Week 23 (Building a PMO) - Lessons Learned?

Well, one of the major deliverables for one of our customers has arrived – we are going live on 3/1! As of this writing, it really looks like we will make it, and with quite a few reasons to be proud. We will be implementing a considerable part of what we planned, and in some cases, a little extra. Of course since we had no real success criteria, the idea of a successful implementation is not applicable. How can you succeed if you don’t know what success is? I’ll get to that another time… Today – lessons learned.

First, I am an advocate of learning lessons at all times during the project and recording them as they occur, something that I did with this one. My reasoning is that we tend to forget over time, so waiting until the end of the project may result in lost lessons. Also, after a project is completed, we all have a tendency to paint a slightly rosier than real picture of what happened. The aura of success (or even just getting the darn thing over with) can create a euphoria that makes things look - not so bad.

The reason I added the question mark to the title is reflective of my skepticism that we are actually learning here. I propose that a well-run project will have lessons learned that relate ONLY to the parts of the project that were new. The other parts, I expect we would have learned from already. Now, that is not to say that continuous improvement is not possible, but rather that the “lessons” from continuous improvement are a different order of magnitude than those from the newer parts of the project. That is – if you have been learning in the first place! I think we are learning a little, but not as well as we could. One of the jobs of a PMO is codify or ingrain these lessons into the culture and processes of the organization. This way we can collectively and consistently learn these lessons rather than learning them individually and unpredictably.

So here are some lessons learned form the most recent project in our current program – how many of these do you already know?

1. The people we had were great; there just weren’t enough of them.
2. We left management and planning unattended for too long.
3. Unclear roles and responsibilities led to confusion and loss of precious time.
4. We had the most success when we were all informed.
5. Once engaged and informed, management responded quickly and helpfully.
6. We did things right, wrong, and mostly late.
7. We were slowed by constant competition for resources.
8. A great customer relationship got us through many challenges
9. We often did not have the tools and skills needed to do the best job.
10. We did not have a clear understanding of the work when we estimated.

I am sure every one of you can relate to these lessons. These were not all the lessons, but these are the ones I think we already knew. Yet somehow we did not learn from them in the past. Why? I think I will break these down a little over the next few weeks and look at them – surely there is a reason, or reasons. Hmmmm.

Week 21 (Building a PMO) - Reporting part 2

So, last week I talked about Just in time reporting – getting the information to the right people while it’s “hot.” This week, I want to talk about getting the right information there. This can be tricky! There are some serious pitfalls. There are problems with giving useless information, presenting the information incorrectly, giving too much, too little and so on. Let’s start with the quantity of information.

You will rarely hear your stakeholders ask that you give them less information; because of this it is your job to start with a little as possible without giving so little as to be meaningless. Ha – that was easy to say! It has been my experience that every time I present information I get good comments about how the information can be used, and am asked if I could include “a breakdown by month”, or “a list of projects over $1million”, or…. This means that if you start with a lot, you will end up with too much information and the associated excess of work. So what is enough?

Let’s look at it this way; you are usually producing reports for some level of management. So what do they want to know? In my experience both as a provider and recipient of these reports, the primary questions are: How are my resources being spent (time, people, money)? Will we do what we said we would do? What can I do / what do you need of me? Although these are all closely linked, let me address them individually.

How are my resources being spent? Any project is an investment by your stakeholders and they want to know how their investment is doing. Did they spend the right amount? Are the resources the right ones? Will the investment pay off? In order to answer these questions, you will focus on the past and the present. These metrics or measures are often seen in dashboards. So some examples would be milestones, earned value, budget, time spent, adherence to schedule, utilization and other similar measures. The purpose here is to say – you (the stakeholder) have invested this (money, people, and time) in the project and we have created this (value, product, service).

Will we do what we said we would do? This relates to commitment and promises. Each project is a promise to meet a need or want of a stakeholder. Those who are receiving the end result of the project want assurances that they will get what they want. While those contributing to the project want assurances that their investments will produce the desired results. This information will focus more on the scope of the project than on the cost / time aspects. Measures here might be number of requirements met or forecasted to be met. Change control information, quality measures, achievements and deliverables demonstrate that the project will achieve what is expected.

Finally, management wants to understand what is needed of them. Everyone wants to contribute to the success of the project, but it is not always obvious how this can be done. Most of those reading your reports do not have intimate knowledge of the projects and do not know immediately what is needed. It is then your responsibility to simply ask for help as needed. Do not assume that any fool seeing this report would know to do such and such, simply ask for the help and explain what is needed and why. If you need more time, money, resources ask. If you are stalled because of a particular problem, call in the big guns. That is what they are there for.
Well, that’s all well and good, but what does a “just enough” report look like. Here is my criteria:

1. KEEP IT TO ONE PAGE LONG AND NO LONGER !!!!!!!! (I can not stress this enough) – if you can’t say it in one page then don’t expect anyone to listen and it is YOUR FAULT – management does not have time to read excruciating details about everything they are involved in or responsible for. That’s why they hired you! Give it to them short, accurate and ON ONE PAGE!!

2. Use illustrations and diagrams whenever possible. This is not because words and numbers are too complicated for pointy haired managers, it is because pictures communicate more information in less time and with greater accuracy. If you haven’t studied work by Edward Tufte then do so. The expression of information is vital in our work for so many reasons.

3. Answer the three questions above. If you don’t, you will be asked these questions every time. Take care of this up front.

4. Tell a story. Make your report more that a point in time snapshot, show the past and predict the future. Some models are good at this – EVA has a lot of potential. One that I use is to show simply actual expenses against budgeted. I use a graph with a line showing actual expenditures up to the current date with a colored in area showing past and future budgets. Bind the past, present and future together in a consistent flow that tells a story of your project(s).

5. Keep the format consistent – same things at the same place on the page every time. Do not make the recipients of the report search for the information every time.

6. KEEP IT TO ONE PAGE – oh – you get the idea – really if they want more they’ll ask. Trust me – you don’t get to Senior management by being shy – keep it to one page, everyone’s life will be better for it – and you will rise to the challenge of presenting just enough information just in time!

Week 20 - (Building a PMO) Reporting

I’ve been thinking about reporting a good bit lately. What makes good reports? What type of reporting is the PMO responsible for? When? What? To whom? And so on. I have been working recently on streamlining the reporting we are doing on the project and yet providing more information in a more useful and timely manner.

I am a minimalist at heart. I believe in one-page. From a reporting perspective, there may be a need for more than one, but I think that the PMO that provide management with a one-page comprehensive status report has found the Holy Grail of reporting. My quest is probably equally romantic and impossible, but I think there is a lot of room for improvement out there.

Let me start with two components that I have been struggling with lately – I call them the “Justs.” They are Just enough information and Just in Time. I’ll start with the latter as that is the more familiar.

Just in Time started as an inventory management practice and Dell showed the world how effective and profitable this can be. Just in Time reporting refers to the freshness of the information. We have all walked into a meeting with management to review the reports we sent out yesterday knowing that some (perhaps many) pieces of information were no longer accurate. Face it, by their nature, projects change quickly and frequently and they have a terrible habit of being unpredictable. Part of the problem is the ever popular hierarchical reporting methods.

To use my current situation as an example, I have a weekly board meeting every Wednesday morning. At this meeting we discuss the current issues, action items, and status for the two programs we are managing. These programs consist of multiple projects from multiple departments. One of those departments is IT. I get the final set of IT information on Monday afternoon for presentation on Wednesday morning. Let’s look at how that information gets to the board.

Working backwards – On Monday the consolidated IT reports are reviewed by IT management and approved for general release. These reports are created on the previous Friday afternoon from a collection of status reports by each project. These individual project reports are due by end of day Thursday. Each project team puts their report together in the day or two preceding Thursday. In this case the IT information that the board reads on Wednesday morning is a week old. A lot can change in a week. Unfortunately this means that we often report tasks as incomplete and behind schedule when they were actually completed on time.

We take a different approach on the business side. Here, there is a full program meeting on Tuesday morning. At this meeting, each project leader and team member reports their status as of that moment. The project manager updates the schedule, issues and action items right there. The program level report is published immediately after the meeting. Since the PMO is present in these meetings, we are able to produce the business components of the weekly status right after the meeting as well. This means that on Wednesday morning the board is hearing about information that is less than 24 hours old.

There are two circumstances that influence the difference. First, the business organization is less hierarchical and less formal than IT. This allows much quicker communication. My observation is that IT is oriented around structure, process, exactness and consistency – all of which contribute to some excellent, stable and reliable systems. Unfortunately, this means that non-emergency information has a long way to go to be seen.

Secondly, the PMO is directly present in the lowest level of the business meetings while we are not present in the lowest level IT meetings. This means that we get the unvarnished “raw” information straight from the people who know it the best. This enables us to better understand the information and to weigh its importance and urgency. This is not the case with IT.

I think the solution is two fold. First, set up a system and process that has the shortest amount of time between the collecting the information and reporting it. Second, eliminate every step possible between the collection and reporting. The fastest this can be done is obviously to have the person collecting the information turn right around and report it. Even better have the recipients of the information hear it first hand. Of course, it is rarely possible to get today’s busy executives to spend that much time listening to details. Don’t forget, your value-add in the reporting cycle is to aggregate, summarize, separate useful from useless, and elevate the important.

To parallel this to Just In Time supply management, getting information from the business is like going to the orchard to pick the oranges while the information from IT has to be obtained by driving to their grocery store and waiting until it is stocked on the shelves. Go to the orchard, pick the best fruit and get that to your board right away.

PMO Reporting

Reporting is often viewed as a less-than-glamorous responsibility of the PMO. I think that reporting is probably one of the most visible methods that a PMO can show value. The PMO reports go to management and those managers and executives make decisions based on your reports. By providing accurate and timely information in those reports, you – the PMO – are ensuring that the foundations of corporate decision-making are solid and built on the best information available.

With that as your mission, there are several different types of reports that the PMO may be responsible for: department reporting, project reporting, portfolio reporting and PMO reporting. Let’s take a quick look:

Department reporting takes several different forms; one common form is resource management and projections. These focus of these reports is to give information on a department or group.

Project reporting is probably the most familiar, this can take the form of your red/green/yellow status reports, buffer reports (for those using CCM), or earned value. These reports give information on a project or projects.

Portfolio Reporting gives information about a collection of projects, some common reports are the pipeline report which shows where each project is as it moves thorough the project lifecycle. Other reports include a project priority list, resource and cost projections, and possible other more sophisticated sets of information. While project reports are more tactical in nature, portfolio reports are used more for strategic decision-making.

Lastly we have PMO reporting – This is simply reports that tell how the PMO is doing. Some examples are budget reports, balanced scorecards, staffing and others.

Each of these reports offers you a great opportunity to demonstrate your PMOs independence, neutrality, honesty and consistency. They are also a great marketing tool.