Tailored PMO
Department within the Business School of a Large University
Stakeholders had competing priorities that couldn’t be ignored:
The Department Director wanted to influence project priority without overriding the Leadership Team’s decisions, plus a dashboard view of real-time status across all projects
The Leadership Team wanted an objective process for assigning project priority
The broader team wanted a consistent, transparent process for pitching, evaluating, and selecting projects
School Leadership wanted to be informed of any projects requiring >$1k in spend, new software, or external communications
University Leadership wanted all work aligned to the Strategic Plan
No one in the department was familiar with project management concepts, half the team didn’t think a formal PMO was necessary, and the director wanted to launch within 3 months.
The Situation
A 35-person department within the business school of a large university struggled to align and execute initiatives in an environment where teams operated independently but were constantly subject to shifting priorities from above. The director needed a way to share progress and communicate rapidly changing top-down needs to the team; the team needed a way to plan and execute that satisfied both departmental and school/university needs. I was engaged to create structures and processes to address these needs, requiring alignment across five layers of organizational hierarchy-- none of whom reported to me.
The Approach
The Complexity
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At every level to define what “success” looked like from each perspective— which provided a concrete set of design requirements for the PMO
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I designed a streamlined process with minimal documentation and templates for each step. Project priority was determined by leadership vote across 4 objective measures, including strategic alignment, thus ensuring selected projects were fairly evaluated and worth pursuing
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I created visual workflows and 1-page overviews, then facilitated a live feedback session. The skeptical half of the team came around once I framed the launch as an iterative experiment to fix what everyone agreed wasn't working
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Managed end-to-end over 9 months, including role-specific trainings, documentation, drop-in hours, and town halls to keep the team feeling invested, supported, and heard
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Conducted a lessons-learned session after the pilot to refine v2.0; the team was eager to continue improving what had become a successful experiment
Launched on-time against a 3-month design deadline; 95% of pilot-year projects completed on-time
Team satisfaction with project submission & selection: +35%
Leadership satisfaction with strategic alignment: +42%
Satisfaction with project status visibility: 63%
Satisfaction with execution resources & support: +73%
The PMO is still in use today