Week 1 (Building a Program Management Office)

Well, I just started on a new assignment building a Program Management Office and I thought that I would give a weekly update on what I am doing and going through, thoughts, etc. First a little background. The program has been active for about a month or two, so I am coming in early, but not completely at the start.

The Program is a set of three other programs that each consist of many projects. I’m not sure exactly yet just how many projects there are all told. One of the challenges that I’ve been asked to help with is managing and coordinating all the work so that things do not get dropped “between the cracks” so to speak. There are 6 major separate units involved, 3 are internal (I’ll refer to these as “client” groups), two customers and one external vendor – who works for the customer and us.

One internal organization has a methodology and is following that fairly well. One customer has a methodology and set of documentation that they would like to see, but I have not seen that yet. The client corporation has a methodology that is based on the PMI framework, so it is pretty easy to understand. I am still not too sure if that methodology is in use by all the client organizations.

This week, I mostly just started getting my balance and understanding who is who and what is what. I did get immediately involved in facilitating some work on budget and requirements. As a result of this meeting, I started using Meeting Minutes and Action Items. These were not new to anyone, but I didn’t see any action items for the program initially. I used the client’s forms.

The lesson here I think is to start small and simple. We have one person in the PMO – me, and a methodology consisting of 2 forms. No one seemed overwhelmed or resistant.

Overall the week went well and I got to meet many of the principles. All of whom are very capable and professional people. Nice too, I am looking forward to working with all of them!