THE EMERGENCE OF project offices on the corporate landscape has been driven by the desire to improve the success rate of projects, which continually become more complex, and by the need to relieve the project manager of the administrative chores associated with managing a project. To better understand the impact of this emergence, let's examine what a project office is, why it is needed, its functions, how to sell and implement a project office, and the emergence of a virtual project office.
What is a Project Office? A project office is in the eye of the beholder. Research has shown that it can be anything an organization wants it to be. In the past, the project office meant a program to maintain best practices, a venue for the keepers of the project management discipline. It was recognized widely as a static repository of project management information controlled at a high level in the organization. Lately, the concept has been redefined out of necessity, assuming an operational support role for the project manager. In this context, the project office can be defined as an organizational entity that assists the project manager in achieving the goals of the project by providing assistance in planning, estimating, scheduling, monitoring and controlling the project. We would classify this organization as an emerging project office.
The project office can be located at any of several levels in the organization, from project to business unit to corporate level, as illustrated in Exhibit 1. At each level the needs and support provided by the project office varies, as does the staffing. For example, at the project level (Level 1) the staff may consist of one to three professionals responsible for schedule tracking, status, and variance analysis and handling of administrative chores. At the business unit level (Level 2) the focus is on multiple projects. The corporate-level project office (Level 3) deals with corporate policies and procedures and therefore should have the fewest professionals.
A mature project office provides many types of services. In researching the book Project Office—A Key to Managing Projects Effectively (Block, T.R., and Frame, J.D., 1998, Crisp Publications), we found project offices at various levels and providing various services. At corporate level the project offices were generally regarded as Project Management Centers of Excellence. The professionals who staff these project offices should be experienced and trained in advanced management and leadership skills because they will continually interface with senior project personnel, senior management and the customer. Many of the project office personnel should be certified project management professionals (PMPs). Some of the services performed by project offices include just-in-time training, development of methods and standards, administration, consulting and mentoring, scheduling and status reports, and a “home” for project managers.
Why is a Project Office Needed? The poor track record of projects described in the Standish Group study (see “Chaos, Charting the Seas of Information Technology,” The Standish Group International Inc.,1994) has caused more interest in helping project managers. In addition, the complexity of projects increases as technology increases. A desktop rollout of a client/server solution is a lot more complex than hooking dumb terminals to a mainframe. The many details of this rollout have to be coordinated, planned and scheduled. The project office assists the project manager in this important function lest the project manager get mired in detail.
Exhibit 1. The project office can be located at any of several levels in the organization. At each level the needs and support provided by the project office varies, as does the staffing. At Level 1 the staff may consist of one to three professionals responsible for schedule tracking, status, and variance analysis and handling of administrative chores. At the business unit level (Level 2) the focus is on multiple projects; at the corporate level (Level 3) it is on corporate policies and procedures.
Exhibit 2. The emphasis of the project office should be on supporting the project manager, not taking responsibility for the project. The project office takes care of the myriad details, leaving the project manager free to focus on the important duties of leading, negotiating, and customer relationship—the “art” aspects of project management.
The project manager must accomplish a number of duties throughout the life cycle of a project, the most important duty being to make things happen and influence others. The project manager does not have the time to enter, manipulate and schedule data in the latest project management software. This is the responsibility of the project office. The project manager must be knowledgeable of the tool and conscious of project performance, but he or she must not become mired in the data entry. If the project manager doesn't delegate the detailed scheduling, status and variance reporting duties to the project office, he or she is foregoing the important leading, negotiating, and customer relationship duties. Exhibit 2 illustrates the duties that can be performed by the project office in support of the project manager.
The days of “Trust me!” are over. The customer wants to see detailed project plans and schedules and expects the contractor to manage according to the plans submitted in the proposal. These factors have created an additional burden on the project manager. The detailed planning, scheduling, resource loading and status and variance reporting has to be done, but not solely by the project manager. The project office assists the project manager in these duties.
More organizations are concerned with reducing cycle times and getting products to market sooner. There is more emphasis on re-use of data and products and more pressure to stop reinventing the wheel. These organizations also want to use their highly skilled but scarce professionals on multiple projects and they want project data consolidated and simplified on an “Executive Dashboard” display. The project office is best suited to accomplish these new demands.
Functions of a Mature Project Office. A mature project office is a full-service provider of project management services, either to individual projects or (at Level 2) multiple projects. Here's a closer look at some of the services provided:
Methods and Standards. Project management processes are developed, used, refined and proliferated throughout the organization as best practices by the project office. For example, the project office should enforce a project management process that spans project selection to project closure. From these processes, metrics are developed to measure project performance and improvement. These best practices and lessons learned are stored in a repository for use on subsequent projects. Many large organizations are effectively using their intranet and Web as repositories of best practices. The project office also is involved in internal benchmarking of projects as well as project evaluation. A mature project office should eventually get involved with external benchmarking to further try to improve project performance.
Just-In-Time Training. The project office should be concerned with training consistency. A project office in a small company may have to develop and deliver the project management training or broker it to a vendor. In large organizations, the training is normally developed and delivered by a corporate training organization. Here the project office is concerned primarily with the integrity of the curriculum. In either case, the project office should provide a full range of “Just-In-Time” project management training for newly formed project teams. Often the corporate trainers cannot accommodate the training needs of these teams because of schedule and enrollment conflicts.
Project Support. In most organizations, project management means scheduling. In addition to scheduling, the project office should also be involved with project planning, resource estimating, project control, reporting, variance analysis, and administrative support. The administrative support can be significant. Recent studies indicate that over 50 percent of the project manager's time is devoted to administrative actions. The project office should also maintain the issue tracking and change control processes. The visibility room or “war room” is established and maintained by the project office and they maintain or feed an enterprise-wide project management system.
Project Consulting and Mentoring. Many organizations are using consulting/mentoring to supplement their formal project management and leadership training. This function, if executed properly, can do more to sell the organization and the customer on project management than all the rhetoric imaginable. The mentors/consultants can also gain an inseparable relationship with the project manager if they provide value to the project. The reputation of the project office is enhanced by continued responsiveness to the project management needs of the organization. The project office should also provide project risk assessments, project start-up assistance, project recovery assistance, and proposal support either as writers or reviewers. This is an excellent way to write project support into the project proposal and share the cost with the customer.
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Exhibit 3. Of all the steps shown here, identifying the champion is the most difficult and the most critical to success. Ye t before this can happen, you must thoroughly assess the organization's use of and need for project management.
Exhibit 4. A “Gap Analysis Chart” is useful for organizing your thoughts as to where you are and where you want to be with the project office. This chart puts the entire plan in perspective and allows for a progressive rollout that can be budgeted appropriately.
Project Managers. The project office is an excellent place to maintain a “stable” of project managers. Project managers are assigned to the project office in order to control this scarce resource and for administrative reasons to monitor their career development, job assignments and job performance. The project managers are subsequently assigned projects of varying duration and complexity based on availability and experience. Project managers that are “on the bench” can use this time for personal development by attending training courses or serving as trainers, mentors, internal consultants or project evaluators.
How to Sell Senior Management. Selling senior management on the need for a project office may be the most difficult but is certainly the most important step in implementing a project office. Your success or failure hangs in the balance, so this cannot be taken lightly (Exhibit 3). Before approaching senior management, assess your organization to determine its needs.
Assess Your Organization. It doesn't matter whether it's a small organization or a large one, you have to find out what's happening in the entire organization. You must determine which business units are using project management and which are not. Often each business unit is doing project management differently. People take pride in whatever they have developed and find useful. The assessment allows you to uncover these differences and choose the best practice and try to improve it. Focus groups are useful to get all business unit representatives to cooperate in improving the best practice and adopting it for their business unit's use. During the assessment many issues that are common to most organizations will surface regarding the implementation of a project office:
■ The value to the organization
■ The cost hit to the bottom line
■ The value to the customer
■ Whether to include the project office cost in the bid
■ Who identifies and develops the project managers
■ The value of internal consulting and mentoring.
These issues should not be set aside to address later. They should be frankly addressed in the comprehensive rollout plan.
Identify a Senior Management Champion. This could be the most important task in attempting to rollout a project office and to mitigate the perception of “empire building.” A project champion at the senior level is an absolute necessity if the rollout is to succeed. The higher the level in the organization the better the chance of success. The axiom that “When the Body Moves, the Head Tends to Follow” isn't always true in organizations that have tried to implement project management. Often there is strong project management use and support at the lower organizational levels yet very little project management acceptance at the top. If this situation exists in an organization it is not managing by projects and cannot be considered a project-driven organization.
Determine Functions and Staffing. The initial functions of a project office should be based on need. This need should have been uncovered in the assessment. Staff to that need only. If a consulting need is identified, then the project office should be staffed with experienced project professionals. Keeping the staff small until the demand builds is the prudent staffing strategy to selling the project office concept.
Prepare a Comprehensive Communication Plan. A communication plan is often overlooked in a project office rollout. It is vital to the subsequent success of the project office. The organization must be bombarded with information about the capabilities of the project office and its willingness to help the business units. Keep in mind that the ultimate goal of the communication plan is to gain awareness and customers for the project office. The plan should address the project office rollout and how to mitigate any organizational issues. Various media should be used, and the plan should include the message announcement frequency. Many organizations do a good job of communicating a rollout but fail to consistently advertise the capabilities of the project office. A consistent message is very important in a growth organization that is hiring new employees or procuring new organizations. In a few months, there will be hundreds of employees that weren't in the organization during the rollout and are unaware of the project office announcements and its capabilities. The communication plan has to include the delivery of consistent and frequent project office messages.
Prepare a Comprehensive Rollout Plan and Budget. The comprehensive rollout plan should be developed jointly with all business unit representatives to break down the resistance-to-change barriers, to obtain buy-in from the representatives and ultimately their senior managers, and to gain commitment to implement the plan.
A “Gap Analysis Chart,” as shown in Exhibit 4, is useful to organize your thoughts as to where you are and where you want to be with the project office. This chart puts the entire plan in perspective and allows for a progressive rollout that can be budgeted appropriately. Nothing will kill this effort faster than senior management's belief that this is a costly endeavor with no bottom line benefit.
Obtain Funding and Staffing. Often the process of obtaining funding can be a humbling experience. However, it doesn't have to be that way if you are selling the need and benefits. It should go smoothly if you have buy-in from the business unit representatives and the project office budget is progressive. A progressive budget portrays a smooth increase in cost throughout the year. It conveys the impression that staff will be increased only as the need arises and therefore the overhead costs will not be uncontrolled. The keys to success are a thorough, comprehensive rollout plan and a champion or sponsor. With a few telephone calls, the champion can help gain valuable support throughout the organization for the rollout plan and budget.
Exhibit 5. The project office depicted here is physically situated at the home office. This office supports the efforts of the people in the field. For example, it maintains project management methods and standards that team members need to carry out their work; it maintains a re-use library of templates, algorithms and processes developed on other projects, which are available for use on current efforts; and it serves as a liaison with the organization's functional groups.
Exhibit 6. As a project office matures, the organization will begin to reap the full progressive benefits of a project office. The hidden benefit of the project office is the gradual assimilation of project management into the entire organization.
Conduct a Pilot. Before rolling out the project office to the entire organization, test your project office concepts with a pilot project in a supportive organization, preferably in the organization of your champion or sponsor. Critically analyze the test results and make appropriate adjustments, then broadcast the positive benefits and keep communicating regularly.
Proceed Intelligently and Slowly. If an organization hasn't used project management consistently, they probably don't need it overnight. The concept of implementing project management throughout an organization through the services of the project office often is not readily apparent. This concept will require a continual sell in the organization, so it's better to proceed intelligently and slowly, based on immediate need. Capitalize on success but continue to grow the capability slowly into a mature project office, a project office that provides a full service.
Supporting a Virtual Project Team. “Virtual” teams are increasingly carrying out projects where team members are geographically scattered. Project offices must be capable of dealing with this growing phenomenon. Their primary role is to provide an environment that enables virtual teams to operate effectively.
Today the focus on virtual projects has shifted from grappling with technical feasibility to dealing with management issues. Some of the challenges associated with implementing virtual projects are obvious. For example, how do we handle the fact that team members may reside in different time zones? While this may not pose serious problems for a team split between Atlanta and Chicago (with a one-hour time difference), it can create difficulties when team members operate in Atlanta, Singapore, Bombay and
IN THE FUTURE, projects will continue to rise in complexity, placing greater strain on the project team. The project office will assume an inseparable role of assisting the project manager in managing successful projects. As a project office matures to a full-service provider of project management, organizations will begin to reap the full progressive benefits of a project office, as shown in Exhibit 6. The hidden benefit of the project office is the gradual assimilation of project management into the entire organization. ■
Thomas R. Block, PMP, vice president for professional services at PM Solutions Inc., is a consultant, author and lecturer specializing in establishing project offices, project startups, project intervention and recovery and “just-in-time” training. He is also a visiting corporate Fellow at the George Washington University International Center for Project Management Excellence. He and J. Davidson Frame are co-authors of The Project Office: A Key to Managing Projects Effectively, 1998, Crisp Publications.