Program Management: Music To My Ears

By Claudine Sirgant

Often thought of as a highly administrative function that simply generates fancy reports and tracks time, LeadVantage Consulting believes that effective Program Management provides project leadership, standards, critical decision-making information, and support to projects using the following 11 key components. In establishing a Program Management Office (PMO), we work with our clients to analyze their situation and, depending on need, select the applicable components.  When a PMO is managed well, it can be music to your ears.

Prioritization Management: Helping an organization prioritize which projects to invest in (both dollars and resources) is essential to realizing tangible, bottom line benefits. A PMO helps establish and manage the project justification and prioritization process using a metrics-based approach to help prioritize short- and long-term project investment.

Project Process Standardization: Project Process Standardization is the establishment of standard, repeatable processes and tools for all projects, including:

• Project planning and ongoing management (i.e., project charter development and work plan development, risk and issue management, status reporting, and communication planning)
• Process improvement and documentation
• Technical requirements gathering and documentation
• Organizational change management and communication management standards
• Change control standards
• Training standards, including strategy,materials development, and facilitation

Planning and Milestone Management: The planning and milestone management function assists the program by identifying project level milestones and integrating them into an overall program level plan for the PMO to monitor.

Risk, Issue and Scope Management: The processes of risk, issue and scope management apply to programs as well as individual projects. The PMO supports individual projects by identifying and evaluating risks, issues and change requests and then integrates them at the program level in order to present an enterprise-wide viewpoint for decision making.

Project Performance Status Reporting: The project performance status reporting rolls up all individual project statuses and creates a program-level status for the quality management group and other organizational leaders. An integral part of the PMO’s responsibility within this function is to be aware of project issues and be able to not only communicate them but to help resolve them before they impact the project.

Quality Management: The quality management function (also known as governance or oversight) provides the necessary leadership, guidance, and support to help an organization prioritize and manage projects. The PMO is responsible for providing the quality management group, generally comprised of cross-functional organizational leaders, with the information, and support required to make informed project and business decisions. Typically, quality management regularly reviews information including program-level project status, risks and issues, project prioritization, and budget information.

Deliverable Review: Unlike the quality management function noted above, the PMO reviews all milestone-level deliverables and standard project management tools (e.g., risk and issue logs, organizational change management and communication plans, requirement documents, training strategies,) to help drive consistency and quality.

Resource Management: Effectively understanding and managing project resource needs and capacity is imperative to the proper allocation of resources across projects and, ultimately, programs.

Financial Management: Financial management includes forecasting future project costs, tracking actual spend, and the accurate and timely reporting on cost variances to identify the necessary program adjustments.

Vendor Management: The PMO supports vendor management by monitoring the various vendors providing services to the program and identifying supplier performance issues. Vendor performance scorecards are integrated through the PMO and individual vendors work with the PMO to understand performance-reporting standards.

Team Management:  The PMO facilitates the evaluation and training for the skills that are critical for the project teams to succeed.  The critical skills range from process improvement to technical to project management.

LeadVantage is a management consulting firm in Chicago. We are experts at helping organizations and managers handle change. We offer experienced business people that can help you by running projects, improving processes, building organizations and developing managers. Learn more about us at www.leadvantage.com or call us today at 312.701.0101.