Modern libraries are deeply and digitally connected. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) provides the behind-the-scenes services they rely on to acquire, catalog and exchange materials. The nonprofit cooperative organization serves about 17,000 libraries in 120 countries, helping them process more than 40 million search requests each day. In recent years, OCLC has grown globally through mergers and acquisitions—creating a greater need for executive oversight of the organization's strategic initiatives.
To help provide that, OCLC brought Drew Bordas on board in 2014. He oversees the organization's project management office (PMO), where projects include new product releases and data-center migrations. Mr. Bordas started his career as a project manager in systems consulting, but during the last decade he's taken on leadership roles, applying project management standards and practices across entire organizations.
Management operations includes the PMO and our executive processes—how the executive team reviews business cases and how it operates as a team. Customer operations involves all customer interactions that aren't sales, such as support and system implementations.
Did the PMO exist when you joined OCLC?
A PMO did exist, but it was a mashup of a traditional PMO and an auditing team. One of my first responsibilities was to restructure it as an enterprise PMO. The PMO team had the skills: Eight of our nine project managers have a Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification, and they're all senior level. But I had to get this team working on the most important and strategic projects in the organization, which is what you want an enterprise PMO to do.
What we wanted from our PMO is no-nonsense clarity on project status and communicating what the executive team can do to help.
Also, a big reason I was brought in was to bring a project management focus to the executive level. When you don't have that, issues get buried. So I had to learn what did and didn't work in the past.
What weaknesses did you find?
There was no standardized sense of what was important or not, or what was going well or not. If I asked, “What are the most important projects in the company?” the answer I'd get was, “It depends on who you ask.” Even the standard project status of red, yellow or green did not exist at the executive level. I had to define these things—while communicating that it's not about finger-pointing but about how healthy large initiatives should run.
How did you create a new normal?
We started tracking budget, time and scope. I brought in a new director of the PMO who reports to me, and he put in one of the best status tracking mechanisms I've ever seen. What we wanted from our PMO is no-nonsense clarity on project status and communicating what the executive team can do to help.
What does executive oversight look like now?
I sit at the table with other executives and give them a very clear picture of each initiative. None of the projects is mine, so I can give an unbiased view. If executives want to know about a key initiative, detailed status reports are now at their fingertips. For big initiatives, we carefully choose where to put finite resources and work with the business units to support success.
How did you get the executive team on board with these changes?
Support for these changes came from our CEO, Skip Prichard, which made everything easier. He has done a great job setting the principles he wants us to follow: be honest, assume good intent in others, talk about issues before they're perfectly packaged as a nice presentation deck.
We built a culture of trust in the executive team so we can talk about the brutal facts of a situation in a healthy way. If you can't do that, you could have the best project managers in the world, but they'll constantly be caught up in difficult political situations.
Can you describe a project that's benefited from the improved processes?
When you grow through acquisitions, a lot of the underlying infrastructure can be very different across the organization. But because our products are global, our infrastructure has to be the same. So our CIO launched a multimillion-dollar project to standardize our data centers while also enhancing our security, privacy and scalability. We asked the organization to do this massive amount of work in just 12 months. It was not easy for our customers—and some of our employees—to see why we were doing this behind-the-scenes project. There were sticky conversations, and our project managers handled them masterfully. We also had great executive sponsorship from the CIO. The project came in on time and on budget in 2016 and was a fantastic success.
What's an example of a customer-facing initiative?
One of our flagship products facilitates the exchange of physical materials among the largest libraries and universities in North America. The product's user interface was dated, so it needed to be modernized and then moved to the cloud. We wanted to make the user experience better, but “better” can be a very slippery slope for scope. Drawing a box around scope required constant dialogue, but that's what good project managers do. PM
Small Talk
What's the one skill every project manager should have?
The ability to choose the right tool for the situation. I've seen project managers act like their tools are hammers, so everything looks like a nail. They'll use certain templates whether the project needs it or not.
What's the best professional advice you've ever received?
“It's okay to fail, but fail quickly.” That advice can help avoid analysis paralysis. You don't have to be petrified of every decision you make.
What's a book that has special meaning for you?
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. He says some people are naturally good at connecting people together. That's what project managers do.