Emerging PMO Trends to watch in 2014

It’s always difficult to predict the future, otherwise we would all be lottery winners, so over the past months, I have been reaching out via my own network of Execs, PMO’s, Portfolio and Project Professionals and informally discussing what are the trends which seem to be appearing for PMO’s.

So here’s what’s to look forward to on some PMO things we might start to see in 2014 based on actual practitioners points of view….

 

 

 

1 – Chief Portfolio Management Office (CPMO)

Some of the practitioners I had spoken with have been involved in discussions surrounding making the PMO type function into a division responsible for all organizational change. Since 2007 the term ‘emerging PMO’ has been used, or ‘Business Driven PMO’ from Mark Price Perry in 2009, and it now seems that some organisations are starting to think they should have a directorate responsible for landing all change; moving from an Emerging PMO to the Directing PMO.

Some consultancies have also held conversations surrounding a CCO – Chief Change Officer, or a Chief Commercial Officer responsible for development and execution of the organisations strategy.

The CCO would lead the CPMO, and sit alongside the COO (Chief Operating Officer), the CFO (Chief Finance Officer) and the CIO (Chief Information Officer). This Quartet could be more effective in the execution and embedding of strategic aims within an organization, with the accountability and sponsorship for change being led from the very top of organisations.

 

2 – Move towards SaaS and Cloud Enterprise PPM Software

In May 2013 Gartner (http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1FN5PWK&ct=130515&st=sb) published the new ‘Magic Quadrant’ for IT PPM Cloud Based services.

 

What was surprising was the percentage of organisations ready to pilot or already piloting these solutions; could this be the start of the end for the ‘big boys’?

Organisations are constantly challenged in maintaining the value delivered from Enterprise PPM software, and avoiding it becoming an expensive time tracker, but what these new Cloud solutions are showing is the ability to purchase the software on either a rolling monthly contract or for 12 months at a time. This dramatically reduces the risk for organisations to either move to another provider, or cancel the agreement if the software no longer delivers value, and reduces expensive set up on the supporting consultancy, which is sometimes required.

Therefore, this ideally places the software to also be used on large programmes, or selection or projects; if the programme is cancelled, so is the cost of the software. On the other side, it can also be deployed immediately, and from my experience, they also tend to be easier to use and more intuitive, therefore less reliance on consultancy or training.

Another advantage of cloud based PPM software, is only paying for what you need. Over the years, the larger Enterprise PPM tools which have dominated the market, try and do everything for everyone, yet a lot of organisations only need the simple stuff like tracking a couple of milestones per project, and then aggregating the projects. These cheaper software options enable the PMO to select the tool based on what their own organisations requirements are, rather than what comes out of the box.

 

3 – Move from PM Training to PM Continuous Improvement

During my last two engagements, there has been an objective given to my team and myself for ‘knowledge transfer’.

Organisations are starting to use PMO’s as a way to embed good, best practice PPM skills and train, coach, and embed these skills.

I was also speaking to another organisation who also stated they was looking for the same, yet in the last year they had just trained up their whole team on Prince2, and expected this would give Project Managers what they needed to ensure projects improved.

Other PMO practitioners and consultants I had spoken to had also said organisations wanted to avoid the ‘launch and leave’ culture of bringing in new PPM / PMO practices from consultants and training, and ensuring the organization from Sponsors to Project Managers really understood their role, and were in a position to continually improve practices already established. As one Exec said to me ‘this way we develop our people, but my department retains the knowledge’.

This opportunity places PMO Practitioners to be the leaders in developing change capability within organisations from the top through to the bottom, rather than placing practitioners on the 1-week training course.

 

4 – Portfolio Resource and Demand Management (RDM)

For years, it has been assumed by many, that Portfolio resources are an aggregation of projects / programme resources; and a lot of the ‘off the shelf’ software drive organisations down this path.

The challenge for these organisations is that a full time employee is only effective for 85% of their time (if they are lucky), and aggregating project demand forecasts do not take into account the other 15%.

The added challenge is also around how to control the constant movement of projects and project resource demands including the ‘peaks and troughs’ in demands that take place when aggregating these individual demands into a portfolio resource view.

Portfolio RDM looks at resources of people, suppliers, materials, contractors etc as a whole, and uses strategic mix of resources and partnering alongside more traditional approaches such as employees and contractors.

 

5 – Integrated PMO models and Complex Governance

Since the first 2009 P3O manual, they have referred to this as ‘hub and spoke’. The need for PMO’s to be strategic and commercially driven, but also satisfy other business drivers such as tracking and assuring the performance of projects and programmes.

This year, I have seen many organisations continuing to move a PMO into a position where it is a permanent strategic function of the organization, whilst also creating temporary PMO’s within large programmes or bespoke divisional PMO’s within departments like I.T / HR or within other companies; basically creating PMO’s reporting into PMO’s.

After speaking to many practitioners, they are now concerned that governance will become more complex with multiple levels of governance for PMO’s to navigate around, but also the opportunities, that if it is ‘done well’, the right information can be placed with the right person, for the right decision at the right time.

Complex Governance models are starting to emerge, and could easily be the success or downfall of delivery, unless a timely calendar of meetings, submissions, and information flow is agreed by all; but like any chain, if a link is broken, albeit temporarily, the whole chain fails.

 

It’s evident that over the recent years, the PMO landscape is starting to change from support and admin, towards a function with key commercial accountability. No doubt, some organisations will be ahead of this curve, and others behind, but PMO’s are now a key part for organisations to effectively deliver change.

 

I hope the above has given you some food for thought, and wish you every success in keeping to your New Year resolutions.

My personal New Year resolutions are to eat healthier and exercise more, and my professional ones are for all projects to deliver on time, to quality and cost… ….on the other hand, someone better pass me that large slice of cake and the TV handset

 

Happy New Year

@pmoplanet