When I was interviewing for the role of Data Program Manager with the City of Syracuse’s office of API last year, the center of conversation was the need for a formal project management practice across the organization. Syracuse’s effort to join the league of smart cities has led to a significant increase in the number of projects and the amount of data generated from them. As more projects are taken up, it becomes equally important to ensure the quality, security, efficiency, and timely completion of those projects, and to achieve that, we needed to implement formal project management practices that were standardized across the board. After I was hired, I immediately started researching to see how other cities are setting up PMOs and was met with a severe lack of information on the topic. What I found out was that most PMOs if they exist, are either managing IT projects exclusively or manage a specific department’s work. One year later, there is still hardly any information out there about enterprise-wide PMOs in local governments and as this blog takes you along on our journey of establishing an enterprise-wide PMO at the City of Syracuse, hopefully, we can reduce that gap.
Before we jump into what we are doing, let us understand some basic concepts of project management and PMOs.
What is project and program management and how is a project management office (PMO) essential to it?
Projects are unique, have a definitive start and end date, and usually create, retire, modify or improve a product or service.
Programs are a collection of projects that are similar, create the same product/service, or meet the objectives of the program when combined.
A Project management office (PMO) is a body that establishes, maintains, and governs standards for project management across the organization. It aims to utilize the economies of repetition and standardization in the execution of projects. The PMO manages and governs the portfolio of key IT and business process improvement projects. The office is also responsible for selecting, managing, and optimizing the project resources and ensuring projects are aligned with the organization’s key objectives. PMO staff works in partnership with cross-functional departments to form cohesive teams to achieve project objectives.
There are different types of PMO models that have been identified through research and surveys and one of the models comes from a Project Management Institute(PMI)study on PMOs. This study outlines the following classification for PMOs (PMI, 2013, p. 6):
Organizational PMO: Provides project-related services to support a business unit
Project support services: Provides enabling processes to continuously support the management of project, program, or portfolio work
Enterprise PMO: Highest level PMO, typically responsible to align project and program work to strategy
Center of Excellence: Supports project work by providing the organization with standards, methodologies, and tools
Project Specific PMO: Provides project-related temporary services as an entity to support a specific project or program
How is managing local government projects different from managing corporate/IT projects?
Local Governments provide a wide variety of services and products to their residents by implementing a diverse array of public works, health and safety, information technology, and other legally mandated projects and programs. The primary reasons for such projects and programs are usually local ordinances, state laws, federal regulations, and the business plans of the organizations. While shareholders, board of directors, senior-level executives, employees, and end-users are the stakeholders for a typical corporate organization, city residents, elected officials, community partners, NGOs, regulatory agencies, and other government organizations are usually the key stakeholders for local governments. Typical government project planning processes and decisions are usually influenced by stakeholder’s expectations rather than the potential to make a profit, and project success is generally measured by stakeholder satisfaction.
While corporate/IT projects have millions or billions of dollars in the allocated budget, city administrations usually run on limited resources in terms of money, manpower, access to technology, and skills. Despite the limited resources, local governments cannot deliver a sub-par product or service because everything they deliver impacts the lives of thousands of people, so resource allocation and project planning play a very important role in successful service delivery.
Project Management is not an established process in local government administrations. There are very few established PMOs at the local level with qualified and experienced project managers to implement standardization and formal processes. Usually, subject matter experts(SMEs) act as project managers but often they are not well-versed in standardized project management practices. Project management maturity levels among local governments vary due to several reasons, including organizational policies, business needs, experience, professional background, resistance to change, and financial constraints.
Project Management maturity model
Source: Google
Establishing a PMO at the City of Syracuse
After much research and prototyping, I came to the conclusion that implementing a hybrid PMO that combines aspects of an enterprise PMO and a Center of Excellence would be the most effective for the way we work at the City of Syracuse. The PMO sits within the Office of Accountability, Performance, and Innovation(API) and will be scaled city-wide once the model is completely established and the trial runs are successful. Among others, we’ve implemented a Project Intake process that will create a single source of entry for all project requests that come to our department and will go through a screening process based on the degree of alignment with the organizational objectives, impact, and priority before they are accepted. This will ensure that the projects we take up are intentional and impactful and make it easier to manage workloads. We’ve also implemented Jira and Confluence as our project management tools. The PMO’s service offerings are:
Consultation: Provide standards, tools, and methodologies, establish policies and procedures, and ensure governance for project management across the organization
Training: Collective learning and resource-sharing opportunities for individuals who want to improve their skills and knowledge
Professional Development: Resources, mentorship, and certification support for individuals who are interested in getting certified as project managers
The main objectives of our PMO are:
Ensure project goals are aligned with the organizational goals
To promote a standardized project management framework
To ensure all project management practices are focused on quality and efficiency
To provide a space for project managers to learn from each other and improve the overall process
To ensure accurate and complete documentation and storage of project information
Steps to create a PMO
Although the process of establishing a PMO varies, the fundamental concepts and need for existence are usually similar across all organizations.
Establish the need for standardization and a formal project management practice and get buy-in from senior staff and all other stakeholders
Do a strengths and weaknesses analysis of project management as a practice in the organization and identify areas of improvement and define goals. Define what you want the PMO to achieve in the next 2–3 years
Identify which stage of maturity you are currently in and what type of PMO you want to create
Define what your PMO will do, who will form the PMO, and their roles and responsibilities
Develop resources (people, money, skills, and time)
Define projects, programs, service requests, operational tasks accurately and communicate them to everyone
Focus on change management from the beginning, resistance to change will be the biggest hurdle in your way
Build resources, procedures, processes, tools and technology, and the PMO workflow
Make sure to communicate progress to all stakeholders and users regularly
Start small and try it on a smaller audience to ensure your model can be scaled, this will prevent system breakdowns
Be open to feedback and the possibility of starting over
Establishing a PMO is impossible without the support from senior management and their willingness to relinquish a part of their control to the project managers
Try to make the transition as easy as possible for the users, avoid enforcing standards and rules from the get-go
Make the standards and processes customizable and easy to use and provide continuous support and guidance in the learning phase