Proposing a PMO for the Company: Tip #2. Sell the PMO.

Think of a PMO as a complex solution to a business problem and think of selling the PMO as an internal "sales" effort, not a new project initiative. If your company has a suitable sales process for complex solution sales, familiarize yourself with it and use it. Otherwise, look to the proven approaches such as Miller Heiman's "Strategic Selling." Identify your buyer types (Economic, Technical, User, Champion), assess their buying modes (High Growth, Even Keel, In trouble, Over Confident), and develop "win-win" strategies for each buyer type to articulate the benefits of the PMO proposal and to gain their support. Do this in support of your existing Project Selection process, not instead of it.

Proposing a PMO for the Company: Tip #1. Avoid the hype.

Seek to overcome the challenges that need to be addressed in order for your company to be more successful. The decision to set up a PMO should not be a leap of faith, rather it is a business decision. The justification for a PMO should not be centered on anecdotal evidence or the desire to change the organization just to meet the latest buzz of the pundits. Avoid the hype and prepare your proposal with the singular purpose of meeting the objectives of your company in the best possible manner.

Project Office Leadership: Tip #3. The Paradox of Change.

For most people, there is a strong, sometimes stubborn, inclination to resist change. Technically, this tendency is called homeostasis. This tendency is also accompanied by the ever present instinct to survive, adapt, and evolve. Hence, the paradox. Seek to establish an environment that facilitates a continuous improvement change oriented mindset, rather than a change resistant mindset. Results will follow.

Project Office Leadership: Tip #2. Focus on process-oriented behaviours.

Typically, projects succeed or fail as a result of poor management, not technical difficulties. As the project office executive, take time to focus on the behavioural side of project management. Make it a priority to identify, develop and reward the process-oriented behaviours that will improve project results. Quietly and relentlessly lead, improved behaviours and project results will follow

Project Office Leadership: Tip #1. PMO Charter.

Seek to establish a charter for the PMO that sets the tone of the organization and of the value add delivered. Where possible and measurable, align the charter of the PMO to enabling, facilitating, and achieving the key business objectives of the firm such as revenue growth, cost containment, customer satisfaction, and quality.

Lessons Learned: Tip #3. Maintain a Lessons Learned Log.

Maintaining a lessons learned log, even a very simple one, can provide insight into areas that are consistently causing problems and impacting project performance. A lessons learned log can spot trends and help to early identify and correct project management defects be they people, process, or tools.

Lessons Learned: Tip #2. Learn from what goes right as well as from what goes wrong.

At project closing, be sure to also recognize and document those things that go exceptionally well, and why they go well, so that others in the project organization can benefit from, learn, and apply project management best practices and techniques. Lessons can be learned equally as well from positive success stories as well as project mishaps.

Lessons Learned: Tip #1. Document and act upon your lessons learned.

In the closing process, many project management methodologies casually address lessons learned outputs and some omit them entirely. The end result is that lessons learned, if even documented, are usually "filed and forgotten". Ensure that closing and continuous improvement processes not only provide for documentation of lessons learned, but project manager recommendations for improvement, assessments of impact and priority, and a checklist for how and when the improvement recommendation is to be made to the process owner and management authority. As the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." In a project organization context, "Have a PM process related difficulty or defect once, shame on the process; have it a second, third, and fourth time, shame on the project organization."

Executing: Tip #3. Maintain a Quality Report.

During execution, evaluate overall project performance on a regular basis to ensure that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards. In addition to quality measurements, rate project performance factors such as competence of the project manager, understanding and adherence to processes, and definition and performance of project team duties to provide insight into the quality of the project effort.

Executing: Tip #2. Maintain a Simple Project Status Report.

When asked for a project update, some project managers show their detailed project schedule and explain the status of each work breakdown structure activity. However, management and sponsors often prefer to see a project status report, based upon the detailed schedule, but in a much simpler, summarized, and dashboard-like format with variances noted and explained. Maintaining a simple project status report can help others to better understand the status of the project and can help direct their attention to the specific areas of the detailed project schedule that are most in need of review.

Executing: Tip #1. Maintain a Project Issues Log.

Use a Project Issues Log to record project issues, status, assignment, and resolution. The Project Issues Log is a helpful tool for the project manager to prioritize issues and to manage their resolution. It will also facilitate early recognition of significant project issues that may compromise the project in terms of scope fulfillment, schedule, and budget expectations.

Governance: Tip #3. Use Scorecarding to Establish a Weighted Average Priority.

Assist line of business users in determining the value and priority of their project idea with respect to other project ideas, competing strategies and priorities, and the minimum threshhold for which new project ideas can be supported. Scorecarding can be a very effective tool to quantitatively score a new project idea and help line of business users to understand and position the relative merits of their new project idea.

Governance: Tip #2. Encourage Creative Analysis.

In the Governance - Project Selection - process, encourage creative thinking and analysis to identify and drill down to measurable benefits and paybacks. Where useful, first provide the requestor with creative thinking tools like MindMapper to arrive at strategies, linkages, and priorities. From there, the requestor will be better prepared and able to best use your structured project management process templates and tools.

Governance: Tip #1. Establish Added Value.

Lines of business project requestors often have creative, merit-worthy project ideas, but may lack the skill and experience to prepare an adequate project work request. Establish an added value governance process to jointly consult with and assist project requestors. Make the process simple, yet sufficiently comprehensive to clearly establish the compelling benefits of the project request.

Planning: Tip from a mouse.

The early bird may get the worm, but it is the second mouse that gets the cheese. Planning takes time. Planning should take time. Seek to plan in a methodical and deliberate manner. Don't rush it. A good plan will enable you to execute with speed, deliver a quality product, and avoid risks along the way.

Process Management: Tip #2. PM Process Mentors.

Establish Project Management Process Mentors and make them part of your PM Process "Available Resources". Along with Process Owners, PM Process Mentors can provide "Help On Demand" and play an invaluable role in assisting others in the project organization to understand and apply the project management processes and best practices to their project effort. Process Mentors can also play a key role in assisting Process Owners in reviewing lessons learned feedback and applying continuous improvement opportunities.

Process Management: Tip #1. Process Owners.

Establish Process Owners for your project management processes including sub-processes and steps. Ensure that the process owners maintain and keep updated their assigned processes. Such updates include on-going change and "lessons learned" improvement opportunities, such as new tools, new PM artifacts (templates), and new techniques as well as periodic management assessment and refinement of the processes.

People Management: Tip #5. Manager Relationship.

Your manager has several direct reports, but you only have one manager. Strive to understand how your manager can help you and how you can help your manager. Never be competitive nor confrontational with your manager, never. Be the quiet professional and be in control. When you have issues, set an appropriate time, place, and duration to meet. Don't just pop in or catch your manager in between meetings with demands for time and support. If you really need a significant amount of uninterrupted time, invite your manager to dinner. Insist on paying, it's your meeting. Seek ways to proactively help your manager be successful and achieve assigned objectives. In turn, give your manager opportunities to help you be successful.

People Management: Tip #4. Employee Satisfaction Survey.

Employee satisfaction surveys can be a very effective business and people management tool and they don't have to be overly complex nor difficult to administer. Even if your company or organization does not engage in the use of such tools, make it a habit to conduct an annual employee satisfaction survey for your department, PMO, or project organization. Use the feedback and results to address problem areas and to monitor the direction of the key indices. Seek to involve the team in action plans where possible. Communicate and set realistic expectations.

People Management: Tip #3. Development Plans.

Establish and review annual development plans for every project manager. In addition to general skills development, seek ways to develop specific skills that can be immediately applied to address problem areas or key priorities within the organization. Also, include career development plans and actionable items and regularly align professional aspirations with needs of the business and advancement opportunities within the organization.

People Management: Tip #2. Improve or remove poor performers.

Poor performers can jeopardize projects and drain the enthusiasm of the team and department. Rank performers at least once a year. Let the bottom 5% know where they stand, the reasons why, and what needs to be done in order to improve performance and ranking. If an individual ranks in the bottom 5% three times in a row with no improvements in results or visible efforts to improve, remove the individual from the team.

People Management: Tip #1. Pay heroes well and raise their bar high.

There will always be "floor leaders" in any organization that have more skill and expertise than others. Sometimes these heroes are senior members of the team, other times they are young, energetic, crackerjack performers. Though it is tempting to reward the heroes for always performing better than the others or "saving the day", don't. Recognize hero worship as a process defect. Instead, pay your heroes very well and raise their bar very high. Set the expectation that they are not only expected to perform brilliantly, but to also seek ways to participate in and contribute to the organization's continuous improvement from mentoring others, to evaluating tools, to sharing information and knowledge, to ensuring processes and best practices are in place and usable. Privately reward heroes for saving the day, publicly reward them for identifying and fixing those things that made it necessary to save the day in the first place. Heroes can do more, so expect more from them.

Portfolio Management: Tip #6. Project Portfolio Review.

Portfolio Management results are best achieved when the portfolio is actively managed and the process is continuously improved. Monitor the portfolio at frequent intervals. Review project status, commit to continue or terminate projects, and assess funding levels and resolve resource issues and risks. Document and submit continuous improvement opportunities for the portfolio management process to the appropriate process owner to continually optimize how the portfolio is managed and to avoid repeat errors.

Portfolio Management: Tip #5. Balance step.

There is no one correct method to balance the project portfolio. The standard Risk-Return approach is to balance riskier, higher reward strategic investments with safer categories, such as infrastructure. Another popular approach is to divide the projects into categories: maintaining the business, growing the business, and transforming the business. Categorize the project portfolio using a balancing method best for your business objectives. Set a percent mix of projects that is desired for the current planning period. Seek to balance the project portfolio to your desired mix.

Portfolio Management: Tip #4. Prioritization step.

Use the Project Selection Scorecard that was prepared at time of Project Selection and Initiating as a key input to prioritize the project portfolio. If needed, update the scorecard values to reflect current priorities or to correct overly optimistic or overly conservative assessments that were initially made. The weighted average value that the project selection scorecard provides serves as a "first pass" prioritization and key input to the subsequent balance step of the portfolio management process.

Portfolio Management: Tip #3. Project Inventory and "Keep/Kill" step.

Regularly maintain the project inventory and seek to identify early those projects that should be rescued or terminated. While many failing projects can and should be rescued, there are others that on account of changing market, customer, and technology forces should be terminated. Terminating such projects as early as possible will enable resources, funds, and time to be applied to higher priority initiatives. Be proactive. Don't wait for the budget to run out.

Portfolio Management: Tip #2. Focus on the information, not the tool.

Once your process has been defined, portfolio management can begin with the gathering of a good detailed inventory of all the projects including name, length, estimated cost, business objective, ROI and business benefits, etc. For project organizations with a large number of projects, the use of a portfolio management system can simplify and improve upon data gathering, management reporting, and decision making. Organizations with a smaller number of projects may find that all they require is a spreadsheet or database. It is the information that is important, not the tool. Seek to first use your already existing IT infrastructure and tools. Then, allow continuous improvement feedback and management judgment to drive examination and selection of new technologies and applications.

Portfolio Management: Tip #1. Define your portfolio management process.

Most organizations do not have a defined process for how the project portfolio is to be managed and who should be managing it. It is performed periodically and more as a staff reporting effort, rather than a strategic management activity. Often times, expensive portfolio management applications and tools are implemented prior to and even in lieu of taking the time to understand what the current portfolio management process is as well as what it should be. A more effective approach is to first set up, use, and continuously improve your portfolio management process. Be sure to include not just the what of what is to be done, but the who, when, where, how, and with what tools of the what is to be done - and in the context of your organization.

Time Management: Tip #5. Communicate regularly, but avoid interruptions and try not to interrupt others.

Interruptions can significantly impact productivity and delay the project. Honor and make good use of the communication plan. Don't allow yourself to be continually interrupted without good cause. Be assertive, explaining that you will meet as soon as you finish your work. Saying 'no' is not a crime, nor is it being non-responsive.

Time Management: Tip #4. Understand and leverage your internal time clock.

Some people work best early in the morning when they are feeling fresh. Others may reach their peak performance later in the day or even well into the night. Be aware of when you are at your most effective level and do the things that require maximum brain capacity and energy while you're at your best. Attend to minor issues when you don't have time for larger matters and when your mind and body needs a break.

Time Management: Tip #3. Maintenance Projects and Progress Projects.

Get the balance right between maintenance projects and progress projects. A maintenance project is one which, once completed, will leave you in the same position as you were before. A progress project is one which will improve your position. It is easy to get bogged down with the maintenance projects leaving little time for the progress projects. Set and review project portfolio priorities to help you get the balance right.

Time Management: Tip #2. Urgent and Important.

Look at the way time is used considering the difference between what is urgent and what is important. Maintenance projects and tasks often seem urgent, like applying a fix, and this makes them easy to justify. Improvement oriented projects and tasks rarely seem urgent, although they are very important. If projects don't seem urgent, it is tempting to put them off. Ensure what's important is not clouded by sense of urgency.

Time Management: Tip #1. Avoid postponement of tasks.

Sometimes project team members put off tasks which they are not looking forward to doing. Things rarely get more pleasant or easier by being postponed. Make sure you closely monitor those tasks people don't like to do or have difficulty with. Seek ways to provide an environment, skills, and tools for your project team to excel at and enjoy performing all tasks.

Managing risks in software projects: Tip #6. Poor Design.

Many software developers and architects rush the functional design phase and system design phase of the system development life cycle (SDLC) in order to begin developing code as quickly as possible.  A good design that is reusable allows changes to made quickly and accurately as well as reduces testing time.  A poor design increases risk, programming hours, and require extensive testing.

Managing risks in software projects: Tip #5. Unrealistic Project Schedules.

Many project managers, even experienced ones, fall into this trap.  Project managers often get unreasonable pressure from management and end user clients to complete tasks and milestones in a certain time frame and within a certain budget.  Though the timeframes are unrealistic,  some project managers will bow to the pressure and create their estimates and baseline schedule based on what they know their managers and clients want to hear. This compromises the integrity of the project schedule and scheduler and can impact other projects. Unrealistic schedules should be confronted, negotiated, and mitigated through risk planning.

Managing risks in software projects: Tip #4. Substandard Quality.

The opposite of Gold Plating is substandard quality.  To catch up on the schedule, the programmer decided to quickly code the next set of features spending minimal time testing. Once the features went to the testing team, a lot of bugs were found, causing the testing / fix cycle to extend far beyond what was originally expected. Rushing development and testing to get back on schedule can increase risks and even further jeapordize the schedule.

Managing risks in software projects: Tip #3. Gold Plating.

Similar to scope and feature creep, programmers can also incur risk by making a feature more robust than requested or necessary.  For example, the specification for the login page contained a simple screen shot that showed and explained the login process.  However, the programmer decided that it would be helpful and impressive to add a FLASH based movie on the login page that fades in multiple screen shots of the login process and a provides documentary on sign-on security.  This new movie (while helpful and impressive), takes 8 hours of additional work and puts follow-on tasks in jeopardy as the project team is now one full day behind schedule. It also adds to post implementation maintenance costs as future changes to the login process or content on the login page will require the FLASH movie to be updated as well.

Managing risks in software projects: Tip #2. Casual scope creep.

Often times, though formal change request processes are followed for significant scope change requests, the scope change request process for small requests and suggestions is not followed. Let's say the agreed scope for a project contains a requirement for a login page. The requirement specifies that the user will enter their userid/password and they will be allowed entry upon successful validation. Just before coding, the client casually comments to your project manager that he would like to see a report that shows how many users log in each day and that he thinks it would be very easy to do.  This may sound simple to the client, but it requires many different things to happen. First, the project manager has to amend the requirement document. Then the programmer has understand the new requirement. The testing team must build test scenarios for this. The documentation team must now include this report in the documentation. The user acceptance team must plan to test this. Explain to the client that even a simple scope change request can add days of additional project time, increasing risk. Let the client choose between making the scope change request or not, but don't shortcut the process nor absord the casual scope creep into the plan.

Managing risks in software projects: Tip #1. Types of risks.

Software development is complex and many things can go wrong during the project life cycle.  There are two types of risks that may affect your project; firstly, risks that you know about and secondly, risks that you don't know about. There are many risks that you know about that can be mitigated.  For example, you have assembled a team to work on the project and one of the stellar team members has already scheduled a 3 week vacation just before testing is scheduled, which you agreed to allow. This risk is identified and contingency plans can be established to control the risk. There are also risks that you don't know about, so a general risk assessment must be done to build time into your schedule for these types of risks.  For example, your new development server may crash 2 weeks into development and it may take you 3 days to get it up and running again. The key to managing risks is to build contingency plans for risks that you know about and to build enough time into your project schedule to mitigate risks that you do not know about.

Are you feeling in pain: Pain Point #5. Lessons learned are not applied.

Some organizations do not take the time to document lessons learned feedback. Perhaps worse, other organizations do take the time to document lessons learned feedback, but then simply file them away with no real intention of acting upon them. The resulting pain is that repeat mistakes and erros will be continually made. Many of these mustakes will be frustrating and some will be costly. Perhaps the biggest casualty will be that when lessons learned are not documented, reviewed, and acted upon, the resulting attitude and behavior in the workplace becomes one of complacency and "that's good enough" rather than one of continuous improvement and how can we do better?" Ensure that continuous improvement is part of your project management process. Consider adopting a continuous improvement program to encourage and reward lessons learned feedback and solution recommendations for improvement.

Are you feeling in pain: Pain Point #4. Reinventing the wheel.

Constantly reinventing the wheel is regularly cited as a source of pain for most organizations today. Project managers are constantly looking for and reinventing their project mangement templates, forms, and checklists and it goes much further than that. There are presentation agendas, analysis techniques, and untold tutorials, self-studies, and useful information including past project archives that almost always abundantly exists, but in a private, unshared manner. The end result is not only a great loss of time, but a missed opportunity for knowledge sharing and performance improvement. Ensure you project management process enables your time to better share and avoid recreating the wheel.

Are you feeling in pain: Pain Point #3. Lack of project type scalability.

Many organizations do not have project type scalability. Rather, they have a "one-size-fits-all" approach to project management. The resulting pain is twofold. Not only are short term projects over planned and controlled, but long term projects may not be planned and controlled enough. Scalable project management processes with project type selection guidelines for such things as project size, scope, cost, complexity, risk, integration and procurement requirements, strategic alignment to business, size of benefits, etc. alleviate this pain. Shorter term projects can be "fast-pathed" while longet term, complex projects can take full advantage of all of the steps of the project management process.

Are you feeling in pain: Pain Point #2. Too wide of variety of performance.

Many organizations have a wide variety of people with different titles and skill levels that manage projects or are involved in the project management process. Seek ways to ensure that all practitioners have what they need to perform at the highest level of performance of the organization. Ensure processes are easy to access and use by all.

Are you feeling in pain: Pain Point #1. Unusable PM Methodology Manuals.

Many organizations have project management methodology manuals. While these guidebooks provide very good content and approaches, in most workplaces methodologies simply don't work. They are hard to access, difficult to use, too detailed, and can't easily be changed. They focus on the "what" is to be done only and not the "who, when, where, why, and how". And as methodology manuals become out of date, they cease to be useful. The resulting pain is that the performance of the project team will vary greatly and project results will be inconsistent. Contrary to this, a well defined project management process clearly shows for each step of the process not only the what is to be done, but who does it, who can help (mentors), what tools and information is available to save time and assist in the effort, "how to" examples, all in the conmtext of the customer environment. Processes, unlike methodology manuals whether hard copy or online enabled, remain current and can be continuously improved upon - saving time, reducing costs, and improving quality.

Tips from Confucius: Saying #7. "To see what is right and do it, is courageous."

It is easy to make excuses for project difficulties and to blame an individual or a department. Most problems are because of the process or the lack of a process, not due to the people. Process management facilitates project management and capability maturity. It is the right thing to do.

Tips from Confucius: Saying #6. "To have friends come from far away - isn't that a joy."

Not necessarily geographic, but distances measured in priorities, perspectives, styles, skills, reporting structures, and loyalties can keep team members distant from the project and one another. Good processes enable the project team to come together from these distances to speak a common language, follow a common process, use useful and usable tools and information, and perform brilliantly and consistently.

Tips from Confucius: Saying #5. "By three methods we may learn wisdom: First by reflection, which is the noblest; second by imitation, which is the easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."

In setting up project management proceses, there are ample opportunities for all three methods of learning wisdom. Adopting de facto standard processes, "as-is", is a useful way to rapidly benefit from the wisdom of others. Examing defined processes, benchmark measurements, and qualitative data provides further insight and wisdom as well as opportunities for process improvement. Experience is always an excellent teacher and it doesn't always have to be bitter. Learn from successes and learn even more from the challenges, difficulties, and failures.

Tips from Confucius: Saying #4. "He who learns but does not think is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger."

The professional project manager constantly learns new techniques and thinks about ways to apply them. He also thinks about what he needs to learn next and seeks education and training opportunities.

Tips from Confucius: Saying #3. "Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without."

Don't confuse pursuit of continuous improvement with pursuit of perfection. Always be open to new ideas for improvement, but don't obsess on unattainable states of perfection. Fully use and extend upon what you already know, have, and can easily obtain.

Tips from Confucius: Saying #2. "One who has committed a mistake and doesn't correct it, is committing another."

How many time are repeat mistakes made? Too many. Project managers are in the unique position of seeing first hand opportunities for defect elimination and reduction of waste. Management must ensure that lessons learned feedback is documented, communicated, and acted upon as an integral part of the project management process.

Tips from Confucius: Saying #1. "One who goes unrecognized yet isn't annoyed - isn't that a noble person?"

Rather than hero worship, true recognition comes from within. Quiet pursuit of continuous improvement excellence and helping others perform better will save more than the day, it will secure the future.

Like politics, processes are local.

In many organizations, management is seeking to implement processes that can be rapidly deployed, used, and continuously improved upon at the workplace level. Taking advantage of enterprise defined processes, workplaces can optimize their best practices taking into consideration such things as dynamic and fluctuating workloads and a mix of resources types such as dedicated, shared, internal, and external.