How to create a PMO that means Business
The modern-day Project Management Office (PMO) can sometimes be seen as a passenger and facilitator of business rather than a driver of business and revenue; how do you add weight to it?
According to PMI’s 2017 Pulse of the Profession® more organisations are discovering the value of PMOs. However, on the flipside with statistics showing that 50% of project management offices close within 3 years (The Association for Project Management) and 68% of stakeholders perceive their PMOs to be bureaucratic (2013 Gartner PPM Summit), a PMO needs to demonstrate its own value, as well as adding value to the Business.
In this article we explore how your PMO can drive transformation and with the right technology you can create a PMO that means Business.
Aligning with the Business’ goals and strategy
To add weight to your PMO, its work needs to be aligned with the Business’ goals and strategy. This will enable you to create a PMO roadmap that aligns with key Business Drivers.
Cost efficiency is often a key objective for a Business, as it shows improving return on investment. Drivers such as reducing headcount and improving cost efficiencies will resonate with your C-Level Executives and stakeholders.
For example, cost efficiencies could be achieved through software that reduces the on-boarding time of project managers so they spend less time becoming familiar with the project or shadowing another team member, and can start running the project sooner.
Other ways that your PMO can demonstrate its own value are
- be the gatekeeper of organisational best-practice and compliance;
- act as the Centre of Excellence for risk management;
- drive knowledge management;
- drive strategic change management;
- connect the organisations project and strategic visions.
How can technology help?
With the right technology you can modernise and completely transform your PMO so that it can focus on those tasks needed to drive value and become a PMO that means Business.
Best Practice and Compliance
Hydra software is driven by blueprinting technology that allows the creation of meta-data models of projects, services, best-practices and the knowledge of an organisation.
A Hydra Blueprint contains everything needed for an organisation to successfully deliver its project or service, adhering to Compliance procedures. From methodology and planning to documentation and reporting, it’s all stored within one place. Blueprints govern the delivery of projects, ensuring consistency and success. They enable the collection of data each time a project is delivered, use of that data to improve forecasting and planning of future engagements and they grow organically with your Business.
From a Hydra Blueprint an organisation can translate its service or project delivery into a set of best-practice that can be shared across the organisation, its stakeholders and even with its partners.
Further reading: Templates vs Blueprints
Risk management
Hydra provides a fully customisable structure to manage all risks and issues in your projects. States, workflows and templates can be designed to follow your organisations existing risk or issue management processes, making sure that these crucial components of each project are always managed according to best-practice.
Hydra enables you to better manage risk in your projects and helps shape and drive your risk management strategy.
Knowledge management
Hydra offers you the ability to manage all your vital documents in one centralised location. You can then get instant access to online and offline documents, including training material, videos, templates, instructions, documents and deliverables directly linked to related tasks. This allows anyone who needs it access to the right information at the right time.
Hydra put knowledge and experience at the heart of your projects and can drive your knowledge transfer plan and your organisations knowledge management strategy and helps integrate knowledge management into your business processes.
PMO service
If you are looking to make cost savings in your PMO by reducing the admin effort for senior PMO Resources then Hydra offers a PMO support service to complement and enhance your PMO.
It allows your PMO to excel by taking care of support, admin, monitoring, performance, report generation and all the other necessary but time-consuming activities, allowing your PMO leaders to focus on what really matters – driving value to the Business.
If needed, Hydra PMO can guide on-boarding of new projects, planning and user management assistance and project closure support capturing lessons learned and knowledge management. It also takes care of monitoring, project compliance, risks and issues and quality control.
Hydra understands the importance of PMO's, the part they play in successful project delivery and the value they need to be adding to the Business. That’s why Hydra is made to complement your existing strategy, is hassle free to implement and offers a real Partnership approach.
Case Study
See how our client EPICOR is using Hydra to transform their PMO into one that drives Business value and organisational change.
If you would like to learn more about Hydra software then our brochure on Hydra PMO is just a few clicks away.
