Our first series of On Target seminars were held at the start of April in both Sydney and Melbourne and the topic was “PMO – what does it mean to your  business”.

Clearly the topic of PMO's and how they relate to business advantage is high on the agenda for management and project professionals.  Despite the early start time, the first PM-Partners group “On Target” Breakfast seminar was well attended in both Sydney and Melbourne. In case you missed out here is a summary of the key points addressed by Rhian Saunders, PMO Practice Lead.

What is the role of the PMO?

Depending on the needs of your organisation the Project Management Office (PMO) can take on a monitoring, consultancy/supporting, or a total governance role.

Too often PMOs focus on traditional governance roles such as centralised reporting, implementing a standard Project Management methodology and reducing the cost of delivering projects. Whilst these are fundamental functions of a PMO they are not enough to justify the ongoing existence of a PMO.

For a PMO to truly add value it must also:

• Help ensure that only projects that are of high-value to the organisation are selected so the best returns are achieved from money invested in projects


• Track the benefits of projects undertaken to ensure they are delivering the business outcomes required


• Enable effective portfolio management so benefit can be derived in amortisation of costs across projects, seamless integration can be achieved between projects and the overall portfolio and its parts are clearly aligned to the business strategy


• Promote PM practices and provide a training program for PM related staff to ensure continual improvement of business critical project deployment that achieves the required ‘bottom line’ results.

Why Implement a PMO?

The benefits of a well-established PMO include:

• Reduction in projects of low-value to the organisation so costs are reduced and scarce resources are allocated to projects that achieve the greatest contribution
  
• Increased visibility of projects and project performance to ensure all stakeholders are aware of any action required to support successful project delivery and so maximise returns on the projects
  
• Effective allocation of resources across projects to minimise project costs and improve ROI
  
• Improved PM capability to enable the business to rapidly deploy change and so achieve reduced overheads, competitive advantage or a combination of the two.

Gaining maximum effect from a PMO

Many PMOs are disbanded or restructured within the first two years of operation. To avoid this happening to you, and to give your PMO the best chance of success, consider the following points:

• Gain support from all areas and levels of the organisation
  
• Report directly to a senior executive
  
• Clearly define what services you will deliver
  
• Provide enough resource and use appropriately qualified staff
  
• Mature incrementally as you prove your worth and gain support

What works well…

• Be a service provider not a controller
  
• Provide a flexible methodology to avoid bureaucracy overkill
  
• Ensure projects are aligned to organisational goals
  
• Align practices to a portfolio management framework
  
• Market the PMO and advertise project success regularly!

And what doesn’t work so well…

• A big bang approach – as this causes resistance from project staff and creates pressure for the PMO to demonstrate benefits early
  
• Aligning with one particular business group – such as IT
  
• Forcing methodologies – a methodology contains best practices but project staff should still be able to adapt the methodology to suit their specific needs
  
• Being viewed as a control function – no-one wants to help the admin / audit police!

Current Trends

More and more companies are expecting PMO staff to be highly experienced and appropriately qualified.

Due to limited expert availability more and more organisations are looking at using consulting and outsourcing options to help implement, staff, or manage their PMO solution.

In Summary

The PMO is much more than the project control function or only part of a single department. An effective PMO is clearly aligned with the organisation’s strategy, provides a vehicle to enable rapid deployment of strategic initiatives across business units and ensures overall project costs are minimised whilst enabling improved bottom line returns.

You may be interested in reading some PM-Partners group articles that were published recently.  The statistics quoted are based on the survey that the attendees completed to register for the Q1 On-Target Seminar “The PMO and What it Means to Your Business”

The first is an on-line publication that has very broad readership in the IT community called iTwire.

Please click on the following link:  Techies leading deployments a recipe for disaster: project management boss

The second article was published in iTnews.com.au.

Please click on the following link:  <http://www.itnews.com.au/News/78417,pmpartners-sees-need-for-bridge-in-project-gaps.aspx >

And here is the third article that appeared in Computer Reseller News.

Please click on the following: link: http://www.crn.com.au/News/78417,pmpartners-sees-need-for-bridge-in-project-gaps.aspx.

This week's Quarter 2 On Target seminar topic is another hot one - "Executing Effective Organisational Change" and the seminars are presented by PM-Partners group Organisational Change Practice Lead, Margaret Tumeth. The seminar registration includes another series of survey questions relevant to change management, so keep an eye out for the results in our Q3 newsletter.

PM-Partners group are very pleased to announce that we have recently achieved status as a Microsoft Certified Partner, Enterprise Project Management.

This places PM-Partners group in a small and select group of organisations that are certified in this specialty. The benefit of this official certification to you, our client, is that we are able to consult and ultimately implement a Microsoft Enterprise Project Management solution for you.

For more information about Microsoft Enterprise Project Management please phone 02 9900 1400.

The IIBA™ (International Institute of Business Analysis) has recently announced that the CBAP™ (Certified Business Analysis Professional) exam will be available online in Sydney from 1 September.  Melbourne will also have an exam later in the year - possibly October or November.  Should you be interested we have included a link to the IIBA’s website which will give you more information http://www.theiiba.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Exam_Dates

To assist our clients in gaining this certification, PM-Partners group have a 3 day CBAP™ Exam Preparation. The intention of the workshop is not to teach you how to perform business analysis tasks or produce deliverables, but to guide you through the certification process and prepare you for the CBAP™ exam.  Here is a shortcut to the workshop overview http://www.pmpartners.com.au/pdf/tc1143.pdf

For more information about the CBAP™ certification, PM-Partners group provide a CBAP™ toolkit on the Business Analysis page of our website – here is shortcut to the relevant page http://www.pmpartners.com.au/ba.asp

The PM-Partners group is an Associate Sponsor of the IIBA™ and a Charter Endorsed Education Provider.

PM-Partners group will be involved in the following conferences over the next few months.

We would love to meet you so if you are attending any of these events, please come up and say hello.

Business Analysis World Symposium
www.baworldsymposium.com
The Rydges on Swanston Hotel, Melbourne
21-22 July
The Menzies Hotel, Sydney
24-25 July

5th Annual Project Managmenet Australia Conference - PMOz
www.pmoz.com.au
Sofitel Melbourne
18-20 August

AIPM Conference 2008
www.aipm2008.com.au
Canberra National Convention Centre
12-15 October

Just a reminder that our new website design still incorporates our own project management and business analysis research.

To see our archive of research results click here or here to vote in our bi-monthly research questions.

Melbourne, 21-22 July, The Rydges on Swanston Hotel
Sydney, 24-25 July, The Menzies Hotel

PM-Partners group are proud to again be sponsors of the Business Analysis World Symposium in both Sydney and Melbourne during July.

This year it is a bigger and better expanded 2 day format with multiple tracks, panel discussions, keynote speakers and numerous networking opporutnities.

Our own BA Practice Lead, Jim Hughes, will be speaking on two topics "The Next Step: Questioning & Negotiation for the Business Analysit" and "Business Analysis in Austrlai" Research & Future Directions".

You can save up to $150.00 when you register online so visit www.basymposiumseries.com and enter the PM-Partners group discount code "PMP" to benefit from the speical discount offer.

Project Services & Downward Economic Trends
By PM-Partners Group CEO, Phil Belcher

Difficult economic circumstances such as higher interest rates, escalating costs due to inflation, upward pressure on wages due to inflation and skills shortages all contribute to demand by stakeholders on management to more effectively utilize the resources they have to achieve appropriate returns.

As the Australian economy moves into a more difficult economic phase the need for effective execution of change is more acute.

This required change may take a myriad of forms including:

• Cost reduction
  
• Process improvement
  
• ‘Down-sizing’ of infrastructure
  
• Automation of tasks
  
• Increased involvement of the customer in their own service delivery
  
• Increased marketing to specific target customers
  
• Outsourcing of tasks locally or internationally
  
• In-sourcing of tasks to remove previously acceptable supplier contract overheads (margins)
  
• Re-focus on core competence with subsequent divestiture of non core processes, business units and companies
  
• etc, etc.

Wherever there is change there is time constraint, costs in terms of deploying the change and/or the opportunity cost of time spent without the change and of course risk both in the business effect of deploying the change as well as at the micro level of the process involved in affecting the change. It is in this environment that effective Project Management and associated services are mission critical.

Using proven methodologies, PM-Partners group are able to assist organisations to adapt to the current and future economic circumstances. Working with the business leaders who will determine their strategic change requirements, PM-Partners group can assist organisations by:

• Providing skills assessment to ensure that the organization’s project staff has the appropriate skills and experience to implement the necessary change project/program.
  
• Provide (and where necessary develop) training that is targeted to address any skills deficiencies. Having staff that are duly qualified and experienced will avoid costly over-runs, provide appropriate governance to ensure metrics are being met at all times, mitigate risk and ensure delivery in a timely manner.
  
• Consult to arrive at an effective project methodology for the organisation to ensure that the change is enabled across all business units. A well understood methodology will enable cost saving through rapid change deployment because everyone involved is working ‘in synch'.
  
• Provide Business Analysis either in the form of training for existing staff where it is identified that the BA’s are not trained to industry best practice or by providing staff who are qualified and with the appropriate experience. All too often, projects fail not only because of poor management, but due to the projects not addressing a real business need, addressing a less important need or missing some facet of the business requirement due to poor initial analysis.
  
• Provide skilled project services staff who will integrate with the customer staff to ensure the change initiative is delivered effectively using proven methodology. This can take the form of one person or an entire project team that can deploy the change and then move on thus avoiding the need for expensive increases in staff and/or management overheads to identify/hire contractors.

Difficult economic circumstances mean that businesses must increase focus on their strategy, effective financial management, customers, increasing operational efficiency and attracting/retaining the best. Often real change is required to improve in one, many or all of these areas. Effective project services and an expert partner that provides all facets of project services including capability development, project consulting, project delivery and resources are essential to the business leader that intends to use the economic circumstances to their strategic competitive advantage.

PM-Partners group has a proven track record in all facets of project services. With more than 10 years of effectively deploying mission critical projects for an impressive amount of Australia’s leading organizations PM-Partners group is ideally placed to be the partner of choice for organisations seeking to take advantage of the current economic situation.

The following statistics come directly from the April 2008 edition of PMItoday magazine:

• Total Active CAPM certifications (as at Feburary 2008) = 4,229
  
• Total Active PMP Certifications (as at February 2008) = 259,694
  
• Percentage of Companies that had an enterprise-wide PMO in place in 2007 = 54% (a major jump from 35% in 2006)

PM-Partners group has had a couple of new additions to the family.

Firstly Decler Hague and his partner Jo recently welcomed a baby girl to their family.

Luca Hague (pictured top) was born at 11.03am on 29th May and weighed in at 4.61kg.

Also, Andre Herbst and his partner Sam welcomed another baby girl with their daugher Sienna Jade Herbst.   Sienne (pictured bottom) was born earlier this year on 17 March and weighed in at 3.390kg.

Congratuations to both Decler and Jo and Andre and Sam on the birth of their beautiful daughters.  Watch out world!