The Project Management Center of Excellence: PMO Evolved.

In the mid-1990’s, there came about a well-defined bit of cost-cutting wizardry called the “Center of Excellence.” The COE was well-defined both because of the intent of its function in organizations, and because of its innate irony; you see, a decade and a half ago, the Center of Excellence involved lay-offs.

The COE was fashioned as a method of saving money by centralizing the best of all duplicate resources inside a large organization into one place. This center would then take on the task of managing their piece of the organizational puzzle, while any similar divisions outside the center would be dissolved.

But, like many other accidental discoveries, something wonderful happened. Before long, the COE approach took on more than just a functional use inside the organization — the COE began to live up to its name.

In modern project management, the specific tasks that fall to the Center of Excellence varies quite broadly from organization to organization. However, there are trends and best practices that define the high level function of the COE in the Project or Program Management Office.

First, the Project Management Center of Excellence provides educational and intellectual resources to the project management function of the organization. It is here that the organization houses the body of standards and guides for excellence in the internal project management operation. The PM-COE is the home of organizational methodology for project management.

Second, the PM-COE drives hiring and training against those standards. Global organizations striving for project management excellence are benchmarking their own processes and procedures against results. Ensuring human resources are hired, trained, and prepared to deliver results falls to the PM-COE.

Third, the PM-COE defines strategy in project management for the organization. This is the primary resource for intellectual capital in the broader field inside the company and provides access to the tools and technologies project managers will need to accomplish their jobs today, and in the future.
Finally, the PM-COE really can help grow profits and cut costs. Perhaps it is in the managerial DNA of the COE concept, but when resources and tools are pooled in such a way as a function of the PMO, new opportunities for greater efficiency become naturally apparent.

The PM-COE is a partner to the PMO. While the PMO is focused tactically on managing projects and delivering results, the PM-COE becomes the pit crew, ensuring project managers are trained, equipped, and prepared for work. It becomes a symbiotic relationship, an invaluable partnership that invariably results in better project management.

Even more, however, organizations that have adopted the PM-COE model as a function of the project management office have demonstrated a tacit commitment to not just running projects, but to learning through project management, and defining the project culture clearly through eduction, information, professional development and strategic awareness.

Cadence is a key partner in advanced training and consulting services designed to assist organizations interested in maturing and growing their project management office initiatives. Contact Cadence today for more information.

OPM3: The Three Elements of OPM3

Last week we introduced OPM3, the Organizational Project Management Maturity Model, with a brief overview of the tools and infrastructure it provides in organizational project management. This week, we continue our discussion with an exploration of the three elements that provide the foundation of the OPM3 model.

First, an important distinction. Historically, standards in the field of project management have focused heavily on the individual project manager or program manager. This stems from a convention of measuring aptitude: what do you know, and do you know what to do in a project management context. OPM3 on the other hand, represents a first for the Project Management Institute, addressing not only individual project manager competencies, but best practices across the organization for portfolio, program, and project management.

As a project manager, using the word organization may seem daunting. In the context of OPM3, however, the organization could be your entire company as easily as it could be your own functional area. This is the real beauty of the model: it scales impeccably.

The Knowledge Element provides the foundation for OPM3: 557 best practices as defined by thousands of project management professionals at work in the field. The Knowledge Element doesn’t provide any specific guidance on implementation, rather it provides a background on OPM3 components and operation.

The Assessment Element provides access to the OPM3 Self-Assessment, the online tool that allows users to compare traits of their current organization against best practices as defined in the OPM3 model. Through this self-assessment, you will become keenly aware of strengths and weaknesses in your organization, and see just where you stand against the continuum of organizational project management maturity.

Still, the data you cull from the assessment process might not be an appropriate picture for your organization. That’s why, as a function of the assessment process, you are able to define which best practices apply most critically to your project, program, or portfolio environment.

At the highest level, your OPM3 journey could end there: with a snapshot of your current capabilities and a new awareness of where your organization stands on the maturity continuum. However, assuming you are investing in the process for continuous results, the Improvement Element will help you deliver. Here, you will use the data from the assessment process and build a plan for improvements on key best practices for your organization, implement those improvements, and then re-assess to ensure successful implementation. Each change is specifically targeted to advancement along the maturity continuum.

While the self-assessment tool is comprehensive, like any assessment, interpretation of variables can be tricky. That is why specially-educated Cadence project managers are available to help your organization begin the OPM3 assessment process, a powerful tool for ensuring your projects are delivering the right results today.

OPM3: Why it’s time to care

There are funny cycles in the field of project management.

PERT charts are no longer cool, for example. And we do a bit more planning these days than we did in the 50’s when most of our so-called “complex” projects were still run off a simple Gantt chart. But today’s projects have redefined the nature of the word “complex”. Teams are broader. Budgets are bigger. Deadlines are tighter. Stakes are much, much higher.

A decade ago, the answer was the PMO. The project management office was to be the central repository for project practitioners in medium and large companies. In the best examples, PMOs were user-driven and organic, managed by a savvy suite of experts who knew how to get the most out of the tools they used. And still, project complexity grew.

Today, the PMO has evolved. OPM3 stands to formalize project management operations and help to define a clear path for process improvement.

What is it? OPM3 stands for Organizational Project Management Maturity Model, and it is a model that is owned by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Unlike so many other maturity models in the field, however, OPM3 was crafted by thousands of project management professionals, volunteers, and experts across 35 countries around the world. This is not an ivory tower theoretical application.

In short, it is a big deal.

Perhaps because so many people were involved in its genesis, simply diving into OPM3 can prove a bit unwieldy. Put simply, OPM3 helps organizations understand a broad scope of best practices in the field through a knowledge element; measure organizational performance against those best practices through the assessment element; and build a bridge to meet those best practices through the improvement element.

There are 557 of these best practices, each broken down into a few meaningful capabilities. As such, where OPM3 shines is in dealing with the dramatic increase in complexity in today’s projects. In fact, OPM3 specifically encompasses a whole-organization view of project management, something Cadence has long professed as a key success factor in projects. OPM3 best practices cover project, program, and portfolio management through four key stages of process management: Standardization, Measurement, Control, and Continuous Improvement.

Too often, we see projects that have fallen prey to organizational ill-will. Projects that have fallen through the cracks of management, projects that are spearheaded in spite of misalignment with organizational priorities, and projects with no executive support or leadership. Where OPM3 shines is in helping organizations turn key strategies into projects, and ensure that all projects serve in the achievement of broad strategic vision.

Specially-educated Cadence project managers are available to help your organization begin the OPM3 assessment process, a powerful tool for ensuring your projects are delivering the right results today.

Appreciate Change: 3 Tips to Help Your Teams Adjust to the Inevitable

We spend a great deal of time, as project management trainers and practitioners, focusing on the activities that occur at the beginning of a project. Defining scope, developing the scope of work, recruiting and developing resources around the project, scheduling - these activities tend to receive the greatest attention as new project managers tend to require the most refinement in the planning phase of their projects.

Where we are brought back into the project process comes when the first change occurs. Dealing with change on projects is one thing. But integrating change in a positive and proactive manner is something else. Here are three points you can use to prepare your team for big change when it happens.

1. You cannot plan for change.
The nature of change itself is that it is unexpected. It is dynamic. It is fluid. It will come from all directions and areas of the business when you least expect it. There are two points to be aware of as a leader of your project team. First, if you did your planning right up front, sudden change is likely not the result of poor project management. Second, if the business requirements are changing around you, it is not always an indicator of poor project sponsorship. These two points are often unfairly delivered in tandem. It is up to you to keep your team motivated and productive as you work to integrate change, no matter where in the organization it comes from.

While you cannot plan for change, you can certainly plan what will happen when you are confronted with it.

2. You cannot insulate your project from last-minute change.
If change is truly dynamic, unexpected, and fluid, beware the tendency to build in a drop-dead point for change on your project. As experienced project managers will tell you, change happens when it happens, whether or not you have placed a moratorium on your project.

In fact, change that hits your project after your deliverables are “feature complete” will still have an impact, if not on your own project, on your stakeholders and the organization.

3. You cannot create perfect stability in your project.
In fact, not only is it impossible to create stability within your project environment, it is a detriment to your project to attempt to do so.

However, the project plan is a document that invites assumptions of stability. But markets change. Technology changes. Working to insulate your project with too much rigidity in your project plan will also insulate you and your team from great potential opportunity that comes with maturing markets.

Building a model into your project planning process for dealing with change will help you answer all three of these points with flexibility and efficiency.

First, build a change process that is accepting of all change as change requests in your project plan.

Once you have captured these change requests in a simple system, you are able to review each under the guidelines set by the project in the first place: where will this requested change affect the project Cost, Schedule, or Performance against plan. The result is a system of options - options you are able to review for sign-off with your project sponsors. Options which allow you to remain completely flexible in accepting change at any point in the project, and delivering a platform for processing that change in an open and dynamic arena.

Visit cadencemc.com to download the Cadence Change Request document. This tool has helped project managers around the world by providing a mechanism for capturing each change request - and the impact of the change - in a single page. Available for free right now on cadencemc.com!

Getting Clever: Building Partnerships to Increase Training Opportunity

It is time to get clever.

We have been sharing thoughts over the past two weeks on how to secure training resources and create opportunities to develop professional skills in a volatile training market. Today, we review a strategy for bringing project management training to your teams when they need it, and working with your training and development teams closely to implement it.

The Joint Venture
Most the work we do involves project managers working on projects that involve more than a single core team. Project managers are integrating the efforts of extended project teams including internal and external customer teams, contractors, and suppliers. With such a variety of team backgrounds, our partners quickly realize that a crash course in project management planning and discipline will go a long way toward streamlining the project process and ensuring that all team members share the same project management language.

Our most innovative clients are leveraging these extended team relationships as extended training relationships; sharing the load — and the costs — of timely and effective training between companies and divisions to ensure that training comes when you and your teams need it the most.

The New Role of the Training Department: Ask for Help!
There is a secondary message in this strategy for HR, Training, and Development professionals. In times of fiscal constraint, their role changes, too.

Traditionally, the training and development arm of the organization works diligently to provide on-going training across the enterprise. But as we have said before, when training dollars are cut, so too goes the variety and timeliness of the training that might otherwise play a critical role in your project plan. If the training dollars aren’t coming from the organization at large, it is time for you to begin to budget training into your project budget.

In this new world, project managers must remember that it is absolutely appropriate to ask for help. Invite a representative from training to join your team. This way, you can keep your training teams apprised of your project schedules, the specific tactical importance of training, and when that training will make the most difference in your ability to deliver results. Put the responsibility of providing access to training on the team member best equipped to deliver it.

The message to training teams is equally important: Be on the look-out for ways you can provide strategic and tactical assistance to projects in your organization. The more involved you can become in finding strategic training alliances between teams, and providing access to training when it is most critical to the organization, the better your ability to increase the importance and visibility of the training function.

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