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The Programme Management Office – Delivering Business Value

19 October 2011, 4:57 pm

I am grateful to my colleague, Jim Cumiskey, Manager of our Programme Management Office (PMO) in Trinity College Dublin, for this guest blog post on some lessons shared at the recent conference of the Association of Project Management PMO Special Interest Group last September in Watford, where the main speaker was Mark Price Perry (@markpriceperry).

“The key points are that the PMO should be driven by the needs of the business; that effective leadership is critical to PMO success; that businesses need to establish and continuously evolve a PMO architecture and that the PMO must get to a position where it is viewed as a value-added, purpose-driven business unit.

This means (like all projects, in fact) that there have to be clear objectives for the PMO. The right tools  and techniques need to be available for flexible use at an appropriate level. Support from senior management is essential for the PMO’s success and development. A key aspect of this is to be more focused on business processes and outward-facing, rather than inward.

In the Trinity PMO, we’ve been placing strong emphasis on requirements, stakeholders, communications, business process and change rather than “just” systems delivery. Accordingly, our emphasis is on business benefit and on an approach that is both flexible and scalable depending on the size and demands of different projects.

To do this, it’s important to have a flexible framework that enables different tools and techniques to be brought to bear on different problems as they arise. While this is based on a vision of where we are trying to get to, it has to be very practical with clear and coherent documentation of processes;  training available; adequate staffing (a particular challenge right now) and ongoing assessment of performance.

The idea of having PMO champions in different areas of the business is a very interesting one that we can see benefit from in Trinity.

To be viewed as a value-add, purpose-driven business unit, the PMO has to ensure that projects are delivering better across the organisation (time, cost, quality, scope, customer satisfaction.) The PMO also has to undergo constant and continuous improvement, both in a formal as well as in an informal sense.”

Jim’s points are very relevant to what we are doing in the PMO in Trinity and we hope to include them as part of a self-assessment checklist of our performance and contribution to the college in the future. While we have made significant progress on developing the PMO, we realise that we have more to do and that there will always be challenges to be overcome, not least due to financial, time and resource constraints.

What lessons have you learned from the work of your PMO in your organisation? Are any of the lessons shared here relevant to your organisation? Please leave a comment and let me know.

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About Jim Cumiskey

Jim is a certified PMP and has worked in over 150 organisations for thirty years as a developer, analyst, trainer, project manager and programme manager in both the public and private sectors.

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Cloud Computing – Security Implications

6 October 2011, 10:51 pm

I’ve been working for a while on a policy and associated procedures for Trinity College Dublin to enable us to leverage various cloud technologies and services for the benefit of the college. What has struck me is the complexity of dealing with the topic in a large-scale environment.

As consumers, many of us use cloud services every day; examples are Gmail and Hotmail for email; Amazon Cloud Drive and Dropbox for file storage; Google Docs, Docs.com and Microsoft Skydrive for document processing; Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn for social networking, etc. Many of us tend to use these and other services with little thought being given to security, data protection, privacy, identity theft, ownership of data, etc. When considered from a corporate or business perspective, these issues are significantly more important and take on many complex legal aspects. Yet, in a corporate and, indeed, an educational environment, there is significant pressure to enable these services in the business context, since end users and familiar with them from personal use.

Pursuing another interest of mine this evening – Internet Radio – I came across C-SPAN Radio and just happened to stumble upon the live proceedings of the US Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies, on 6 October 2011, discussing the issue of the security implications of cloud computing. The Committee was addressed by very influential people in the area of information technology, information security, education and regulation:

Each contributor submitted a paper to the Subcommittee and they are all available on the Subcommittee’s website. So if you are looking for what the current areas of concern are in relation to security and cloud computing, why not pick up the papers and listen back to the oral testimony.

Links to the papers (PDF)

What is your organisation doing about security and cloud computing? Do you have a cloud computing policy or are your end users simply using cloud services without regard to existing policy or legislation? Please leave a comment and let me know.

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Gary Hamel’s Interesting Take on Social Media in Organisations

4 April 2011, 7:43 pm

This is an interesting video featuring Gary Hamel, in a short interview with James Franklin of Dell. Gary gives three very interesting insights into how Social Media will affect organisations.

  1. On the web every idea should compete on an equal footing. No idea should get a free pass because it comes from a senior executive.
  2. What should matter is an individual’s contribution, not their credentials. People should be judged on what they contribute, now on what school they went to or what their last job was.
  3. On the web, hierarchies are built bottom up, not top down. People will have leadership positions because others want to follow them, not because someone said, “you are the leader”.

These are excellent observations and should teach us some of the ways in which Social Media can play a significant role in organisations of the future. How organisations respond to these challenges – and, of course, to the opportunities they present – could have a big impact on their success or failure.

What is your opinion on Social Media and their effects on organisations? Do you agree with Gary or are you inclined to agree with a contrary comment left in response to this video? Do you use Social Media to give ideas a fair airing and to encourage collaboration? Is old-fashioned hierarchy more important than leadership? Or maybe you are sceptical about the whole idea of Social Media and their effects on organisations (a naive position, in my opinion). Please leave a comment and let me know.

You can check out this video and much more interesting information at the Management Innovation eXchange. If you are not following this forum, you are definitely missing out on some great management thinking.

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Social Media Revolution? What’s Your View?

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Social Media: Creating Collaborative Conversations

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Is “Generation Gmail” Really Putting Businesses at Risk?

24 February 2011, 8:46 pm

In my industry talks on Social Media, I mention the challenges presented to organisations by consumer technologies, so-called “shadow IT”, social media and mobile technologies. A new generation of technology users are used to having leading edge, powerful technologies and are not satisfied with the constraints placed by their employers on their technology use, productivity and flexibility. Therefore, many employees (and particularly younger employees) are getting around corporate controls by using personal email accounts, personal hosting services, online storage, Facebook, blogs, etc. The availability of new, powerful consumer technologies and services is putting increasing pressure on corporate IT departments to keep up.

Recent research commissioned by Mimecast, a UK-based email management company, highlights the risks that organisations face from their employees using non-corporate IT to circumvent controls. Carried out by Loudhouse Research, based in London, England, the research found that knowledgeable employees, familiar with social media and frustrated with corporate controls, are compromising corporate data and intellectual property.

Continue reading ‘Is “Generation Gmail” Really Putting Businesses at Risk?’ »

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Would You Like to Get to Inbox Zero?

14 November 2010, 10:01 pm

 

Check out Merlin Mann’s 2007 video (courtesy of Google Tech Talks) on getting to “Inbox Zero” by using David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) approach. So, can this method work for you? How do you manage your email inbox? Please leave a comment and let me know.

If you liked this post, you might also like:

Is “Generation Gmail” Really Putting Businesses at Risk?

Social Media Revolution? What’s Your View?

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