Previous page: Project management as a core business
The PMO provides support services to increase project efficiency and effectiveness. At the outset, the skills of the project managers were assessed. Hundreds of hours of training were arranged to fill gaps, and training remains an ongoing priority.
Other services delivered by the PMO include automated status reporting, procurement and cost estimation. This support relieves project managers of routine chores so they can concentrate their energies on running the projects.
Co-ordination with an array of partners helps strengthen project management both within the branch and government-wide. Internally, the PMO continues to openly and fully discuss standards and best practices with project managers prior to their adoption.
The PMO is also working with central agency colleagues to co-ordinate approval pathways so that projects can proceed through the various checks and gates as quickly as possible. The PMO intervened recently in a specific situation to disentangle a project from conflicting timelines and commitments to different parties.
PMO staff are working to prevent such problems by ensuring each project has one detailed, authoritative schedule that reflects all commitments across all organizations involved in the project.
If services are the carrot offered by the PMO, controllership is the stick. The PMO has developed a systematic reporting structure where all project managers are required to update project schedules regularly and log risks, issues and changes as they occur.
Traffic Lights
In a controllership role, the PMO conducts a weekly assessment of all projects to verify the accuracy, timeliness and quality of the information entered, upholding the integrity of project information.
The project centre generates a weekly executive status report that shows the status of each project at a glance, so that project activities are transparent. These overview reports go to the deputy ministers of the affected ministries, the cluster CIO, the corporate CIO and other senior people.
The executive status report contains traffic-light indicators (green, yellow or red) for each element of the triple constraint: scope, schedule and cost. Project managers choose the indicators for each area and the PMO verifies these choices. In addition, the PMO assigns a traffic light to a fourth category: project information integrity.
In this way, project managers are held accountable for the quality, timeliness and accuracy of all project information, including the information that underpins the status ratings. This administrative aspect is what makes or breaks project management. The evidence shows that if there is no tracking of progress, the risk factor can mushroom. But regular reporting quickly spotlights emerging problems and the need for decisions.
Recently, as a two-year project was entering the final changes, the business area unexpectedly added new requirements. The project management system flagged the change and galvanized action. Staff did an impact assessment, forecasting a two-month delay if the new requirements were included.
The issue went to the steering committee governing the project, which endorsed the changes and extended the timelines. Without a project management process, this issue may well not have surfaced until the original deadline passed, catching everyone by surprise.
Once the PMO and a formalized consultancy were in place, we made rapid progress. We raised our score on the organizational project management maturity model (OPM3) - a comprehensive industry-standard tool based on best practices - from 30 per cent to 45 per cent within a year.
This score is calculated by rating the achievement of each of the best practices on a scale of one to five, then dividing the points achieved by the total points possible. The best practices range from measurable project objectives to documented processes and established controls. While we're heading in the right direction, we know we've just begun.
All in all, it was relatively easy to get rigorous project management off the ground. Keeping it in flight is proving harder. The momentum is extremely difficult to sustain. This is where the PMO, and its controllership function, make all the difference.
With co-operation from all project managers and continued leadership, we are creating a project management culture and making project management a core business.
We are finding that better project management increases the value of the government's investment in I&IT, resulting in improved service, lower costs and better outcomes for the public we serve.
Soussan Tabari is director of technology and business solutions, Ministries of Education and Training, Colleges and Universities, community services I&IT cluster, Government of Ontario. She can be reached at Soussan.Tabari@ontario.caRelated content:NASA exec keeps rocket science out of project managementITIL Version 3: What you need to knowIdentifying the barriers to public sector managementWhy big government IT projects failNew certification seeks governance excellenceRFPs: The costs of being unclear
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