A few days ago I was thinking about the economic cycle we’re going through; about constantly being bombarded with negative news and prognostications by “expert commentators” so, as I am by nature an optimist, I thought about hope, particularly “hope for the future”.
What is hope? It’s defined as likelihood of success: a chance that something desirable will happen or be possible.
I am fortunate in that numbered among my friends is Greg Giuliano PhD. Founder & CEO of Ecstasis Consulting, a global network of business leaders committed to evoking and sustaining positive disruptive change in business http://www.ecstasis.com/ who I called to learn his thoughts. Serendipity was certainly at play as Greg had only recently written the following which, with his permission, I now share with you.
To inspire hope, work on trust.
A conversation with a client the other day about how to engage her team more completely led to an important question. She had some conversations with team members recently that revealed that the team is losing hope about their chances for success in the face of a very challenging business climate. For her team “Yes we can.” was becoming “No we can’t.” Fast action is required without a doubt. But what’s a leader to do? In times of adaptive change, our teams want a message of hope and a reminder that through working together and trusting one another that they achieve their objectives. It is the role of the leader to provide hope and create an atmosphere typified by trust.
While instilling hope in our teams and organizations is the desired outcome, I want to focus on what it means for an individual leader to be a person of hope. For it is always true that we cannot give what we do not have. Erich Fromm said, “To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.” How do we sustain an atmosphere in which we and our teams can make ready what must emerge for us to be successful?
Hope presupposes trust. Without trust, there is no hope; for hope is fundamentally a sense of trust that all shall be well. Why shall all be well? Because I trust in my own abilities and I trust in others. Trusting in our individual and collective strength and capacity to achieve is hope-inspiring. Whatever I wish to do, dream I can do, or believe I can do, I can do. That is hope based on trust of self and trust of others.
A lack of trust in an organization is deadly. Without trust in leadership, in other teams, in products and services, in systems, you name it, there is little hope that the organization can accomplish what it sets out to do, nor that leaders will follow through on promises to people. In times of adaptive change (like now), the leader must be a person of hope and must inspire people to trust. To do that, the leader must trust himself and others. In that way, the leader demonstrates what it means to be a person of hope.
What does it mean to be a person of hope? The seeds of hope are either planted or scattered early in our life. What we learn about trust at that early age is reinforced in our relationships throughout our life. We each have beliefs that determine how and to what degree we engage life and people, including our work and our business relationships.
We fundamentally trust others to be there for us when we need them or not. We fundamentally trust our own worth or not. These are deep, core beliefs that we each hold and use as filters for decision making every day, albeit unconsciously. Knowing our core beliefs, we can begin to shift our mindset if necessary in order to engage others and our work in a more productive way.
Self-awareness of our core beliefs about trust, mis-trust, and hope empowers our self-leadership and growth. Are you a person of hope? Do you believe in yourself and your abilities? Is there a part of you that cannot have hope? Do you dread the future or anticipate it excitedly?
How would you answer these questions?
I look forward to tomorrow. YES NO
I like to spend time with others. YES NO
I believe my needs were met and I was well cared for as an infant. YES NO
I am a very capable person. YES NO
I believe that I can make what I want of life and that there are people out there who can help me. YES NO
I easily trust other people. YES NO
I become upset when someone violates my trust. YES NO
I prefer to work alone. YES NO
I trust myself to make the right decisions for me. YES NO
I can count on others when I need help. YES NO
I am comfortable working in groups. YES NO
I easily delegate tasks. YES NO
I look forward to tomorrow with excitement and anticipation. YES NO
I have hope in the future. YES NO
The glass is half full. YES NO
Life is an adventure. YES NO
The more ‘yes’ answers you record the more likely it is that you are a person of hope. The more ‘no’ answers you record the more likely that trust may be an issue for you.
When we want to make a lasting transformation, we want to change not only our outward actions, but also our inner thoughts and feelings. Transforming thoughts and actions are inter-related and codependent. If I change my activities, my thoughts will go along. If I change my thoughts, I will act accordingly as well.
I offer a couple suggestions for further exploring hope and trust:
1. Read. Find some books or articles on trust and hope and/or people who you believe to embody these traits and see if you can find some attitudes or behaviors to emulate. Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning is a tremendous and powerful expression of hope as is The Art of Happiness by HH the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, M.D.
2. Every day when you get up, tell yourself to have hope. Tell yourself that you have what you need to make a wonderful life for yourself today. Tell yourself to make a conscious effort to trust someone today. Make a sign that says “hope” and put it up in your bathroom, over your desk, on the dashboard of your car, somewhere, anywhere where you will be reminded to trust and have hope today.
3. Connect with other people of hope. Associate with positive and optimistic people.
4. Dream. Set some goals for yourself. Put a plan of action into place to make your dream a reality. Hint: Doing number three will give you the support system you need to accomplish number four!
By exploring and growing our individual capacity for hope and trust, we grow our capacity to lead others in times of adaptive change.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Welcome
We are pleased to welcome you to the Horgan Splaine Blog where we will be posting, over the coming months and years, a series of articles addressing current business and thought leadership issues across a varied range of management related topics.
We trust that you will find these informative and beneficial.
For more information on Horgan Splaine Partners visit www.horgansplaine.com
We trust that you will find these informative and beneficial.
For more information on Horgan Splaine Partners visit www.horgansplaine.com
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Program Management Office - How good Is your PMO? Do you really know?
Authored by Michael S. Kenny and Will Yen, Slalom Consulting.
In today’s challenging business environment, Corporate IT is constantly asked to deliver more value with less and to optimize program and project delivery for the business. To do this, many IT organizations have created a Program or Project Management Office (PMO) to help manage and own program and project execution and methodology.
A recent Project Management Institute (PMI) survey found that 60 percent of respondent organizations have a PMO, with 4.5 years being the average age of the PMO.1 The Standish Group reports that 66 percent of projects fail or are challenged.2 In many organizations, a PMO is established to improve this and solve associated problems with program and project execution.
PMOs create additional value by providing standards, processes and policies that create an overall framework for more efficient project delivery. According to CIO Magazine, “PMOs can help CIOs by providing the structure needed to standardize project management practices and to facilitate IT project portfolio management, as well as determine methodologies for repeatable processes.”3
Still, there are many issues IT faces in choosing or designing the right PMO – corporate culture, size of the organization, acentralized vs. decentralized PMO, program and project management maturity, and the annual number of projects are just some of the factors that need to be considered when designing the PMO and its governance. The multitude of corporate attributes necessitates a customized approach to designing the right PMO.
The PMO can also act as a crucial communication hub, not only facilitating project team communication, but identifying and reporting on key data to business sponsors, executive stakeholders, resource and demand managers, and other project/program teams. PMOs create the standard by which program and project community members communicate, thus decreasing confusion and information misunderstandings. Our future research hopes to provide additional insight into how social media opportunities like community building can optimize program and project communication and interaction.
PMOs also provide fundamental guidance in developing a program and project management core competency and program and project management career development within the enterprise. Training schedules and curriculums can be developed through internal resources and external organizations in order to create this core competency within the enterprise. PMOs can also provide project management coaching and mentorship during current projects.
You cannot manage what you cannot measure. The PMO can help management by determining and communicating key project metrics – delivering the right information to the right people at the right time. PMOs will typically track enterprise-wide measures on the state of project or program management, delivery and the earned value being provided to the business stakeholders.
We challenge our clients to answer three fundamental performance questions regarding their existing PMO:
• Do you know how your PMO is performing versus your expectations?
• What are the objective standards for your PMO’s performance?
• How far away is your PMO from leading practices?
Despite the ubiquity and history of PMOs we find that very few organizations can answer these questions with confidence. We present a framework to answer them.
Our Perspective
In our experience, there are a common set of responsibilities across all PMOs. For example, most PMOs will develop and implement a set of project management processes to assist project team members. This commonality has helped us to create a “Leading to Lagging” assessment framework used in analyzing the PMO for our clients.
To help the enterprise with the evaluation, we developed a rigorous PMO assessment methodology grounded in these “Leading to Lagging” practices that enable a PMO to measure where it stands compared to a verifiable standard. In addition, the PMO is able to assess the gaps between its current performance and desired future performance and develop a roadmap for getting there. The following seven capability areas represent key components that a PMO will influence or manage directly within an organization and consequently the areas of focus during our assessment:
• Program/Project Management Office
• Project Management
• Resource Management
• Resource Capacity Planning
• Demand Management
• Financial Management
• Project Management Tools
We have developed Leading-Lagging framework tools for each of these seven capability areas based on what we see across our clients. We find these tools helpful in facilitating a deep discussion in the capability areas with our clients. Our PMO assessment methodology consists of four major phases: Current State Assessment, Future State Assessment, Gap Analysis and Recommendations and Roadmap.
Current State Assessment
The objective of the Current State Assessment is to understand today’s performance in each of the seven capability areas above. Each of the seven capability areas is assessed versus the Leading to Lagging framework. Within each area, key activities and their associated tasks and behaviors are defined along the continuum from Leading to Lagging. Information is gathered from a multitude of sources within the organization – subject matter experts, business and IT stakeholders, past and current project and program managers, and executive sponsors. This framework can be applied to PMOs with projects adhering to both agileand plan-driven practices although the agile project management capability area is typically customized to the specific organization’s Agile project management practices.
In addition to the self assessment interviews, the organization will typically provide current standards and process information, if any, for review. This approach tends to garner quick approval and the organization is able to rate itself given an objective framework of reference.
Future State Assessment
The Future State Assessment is performed after the current state analysis is finalized and communicated. The organization needs to determine the objectives for each of the core areas, and to identify opportunities for improvement. Feedback from current state interviews, workshop sessions, and future state interviews is aggregated and analyzed to form an accurate desired future state. In addition, a high-level understanding of effort and impact is assessed for each of the capability areas, in order for the organization to move from current to future state.
Gap Analysis
The organization must identify the performance gaps that exist between the current state and desired future state. The Gap Analysis outlines how the organization can move to the future state and what is needed to enhance those areas identified as opportunities for improvement and bring them up to a desired future state of operation. For each PMO capability area, gaps are classified in terms of system, process, and technology. Specific metrics and change management guidance is provided for each gap to form the basis for “how the gap is filled.”
At this stage, the organization can begin to assess the true impact and effort for each identified work activity within each PMO capability area. These are then rated on an Impact-Effort Matrix to begin to formulate an initial picture of the roadmap for implementation. Figure 3 is a sample Impact-Effort Matrix. At one end of the matrix are “Hares” – activities and tasks that have been identified as having a low impact and high effort in terms of time and money; at the other end of the matrix are the “Cheetahs” – activities and tasks that will produce a high impact to the organization with a relatively low effort.
A further analysis of any core area will reveal specific areas of improvement and the associated relative impact and effort. This impact and effort analysis is performed for all initiatives within each of the seven capability areas and for each of the seven capability areas overall.
Recommendations and Roadmap
Once the Gap Analysis is completed, the organization can begin to create a future state PMO roadmap. Benefits and critical success factors are also defined for each activity at this stage. As a result of our earlier analysis, we know that there are quick win opportunities or “Cheetahs” that may be launched in a short time period these can be specifically called out to improve ROI. Prioritization of work activities is the final task performed so that a comprehensive work plan can be developed, consistent with the organization’s overall priorities.
Conclusion
The PMO is not a cure-all for the challenges of Corporate IT. PMOs are becoming more common place with greater responsibilities. It is imperative that organizations are able to answer the three fundamental performance questions about the PMO. Implementing a PMO and hoping for success is insufficient. Organizations need to know how their PMO is performing and how far from best-in-class this performance is. Our experience is that being able to answer the fundamental questions and then creating a roadmap to close specific performance gaps is a path to a best-in-class measured and managed PMO, delivering successful programs and projects to the organization.
___________________________________________________________________
1PMI Today, May 2009
2Standish Chaos Report 2009: Are Projects Failing or are Project Managers Failing
3Santosus, Megan, “Why you need a Project Management Office (PMO)”, CIO.com, July 2003
___________________________________________________________________
About Slalom
Slalom Consulting (www.slalom.com) is a national business and technology consulting firm, founded in 2001 and headquartered in Seattle. Slalom’s services range from broad areas including program and project management, business process improvement, and software development, to specialized solutions such as ERP, business intelligence, CRM and more. As a winner of Consulting Magazine’s “Top Ten Firms to Work For,” Slalom is best known for its highly-experienced, locally-based teams and consultants who consistently take client projects from strategy through successful implementation. In addition to Seattle, Slalom has offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Portland, San Francisco and Southern California.
About the Authors
Michael S. Kenny (michael.kenny@slalom.com) BComm, MBS, PMP is the Managing Director of Slalom Consulting, San Francisco. Mr. Kenny has more than 18 years of consulting experience across industries including High-Tech, Aerospace and Defense, Communications, Automotive and Healthcare and has led IT Strategy, Business Process Reengineering, Enterprise Architecture, Business Intelligence, and Supply Chain engagements for a wide array of Fortune 500 companies. Originally from Ireland, Mr. Kenny holds a Bachelors of Commerce and a Masters of Business, Strategic Management and Planning from University College Dublin, National University of Ireland.
Will Yen (will.yen@slalom.com) is a Senior Consultant at Slalom Consulting, San Francisco. Mr. Yen has 8 years experience delivering business solutions for Fortune 500 companies. He has a deep knowledge of PMO and Project Management Methodology, Social Media, Marketing and IT Strategy. Mr. Yen holds a Master’s of Science in Applied Economics from University of Georgia, Athens and an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are provided by Slalom Consulting to provide general business information on a particular topic and do not constitute professional advice with respect to your business. The names of companies and products used in this article may be trademarks of their respective owners. Their use in this article is not an assertion of ownership and does not imply any association between Slalom and the owners of such trademarks.
©2009 Slalom Consulting. All rights reserved.
In today’s challenging business environment, Corporate IT is constantly asked to deliver more value with less and to optimize program and project delivery for the business. To do this, many IT organizations have created a Program or Project Management Office (PMO) to help manage and own program and project execution and methodology.
A recent Project Management Institute (PMI) survey found that 60 percent of respondent organizations have a PMO, with 4.5 years being the average age of the PMO.1 The Standish Group reports that 66 percent of projects fail or are challenged.2 In many organizations, a PMO is established to improve this and solve associated problems with program and project execution.
PMOs create additional value by providing standards, processes and policies that create an overall framework for more efficient project delivery. According to CIO Magazine, “PMOs can help CIOs by providing the structure needed to standardize project management practices and to facilitate IT project portfolio management, as well as determine methodologies for repeatable processes.”3
Still, there are many issues IT faces in choosing or designing the right PMO – corporate culture, size of the organization, acentralized vs. decentralized PMO, program and project management maturity, and the annual number of projects are just some of the factors that need to be considered when designing the PMO and its governance. The multitude of corporate attributes necessitates a customized approach to designing the right PMO.
The PMO can also act as a crucial communication hub, not only facilitating project team communication, but identifying and reporting on key data to business sponsors, executive stakeholders, resource and demand managers, and other project/program teams. PMOs create the standard by which program and project community members communicate, thus decreasing confusion and information misunderstandings. Our future research hopes to provide additional insight into how social media opportunities like community building can optimize program and project communication and interaction.
PMOs also provide fundamental guidance in developing a program and project management core competency and program and project management career development within the enterprise. Training schedules and curriculums can be developed through internal resources and external organizations in order to create this core competency within the enterprise. PMOs can also provide project management coaching and mentorship during current projects.
You cannot manage what you cannot measure. The PMO can help management by determining and communicating key project metrics – delivering the right information to the right people at the right time. PMOs will typically track enterprise-wide measures on the state of project or program management, delivery and the earned value being provided to the business stakeholders.
We challenge our clients to answer three fundamental performance questions regarding their existing PMO:
• Do you know how your PMO is performing versus your expectations?
• What are the objective standards for your PMO’s performance?
• How far away is your PMO from leading practices?
Despite the ubiquity and history of PMOs we find that very few organizations can answer these questions with confidence. We present a framework to answer them.
Our Perspective
In our experience, there are a common set of responsibilities across all PMOs. For example, most PMOs will develop and implement a set of project management processes to assist project team members. This commonality has helped us to create a “Leading to Lagging” assessment framework used in analyzing the PMO for our clients.
To help the enterprise with the evaluation, we developed a rigorous PMO assessment methodology grounded in these “Leading to Lagging” practices that enable a PMO to measure where it stands compared to a verifiable standard. In addition, the PMO is able to assess the gaps between its current performance and desired future performance and develop a roadmap for getting there. The following seven capability areas represent key components that a PMO will influence or manage directly within an organization and consequently the areas of focus during our assessment:
• Program/Project Management Office
• Project Management
• Resource Management
• Resource Capacity Planning
• Demand Management
• Financial Management
• Project Management Tools
We have developed Leading-Lagging framework tools for each of these seven capability areas based on what we see across our clients. We find these tools helpful in facilitating a deep discussion in the capability areas with our clients. Our PMO assessment methodology consists of four major phases: Current State Assessment, Future State Assessment, Gap Analysis and Recommendations and Roadmap.
Current State Assessment
The objective of the Current State Assessment is to understand today’s performance in each of the seven capability areas above. Each of the seven capability areas is assessed versus the Leading to Lagging framework. Within each area, key activities and their associated tasks and behaviors are defined along the continuum from Leading to Lagging. Information is gathered from a multitude of sources within the organization – subject matter experts, business and IT stakeholders, past and current project and program managers, and executive sponsors. This framework can be applied to PMOs with projects adhering to both agileand plan-driven practices although the agile project management capability area is typically customized to the specific organization’s Agile project management practices.
In addition to the self assessment interviews, the organization will typically provide current standards and process information, if any, for review. This approach tends to garner quick approval and the organization is able to rate itself given an objective framework of reference.
Future State Assessment
The Future State Assessment is performed after the current state analysis is finalized and communicated. The organization needs to determine the objectives for each of the core areas, and to identify opportunities for improvement. Feedback from current state interviews, workshop sessions, and future state interviews is aggregated and analyzed to form an accurate desired future state. In addition, a high-level understanding of effort and impact is assessed for each of the capability areas, in order for the organization to move from current to future state.
Gap Analysis
The organization must identify the performance gaps that exist between the current state and desired future state. The Gap Analysis outlines how the organization can move to the future state and what is needed to enhance those areas identified as opportunities for improvement and bring them up to a desired future state of operation. For each PMO capability area, gaps are classified in terms of system, process, and technology. Specific metrics and change management guidance is provided for each gap to form the basis for “how the gap is filled.”
At this stage, the organization can begin to assess the true impact and effort for each identified work activity within each PMO capability area. These are then rated on an Impact-Effort Matrix to begin to formulate an initial picture of the roadmap for implementation. Figure 3 is a sample Impact-Effort Matrix. At one end of the matrix are “Hares” – activities and tasks that have been identified as having a low impact and high effort in terms of time and money; at the other end of the matrix are the “Cheetahs” – activities and tasks that will produce a high impact to the organization with a relatively low effort.
A further analysis of any core area will reveal specific areas of improvement and the associated relative impact and effort. This impact and effort analysis is performed for all initiatives within each of the seven capability areas and for each of the seven capability areas overall.
Recommendations and Roadmap
Once the Gap Analysis is completed, the organization can begin to create a future state PMO roadmap. Benefits and critical success factors are also defined for each activity at this stage. As a result of our earlier analysis, we know that there are quick win opportunities or “Cheetahs” that may be launched in a short time period these can be specifically called out to improve ROI. Prioritization of work activities is the final task performed so that a comprehensive work plan can be developed, consistent with the organization’s overall priorities.
Conclusion
The PMO is not a cure-all for the challenges of Corporate IT. PMOs are becoming more common place with greater responsibilities. It is imperative that organizations are able to answer the three fundamental performance questions about the PMO. Implementing a PMO and hoping for success is insufficient. Organizations need to know how their PMO is performing and how far from best-in-class this performance is. Our experience is that being able to answer the fundamental questions and then creating a roadmap to close specific performance gaps is a path to a best-in-class measured and managed PMO, delivering successful programs and projects to the organization.
___________________________________________________________________
1PMI Today, May 2009
2Standish Chaos Report 2009: Are Projects Failing or are Project Managers Failing
3Santosus, Megan, “Why you need a Project Management Office (PMO)”, CIO.com, July 2003
___________________________________________________________________
About Slalom
Slalom Consulting (www.slalom.com) is a national business and technology consulting firm, founded in 2001 and headquartered in Seattle. Slalom’s services range from broad areas including program and project management, business process improvement, and software development, to specialized solutions such as ERP, business intelligence, CRM and more. As a winner of Consulting Magazine’s “Top Ten Firms to Work For,” Slalom is best known for its highly-experienced, locally-based teams and consultants who consistently take client projects from strategy through successful implementation. In addition to Seattle, Slalom has offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Portland, San Francisco and Southern California.
About the Authors
Michael S. Kenny (michael.kenny@slalom.com) BComm, MBS, PMP is the Managing Director of Slalom Consulting, San Francisco. Mr. Kenny has more than 18 years of consulting experience across industries including High-Tech, Aerospace and Defense, Communications, Automotive and Healthcare and has led IT Strategy, Business Process Reengineering, Enterprise Architecture, Business Intelligence, and Supply Chain engagements for a wide array of Fortune 500 companies. Originally from Ireland, Mr. Kenny holds a Bachelors of Commerce and a Masters of Business, Strategic Management and Planning from University College Dublin, National University of Ireland.
Will Yen (will.yen@slalom.com) is a Senior Consultant at Slalom Consulting, San Francisco. Mr. Yen has 8 years experience delivering business solutions for Fortune 500 companies. He has a deep knowledge of PMO and Project Management Methodology, Social Media, Marketing and IT Strategy. Mr. Yen holds a Master’s of Science in Applied Economics from University of Georgia, Athens and an MBA from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are provided by Slalom Consulting to provide general business information on a particular topic and do not constitute professional advice with respect to your business. The names of companies and products used in this article may be trademarks of their respective owners. Their use in this article is not an assertion of ownership and does not imply any association between Slalom and the owners of such trademarks.
©2009 Slalom Consulting. All rights reserved.
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