is, none of us truly win until we all win.

Albert Einstein famously said, "The only source of knowledge is experience" and what better way to gain wisdom from the lessons that we learn while executing projects, programs, portfolios or managing operations. Sharing 'lessons learned' across teams is one of the key aspects of a matured PMO in an Organization. Many of us have not personally experienced the pain of slipping, by stepping on a banana peel, but have learned those lessons through someone elses experiences. 

This is applicable for a matured Organization to have a functional PMO and create an environment of sharing lessons learned across projects, programs or portfolios. Note that 'lessons learned' is not only for documenting failures but also the success stories. The more knowledge shared, the more we gain and lessons learned from successes or failures helps an Organization to leverage on the successes and not repeat failures. For a matured PMO, its an important aspect to share 'lessons learned' on what went well and what did not go well so that an Organization does not repeat past mistakes while following patterns that are proved successful in the past. One template of documenting 'lessons learned' include

• Document the pre-condition(s) and condition(s) in which the negative (issue) or positive event (best practice) occurred 
• Describe how the issue arose and define the problem or positive event encountered, and
• Provide concrete, practical solutions or recommendations based on this experience.

and can be then tagged under 'Lessons Learned Knowledge Base’, which could be managed by PMO. 

"Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.” -Brian Tracy

Why Sharing Lessons Learned Is Key For Matured PMO was originally posted under Prokarma Blog on Oct 5th 2015

Inside and Outside Project Comparison and Prioritization

We understand the needs of a Project Management Office (PMO) to help drive IT efficiency, cut costs and improve the quality of project delivery in terms of time and budget. In my earlier blog 7 Questions to Ask Before Establishing a Project Management Office (PMO), I shared three types of roles a PMO plays in an organization in terms of supporting, controlling or directing. A PMO can boost productivity while ensuring that priority projects get the most attention, but it is important to perform the right comparisons between projects to prioritize them. The PMO should not be comparing 'inside' of a project in terms of which department/business unit the project belongs to with 'outside' of another project in terms of goals it's achieving. While reviewing projects, the PMO should go over the project charter or SOW, which includes:

• High-level scope of the project 
• Goals and objectives 
• Cost 
• Schedule
• Critical measures
• Potential gains
• Risks
• Assumptions
• Issues
• Dependencies
• Constraints
• Identification of key stakeholders
• Project's impact on the entire organization

Use a common basis for comparing projects while prioritizing them. One way of prioritizing projects is to group them in terms of:

• Business critical, strategic objectives or initiatives of the organization
• Business unit/department critical (one or multiple)
• Business unit/department need (one or multiple)
• Internal process improvements or exploring long-term growth by adopting new technologies and/or business models 

Note that the above mentioned grouping of priorities can change according to the strategic goals of an organization. After grouping priorities, there might be a potential need to do project sequencing for execution within each prioritized group. Harold R. Kerzner in his Project Management - Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence book shares key decision criteria for project sequencing, which includes:

• Strategic priority
• Window of opportunity
• Project interdependencies
• Resource availability

Share your thoughts on how you compare and prioritize projects within your organization.

Inside and Outside Project Comparison and Prioritization was originally posted under Prokarma blog on Feb 26th 2015.

7 Questions to Ask Before Establishing a PMO

According to the definition in Project Management Institute (PMI) PMBOK Fifth Edition, the Project Management Office (PMO) is a management structure that standardizes the project related governance processes and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodologies, tools and techniques. The responsibilities of a PMO can range from providing project management support functions to actually being responsible for the direct management of one or more projects.

PMO is also applicable to program and portfolio management offices. By definition, program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually and portfolio is a collection of components (i.e. projects, programs, portfolios and other work such as maintenance and related ongoing operations) that are grouped together to facilitate the effective management of that work in order to meet the strategic business objectives. 

The PMO is established within an organization based on its strategic objective, in which it could play supporting, controlling or directive roles. 

1. In a supporting role the PMO is more consultative in nature. The goal is to provide templates, best practices, training, and a knowledge base including lessons learned from previous portfolios, programs or projects. The PMO's primary role is more as a document control center with a low level of control.
2. In a controlling role the PMO is more focused on auditing. This ensures portfolios, programs or projects are following recommended methodologies, best practices, standards, processes, etc. The PMO's primary role is to maintain compliance across portfolios, programs or projects with a moderate level of control.     
3. In a directive role the PMO is more management focused. Involved in the organization's portfolios, programs and projects, the PMO's primary role is identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, and managing with a high level of control.

So before establishing a PMO, it is very important to understand your organizations strategic goals. The following set of questions will help serve as guidelines

Question #1

What is the mission of the PMO?
Is the mission of the PMO to provide consulting services to projects, programs and portfolios running across an organization and/or to provide standards, processes, templates and also be responsible for auditing on a regular basis while flagging the projects, programs and portfolios that are not meeting their objectives and/or directly manage projects, program and portfolios while forming a governance framework.

Question #2

What are the roles and responsibilities of the PMO?
A well defined RACI matrix across organization will help determine the tolerance and maturity of organization to adapt to one of the supporting, controlling or directive PMO types.

Question #3

What would be the KPIs for a PMO?
How the PMO will be measured is important. Determine the type of PMO that needs to be established and set appropriate metrics accordingly. 

Question #4

What would be the 30-60-90 day implementation action plan to establish the PMO?
A step by step action plan of 30-60-90 days will help create short, mid and long-term goals for the PMO and help determine the PMO type as well.

Question #5

What is the governance model for the PMO? 
Managing and controlling the PMO for a longer period will depend on the governance model defined for the PMO. In turn, the governance model will help in understanding the type of PMO needed. 

Question #6

What is the availability of qualified personnel to staff the PMO?
Establishing a PMO is heavily dependent on finding qualified personnel and a key factor to be considered in determining the type of PMO.

Question #7

Where does the PMO fit in the organizational hierarchy? 
Understanding where the PMO will fit in the organizations' hierarchy will help establish innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. This will also help in planning the roll out of PMO in 30-60-90 cycles. 

Please share your thoughts on how you would establish PMO in your organization.

7 Questions to Ask Before Establishing a PMO was originally posted under Prokarma blog on Jan 6th 2015.