In the well-read posting in the online PMI Library, Andrew Christie lays out the challenges of starting and maturing an in-house project management office, or PMO.
One of the challenges he cites is changing the institutional culture in regards to managing projects: from one of reactive to proactive, from "finger-in-the-air" estimations to data-driven ones, and from ad hoc decision making to a more structured and fact-based process of making project-related decisions.
"Implementing and establishing a PMO is difficult. Developing and maturing a PMO can be even more of a challenge." - A. Christie
This is where Business (PMO) plan comes in, allowing a team of project managers using Project Plan 365 (or Microsoft Project) to instantly change a culture from ad hoc to structured and data-driven.
One of the biggest challenges any PMO has is to get a handle on who is doing what when, and at what cost. In short, how to get control of resources working on all projects across the board (as well as by individual project).
Project Plan 365 helps PMOs do this in the most elegant way possible, by first establishing a global resource pool for the team, and then by using intelligent programming to keep track of all work performed by that team.
Team members simply enter in their respective data in regards to %completes for any task assigned, and Project Plan 365 does the rest; now allowing managers to pull up reports on either an individual worker, or as a workforce in total.
Resource costs, schedule and assignments are now under control within the PMO, making the challenges cited by Christie, all the more easier to overcome.
Project Plan 365 introduces a revolutionary new feature (rTc), that allows plans to be configured so that team members can update the status of their work by using nothing more than a smartphone or tablet (any type will do, either Android or Apple).
In addition, project managers are not limited to one methodology alone when creating project plans. Managers can choose to use the Agile method, where they can create KanBan boards or Scrums, or they can use the traditional Waterfall method to create stunning Gantt charts.
However, since Project Plan 365 is data-driven, managers can actually switch methodologies on the fly, and then deliver schedules in whatever way best suits the audience of the moment.
In this way, Project Plan 365 becomes the perfect solution for either a brand-spanking new PMO, or one that has years of maturity under its belt.
As Adam Smith International (ASI) began to open offices around the globe, each with project managers installed that were handling large state-funded infrastructure projects, it became obvious that a Project Management Office (loving known within the biz as a PMO) needed to be formed.
Initially, most of this important development work was handled by managers using stand-alone versions of Microsoft Project, custom Excel spreadsheets and a myriad of other solutions: Basecamp, Google Docs, Trello and others. Within this scenario, the ASI c-level team could not see the entire portfolio picture at once, at least not without a lot of work pulling it all together.
Enter Project Plan 365: Business (PMO) plan, the subscription plan of choice for anyone running a PMO with managers spread across the globe. Within weeks, everyone was on the same page (or in this case, in the same workspace) - with PMs and upper-management now all able to see what another was planning. And all of this was accomplished without installing new hardware back at HQ, or radically changing anyone's workflow. Congrats ASI, and best of luck in your efforts to end some of the world's worst ills!
