Is your team ready to rock?

Achieving the right balance when building a new PMO is more art than science.  How many FTE? More consultants?  New Vendors? Full outsource?  Just when you think that, you have your charter and you understand your hiring goals you realize the real fun is just about to begin.

If you have modest reporting needs, conversion goals for growing your organization, or just a list on paper of potential agencies to contact, I will cover those challenges in a different post… today I have some spokes for your training wheels where the landscape is big, complicated, and well charged.

I had the opportunity to construct global standards for contractor procurement, time tracking, and asset retention while working at a global pharmaceutical company that taught me some valuable lessons:

1.       International Hiring is not as easy as International Supervision.

      How can a hiring manager in England retain a consultant in Michigan? When the site management’s interpretation of newly minted laws meant that, no interviews could be allowed?  For our British colleagues the concept that meeting a consultant face to face was too close to the full time hiring policy to be allowed was jaw dropping.  For our finance colleagues transversing the legal and system hurdles so the money flowed in the right manner with the right taxes paid was just as challenging.  Facilitating both with honest SLAs that talk candidly about workload can be a challenge.  Finance associates need to understand that hand writing a transfer to the ledger every month may become 200 transactions without much warning. Often overlooked inline help can become critical when you start looking at users that are in not only other business units with different agendas… but new cultures.

2.       A Tomato is not a To Mate Oh when they have different daily work.

Being really ‘crisp’ about the names of rolls and roll descriptions  before making your PMO national … let alone global… is the Special Assistant in Boise, Idaho the same as the Billing Manager in Atlanta, Georgia…  the Software Engineer III in France may actually be a Software Tester IV in Italy… or even a Senior Design Lead in San Francisco, California.  You may track all of your ‘time’ through your work breakdown structure (wbs) but you will have a much easier time making budget cases and process flows meaningful across the organization if your get the job titles and skill sets settled up front.

3.       Pick your partners as carefully as your political battles.

Global reporting of contractor dollars and workload and skill set sound great… until uncover some very ugly situations as start to ask agencies for the names of all their consultants, the hiring manager, and rates in preparation for getting the right electronic timecards to the right people and the right purchase order dollars in place:

·         Contractor submitted was converted to an FTE 6 months prior… agency still billing weekly for same… sending to central processing… getting paid… agency has 85 other contractors on site… many on critical projects… legal and procurement want to ban the agency… business stakeholders terrified of brain drain / time loss.

·         Contractor submitted not claimed by any hiring manager at the site… unclaimed list goes to business managers globally… actually does work for another department and IT pays for it ‘as a favor.’

·         Entire portfolio of contractors work on 6 – 10 project codes that change monthly and are spread over 15 purchase orders that shift with the hardware fulfillment wind… need a server… charge the people elsewhere until the end of the quarter.

·         Group of contractors compensated well over $300 / hr by niche agency owned by the spouse of a director in a sensitive business group.  The skill set is not unique… the software is… well… special J.

As you work through how your vendor management model will evolve be honest as a governance team (procurement, legal, business, IT) about where you want to be more aggressive about ending bad practices.

4.       Recruiting is not the same anymore.

If you have, 100 – 2000 or more consultants to manage and you are not looking for a high percentage of conversion to FTE than I highly recommend the ‘spot market’ approach.  Bring in a vendor neutral party to assist and reap the benefits of centralized management.  I have worked with Volt’s spin off known as ProcureStaff (http://www.procurestaff.com/) and have seen them grow tremendously over the last 7 years.

While the business process work is still your work… having a partner ‘own’ the master contracts with each agency can make you a rock star to your legal partners… centralizing the invoicing and electronic processing with validated purchase orders, cost centers, and project codes will score you prime seating at the next procurement event… and once your hiring managers become comfortable with the screening staff and only have to review quality resumes you won’t have to sneak into town with your next process improvement road show anymore!

What challenges are you facing in making your resourcing plan a reality?  What are your greatest ledger challenges?  Are you ready to never give a recruiter a ‘suggested rate’ again?

(Photos are the work of Strollerdos, Leo Reynolds, and Roland and are used under Creative Commons License)

Team Alone Time Is Valuable

Once a week I host a meeting for all of my peers to roll out process change, have process owners come and present / discuss, and to talk through process suggestions.

I use cartoon clip art (MS Word, insert clip art feature) and lots of puns, and strictly follow the 4 lines / 5 word rule of PowerPoint presentations.

If the conversation is going to be perceived as stress filled… I bring snacks… and in a non-lactose, sugar free, non-wheat crowd that can be a challenge in and of itself!

Humor rules the conversation… first last and always… the pace is much slower and much more open than many of the presentations that they would give themselves.

I say ‘many’ instead of ‘all’ because over the past 2 years or so that I have had this position the entire energy of the group has changed. Some of it is because of familiarity… but some of it is because there is a safe, restful, fun, space for interaction.

People don’t come running to me in a flutter and speaking a word a second in 2 directions at once… they run in a flutter, pause, flop on a guest chair… and present their situation.

It really does spread.. and it really does help.. hmmm… maybe I’ll blog more about this method of team building & the candy jar philosophy next week… it is one of the training wheels to getting an effective PMO up and running !

(Photo is the work of Peter Garnhum and is used under Creative Commons License)

A very wise Deputy PMO Manager taught me the power of the nibble… and I have extended his practice in several directions since!

The Lure of the Drawer

Projects are stressful, getting called to a manager’s office is stressful, and combining them makes for very passionate chatter. Our Deputy PMO manager had a magic drawer.


Everything is Better with Chocolate!

Being a diabetic he would stock it with snack mix and granola bars and popcorn as well as whatever chocolaty goodness he could find at the wholesale club. It was always random, and it was always there.

The Prioritization Lesson

When you have a group of firefighters that need to switch brains and learn to live by the power of the approval and not the telephone there are many ways to start the lessons in project management. One of my favorite is candy prioritization. What do you like? Carmel or nuts? What do you value? Chocolate or sours? What do you nibble on while you watch TV? Popcorn or granola bars?

Everyone starts confused, everyone ends laughing. When they show up the next day and a kiss or a cup or a bar is resting on their mouse… they start to believe. When they start looking around they find themselves in disbelief. It is a great team builder to have 15 ~ 20 people start their day on a random Thursday amazed that there is a candy drawer (or sometimes filing cabinet) in the new manager’s office.Can you really go in there in the evening and grab some popcorn? Is there really Ramon Noodles there this week? This upgrade is going sideways… let’s head up to the PMO office and brainstorm on her board and get something to snack on.

The Bad Tasty Meeting

If the conversation at an excellence meeting is going to be perceived as stress filled… I bring snacks… and in a non-lactose, sugar free, non-wheat crowd that can be a challenge in and of itself! The meeting appears to start slow, but the intention is to bring out the informal and the relaxed… (but I’ll save the safe space thought for another post!)

Everyone has a favorite, there are always healthy choices. I have been in organizations where spirits are encouraged if the meeting is at the end of the day while other organizations would be aghast to see alcohol on company property.

The Team Lunch

I can’t let this post go without a thought about the dreaded team lunch. Switch it up! Do breakfast before an early half day team event. Pull taffy, take a cooking class together, or even work a soup kitchen together. Find creative places that don’t call for the same ole’ suit and tie!

I have yet to have anyone frown at both the apple and the chocolate so be bold and daring and you will be rewarded with great team bonds.

Like everything I do… it’s an evolution and not a revolution… it’s about trust and freedom and building a team one training wheel at a time!

How do you diffuse the stress and break the ice in your organization? Do you long to break out of the business lunch?

(Picture is the property of Pink Moose used under Creative Commons license)

GDC Post Mortem - Not your starter Post Mortem for sure!

You want to grow… you want to improve… you want to add value to the organization…

Some projects have failed… some are considered best practices… Some product teams fly under the radar release after release…

So you want to provide another service to the organization and you feel that a post mortem process is the golden bullet?

Here are some thoughts to consider before taking the enterprise level plunge:

Start Slow.

Have a third party facilitator discuss high level thoughts in separate discussions with the business and the technical team.

Skim through the areas of:

Review the results with the exec stakeholders… rolling up across the portfolio for large organizations… What are your trends? What are your strengths? What organizational communication challenges are having the most impact?

Give people time to vent. Give people time to dream. Give people time to talk about concrete change that they want to see in the current / next release.

Round Two

Next release, be more strategic and coax troubled groups to survey or meet at baseline…. with a couple tactical ‘go do’ items for improvement during envision and design.

Are you ready for an enterprise process now? Do you have the executive buy-in?

For those teams not in trouble look at a richer question set at baseline during the next release. Are they enthusiastic about change? Are they ready for document based questions? Do they want to carve out a monthly discussion?

At the post mortem discussion decide on question depth and frequency for the third release…. in concert with the direction provided by the exec reviewers after your second roll up ! Be more formal in the assignment of action items. What release will you be able to incorporate the brainstormed solution?

Dependent system based discussion? Give teams some latitude, but drive them to a central reporting process of actions.

What timing?

Look at creative ways to have dependent systems hold discussions together and then identify action items that are shared or separate. Who is releasing next? Who can take on the complexity of the change?

In any and all cases… time the first round so that ‘go do’ items can be identified before budget season starts. Is there a reporting universe that could be expanded to end a metric crisis? Is there a pattern to the data freshness challenge that a boost to infrastructure in the UAT environment could solve? Let your group learning help set the prioritization in the coming budget year.

Be careful to look at the frequency not just from a project level but the team level… are the same people participating in 4 discussions in one week or one month.

What format?

Surveys in the collaboration tool of your choice with a setting to provide anonymous feedback. Store with the project documentation and incorporate into new hire training as part of the “Where to learn about your system.”

Report in a word document to share with partner organizations and new team members, but rolled up action items in the collaboration tool of your choice.

Presentations in the format of choice for both team and executive discussions.

What else?

What has worked in your organization? In your vertical? In your methodology?
 

(Picture is the property of Crashworks and used under Creative Commons License)

State of Oregon: Project Management Office

The Office of Information Services (OIS) for the state of Oregon has presented a simple, but expansive, portal that displays all of the usual pieces and parts you would expect, but also provides a PM process guide and PM blog. The training sections provides a brief window into the classroom offerings. The latest newsletter ( Dated – Jan 2008 ) mentions that a “complete overhaul” is in the works. the cynic in me wants to point out to them that with such a great library of online information and a link to the state mental health services department, there isn’t much that they are missing already!

Program Management Office a Best Practice?

If you are looking for bullet points to build your business case for creation of or enhanced investment in a PMO then look no further then this single post blog on IT Toolbox for a great way to organize your thoughts.

Closer Sponsor Relationships Through Web 2.0 Tech…

What would a list of links be without Gantthead… Nice thoughts on how to bring the Blog to the stakeholder and thereby bring the PMO to to the daily thought process without coming across as spam.

Consultant / Consulting Company Links

Transforming PMO from a cost center to a profit center (Blue Hammock)

This short post from March 2007 on Ahmad Shahzad’s blog does not give
many details, but provides a framework of thought around the PMO as a shared
services financial model.

PMO 2.0 – Program Management Resource Center (Planview)

Nice list of white papers, webcasts, and seminar reviews to help an
existing PMO improve and align with new process thought models.