PMO Implementation Requirements & Challenges

Considering the current market changes and torments, consultants and contractors are focused on operational initiatives that would keep the business running. These thinking blocks them from initiatives to innovate and stay ahead of the competition and maximizing opportunities. It also forces them to take more risks and make difficult cost cutting.



Because of this thinking, they always delay new system implementation to avoid more cost and long investment. The excuse are there like disruption to operation (which is already having trouble). However, on the days when they are so busy, they might have another excuse (it is generating profit so why changing it).

It is a top management strategic decision. The ones, who delay it, delay it because they don’t have the right information and the right skills to implement it.



PMO model is one of these delayed systems which needs to be implemented on the construction industry immediately (projects’ owners, Consultant and Contractors).

Although, project owners, consultants and contractors are operating within project management methodologies and processes however, in my experience on the different organization I worked with, they have different project management approaches and techniques.

Most of them have good structured formal project management which they use. However, they have different processes, forms and templates for different departments and projects.

Good example of them is organisations who have different offices, branches and global operation. They don’t implement the same processes, procedures and systems due to some local customization, local clients requirements, investments limitiations and regulations reasons.

The best practice to manage such challenges on big operation is portfolio management through PMO. However, there is a challenge when implementing PMO for the different businesses when they use to operate on different business areas and had been managing projects differently. They would have different approaches, different processes and different tools and templates.



The organization knows that this new PMO department implementation would have many challenges:

1. Choosing The PMO Manager:

Definitely, the PMO manager has to have enough information to manage the new system in contractors and consultant’s world. The PMO must have the following skills:-

• PMO has to be an expert engineer to understand the technical background of the design PMO and its processes. He will discuss all steps with technical teams and his knowledge and expertise would be focal to manage it effectively.





• He has to be a qualified project manager with good experience from pre contract and business development stage to close out stage.
• He has to have change management basic knowledge to coordinate with the change manager.
• PMO has to have contract experience. Every step on the process is a step to reply to a contract, regulation, best practice and operation needs. If not, it is not required.
• PMO has to have design experience and construction site experience. The harmony relationship between the office operation and site operation is so important for the quality of project delivery and client satisfaction.
• PMO has to be a commercial oriented manager to value every step and process he is suggesting to provide the decision maker the economical option meeting the operation needs and easy to implement and operate.
• PMO has to enough experience on governance, standards, policy development and QA/QC procedures to help on writing them with the QA/QC team.
• PMO has to have enough knowledge on decision making techniques, process mapping and process improvement.
  
  
  
• PMO has to have skills on prioritizing strategy, strategic thinking and of business strategic planning.
• PMO has to have enough experience on project cost control and project planning especially project portfolio management which is very rare talent to oversee and bear the organization big load.





• PMO has to have enough IT information and skills on the new system.
• PMO has to be a leader. He is managing the change and driving this change needs a quality leadership to achieve its challenges.

We might argue on the above requirement by saying the organization will have this experience in its different department. Therefore, PMO only need project implementation skills. Which is correct but the result would be having high cost and slow implementation.

2. Choosing The Right System:

The other challenge is what and why to invest and choose an enterprise-world known wide system.  This investment and strategic business decision would be effected by the available skills (internally and externally) to use the suggested system.

Definitely, the PMO manager has to have enough information to manage the new system. In contractors and consultants world, he has to be an expert engineer with good experience from pre contract stage to close out stage. He has to have contact experience and project management experience. He had to have experience on design s experience on construction. However, the most important quality on him is to be a commercial oriented project manager to value every step and process he is suggesting to provide the decision maker the economical option meeting the operation needs and easy to implement and operate.

3. The Challenge of Implementation Plan and Period:

The decision of implementation period is so important to the PMO implementation plan. Stretching the period or reducing it has its advantages and disadvantages. However, questions like why we need PMO, what benefit we will get form using it and how it will affect our operation and how it will impact how we do business will help to define the right period.

A questioner is part of any successful implementation plan especially when we deal with change. It is the right approach to get into the people mind and mode. It would help a lot doing it and define the implementation plan, where to start and when, stages, main stakeholders, change champions and resistance corners. Have your say technique always help however, with strong leadership not to divert it to the resistance path. This will define the implementation plan period and the targeted success.

People during operation can’t not tolerate big load of change meetings and new producers and processes. Similarly, the hope for change and selling the positive change idea might diffuse from the change supporter minds when it takes long than expected.

4. The Challenge of Existing Information:

The existing information and existing projects historic data, which spread out across spreadsheets, number of different project management tools and even hard copies are big challenge. It delays the main goal of implementing the new PMO system with the different organization.

The decision to link and keep the current operation and the previous historical data or not is not a luxury. Any organization especially consultants and contractors will need manage current projects and to retain their data record for 10 to 15 years.

Having a change management system is a must and run over the new change with minimum disruption to the current operation is important to sustain the business goals and revenue.

5. The Challenge of New Process & Procedures:

According to Gartner research the misalignment in functional requirements was the main cause of project failures. The process between projects operation and functional department is known as a continuous organization challenge. The decision for full or limited ownership and delegation to be given to the project management team is making negative impact on the new system implementation. However, this is because the current operation conflict with the new system implementation. The new staff and enough awareness and training for the current staff would solve this issue. From the organization prospective, no full ownership and delegation to the project management team without having the policies, producers, processes and regulation to maintain its viability.

6. The Challenge of Data Entry, Dashboards & Reports:

Junk in, junk out needs to be eliminated. Any big data, if there is no control on data entry quality, it ends up losing the faith on the system. From my experience, discussing dashboards and reports presentation is taking more time than data entry quality and staff training to do it probably. Choosing how and in what form we are entering the data is more important than thinking about the output format, A step where a lot of PMO failed on it and end up losing the faith on the implemented system.

However, top management and stakeholder concentrate more on how visually the project or portfolio status is presented rather than presenting them with reams of project data or conducting multi-hour work meeting. While visually pleasing elements can help stakeholders focus on important aspects of decision making, project management like risk identification and crisis management, other project data elements are still needed for a qualified assessment of project or portfolio status. This can be solved by giving the right report on need to know basis and the training for them to go deep if they need.



Notwithstanding that, visualizing the business operation is so central to coordinate the functional groups and aligning them with the project operation from opportunity identification to win the project to execution and close out. Gartner research found that misalignment in functional requirements was the main cause of project failures. This was found to be the most common reason for project dysfunction along with schedule and cost mismanagement.

7. The Challenge of Change Resistance:

People always fear from the unknown. Change always is unknown end product. People look for what’s for me in any change. Some people will resist the change as a concept because they are close to retire, they don’t think they need it, it would affect their positions and and for many personal reasons.

Change management and making proper team involvement and awareness is so crucial to make the change. Leadership, transparent communication, facilitation, training, involvement, negotiation, surrounding manipulation and even coercion are the most used techniques to achieve change in any organization.

8. The challenge of PMO System Management & Operation:

Usually, the organization as part of the implementation, gives training and staff the PMO as required as part of the implementation. However, staff leaves companies and moves to new career path. Also, organization sometimes, moves their trained staff around to other department and projects when they need too. System needs stability. Its staff needs to be trained to train others to operate it in other offices, in projects offices and client offices too. However, we are dealing with systems.Research found that young generation is always more effective on dealing with new systems especially the IT systems more effectively more than old generation. Having a plan of new blood of fresh graduate to be recruited and trained on the system is a good solution. Any system can’t survive more than 5 years to be considered old and need upgrading to the new system revision or even moving to new system completely based on their experience and their annual system review and improvement.

Finally, I hope my personal experience points above would encourage any organization to move to PMO rather than scare them more about it. PMO and CSO (Chief Strategic Officer) are crucial for the suitability of any organization business especially on such fast changing market conditions. The winners are who decide to do it first.

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