How P3O can help you avoid 3 common PMO mistakes
Some organisations have implemented PMOs but certain mistakes are being repeated over and over again. One reason for this is that PMOs are being implemented from scratch – someone in the organisation is giving it their best shot but they are not using best practice or benefiting from the years of experience built in to the P3O guidance.
These are the top 3 mistakes we hear about on P3O courses:
Mistake 1: Prioritization
Portfolio Office management is usually poor because of lack of credibility of the individual involved. They are seen as simple administrators rather than the qualified professionals they should be. Pet or rogue projects easily get through into the portfolio because of senior management say "make it so". No challenge or scrutiny is provided by the portfolio office. No alignment with strategic objectives takes place and, as a result, the organization does not achieve its long term aims. Many of these projects fail to deliver benefit and cost the organization money as a result.
How the P3O course helps this situation.
By providing guidance on best practise on the course, the P3O student will understand prioritization techniques and an overview of the portfolio office and the roles within it. This will help provide the scrutiny and challenge needed to stop unrealistic projects going ahead and save the company money as well as aligning change initiatives to the objectives of the organization.
Mistake 2: Capacity planning and forecasting.
Many companies react to situations and are not pro-active. One the weakest area is the failure to co-ordinate planning and forecasting the future resource needs of both the planned change initiatives and business as usual. This results in resource bottlenecks where the initiatives and businesses as usual call on the resource at the same time. No account also is taken for pipeline management. Time and money is wasted and unnecessary conflicts result.
How the P3O course helps the situation.
P3O training provides guidance on capacity planning and its value to the company. Training courses show how capacity planning at the portfolio model helps provide clarity about resource capacity and supply and demand levels so that these can be matched to delivery requirements. A key benefit of good capacity planning is to reduce barrier to successful delivery of projects and programmes due to lack of resources or skills across the organisation. The training course looks at examples of resource capacity views in different formats.
Mistake 3: Benefits realization and tracking
Another weak area in the portfolio is benefits management - especially at programme level. Many organization spend months and millions in planning projects and programmes but don't bother checking to see if any benefits have been realised. This is very poor management as it's possible for a company to be sat on projects and programmes that have been extremely successful - but nobody is aware because nobody has tracked the benefits and learned any lessons.
How the P3O course helps the situation.
During a course, the P3O student will receive detailed information about benefits management at the portfolio, programme and project levels. Good benefits management will allow the planned change initiatives to show valuable successful lessons for the company to use on other projects and more value added to the organization. It may also provide evidence the project has exceeded it expectations and provided a return on the money. As well as guidance on setting up a benefit tracking service and model, the course provides an overview of the roles that help in creating and managing it.
