TITLE: PMO director
ORGANIZATION: National Football League
LOCATION: New York, New York, USA
Legions of fans watch National Football League (NFL) games for the riveting on-field action. The organization's success, however, relies in no small measure on what the audience doesn't see: behind-the-scenes technology. Since 2012, Sandra Manigault has been the director of the project management office (PMO) for the NFL's IT department. Ms. Manigault, who has two decades of IT project management experience, leads a team of 15 project managers who run about 120 projects at a time.
What led the NFL's IT department to create the PMO in 2012?
When I joined the NFL, the IT department's team members were all doing their own projects, but upper management did not have visibility into all of the work. So the department wanted to create a PMO to make certain we're successfully partnering with our clients.
What processes have you implemented since then?
I put together a standard process so that our teams don't just start working on a project. Now projects first go through a steering committee, which consists of vice presidents, senior technical staff, relationship managers and myself. At the steering committee, we give the reasons we need to do the project and explain what might happen if we don't. Once the steering committee approves the projects, we track them in our project management tool so the CIO and other executives can track the work we're doing.
For the Super Bowl, we ensure technology readiness. But the weather is a big risk.
How does the rest of the IT department participate in that?
We open the steering committee meetings to everyone in the IT department so that we're as transparent as possible, even if everyone there doesn't vote on the projects. Communication and collaboration are important to us: We always want to make certain that everyone in IT is aware of all our projects, even if they're not a resource on every project.
What benefits have you seen from this process?
Our CIO now has visibility into our projects, budgets, resources and risks, as well as the prioritization of our projects as high, medium or low. This visibility helps us make better decisions about the projects we do each year. On a monthly basis we distribute our project health-check report, which covers each project's scope, budget, schedule and milestones, as well as its status. This way, our CIO, vice presidents and project teams can immediately see a project's status and we can decide how to turn around any troubled project. Also, we no longer have to ask for resources while we're executing a project because everyone knows which projects were approved by the steering committee—they can see the pipeline.
What types of projects does the PMO run?
They range from data center build-outs to data cloud platforms to technology solutions. Last year we implemented a nine-month project to build a security service that can monitor and respond to any risks to our data and assets. The project took place during the football season, so one of the main challenges we faced was the logistics of rolling it out. After a kickoff meeting where we explained the project and its schedule with all of the NFL's 32 clubs, we had individual meetings with each club to give them more insight and find the right timing for each of them to test the new service. We had to be highly collaborative.
How does the PMO approach project delivery?
Based on the unique characteristics of a project, we will use waterfall, agile or a hybrid of both. There are four criteria we look at to determine the best delivery approach: type, priority, complexity and risk level. Roughly speaking, we use waterfall 40 percent of the time, hybrid approaches 40 percent and agile approaches for the other 20 percent.
What's the biggest risk you encounter on one of your most high-profile projects, the Super Bowl?
For the Super Bowl, we ensure technology readiness. But the weather is a big risk on the Super Bowl. So we are involved in a lot of planning sessions conducted by our events department, and we conduct a lot of on-site tests to make certain the technology, like Wi-Fi, will work correctly under different weather conditions.
What are the primary challenges you face?
I group the challenges I face into three buckets: people, process and technology. With people, for instance, there might be a team member who's on vacation or we might lose a resource. With process, we might have a team member who's not providing status updates or participating in meetings. With technology, a solution might take two weeks longer than planned.
What's one way you handle people challenges?
I decided that with all of our projects we should assign both a project manager, who's responsible for delivering it on time, and a technical lead, who's responsible for the end-to-end solution. So if we lose a project manager, we still have the technical lead who can provide project updates while I onboard someone else. PM
Small Talk
What's the one skill every project manager should have?
Adaptability. Project managers need to adapt their style to work with many different personalities and communication preferences.
What is the best professional advice you've ever received?
“The five P's of success: Proper planning prevents poor performance.” I end all of my staff meetings by saying that.
What is a book that has special meaning for you?
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I love the quote that's paraphrased, “If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.” I'm a big planner; I always like to know where I'm going.