By: Priyanka Nagpal | May 26, 2022 | PMO & Project Management | Product Management
Introduction
This post discusses the role of the project management office (PMO) in achieving business success through an illustrative scenario.
An e-commerce start-up in line with its consumer-oriented digital transformation strategy decided to launch an augmented reality enabled omnichannel commerce capability for its 17,000 consumers.
The leadership vision and goals are well carved. The team members are working long hours. Despite the rigorous working hours, the team has not been able to achieve success. The launch is overdue by seven months, and there has been no communication with consumers. The delivery is at risk, as well as brand loyalty and credibility.
There is no PMO team to assist with the overall governance and day-to-day project execution. The leadership has decided to add more people to the development team to accelerate delivery. Without a PMO team, the leadership vision and goals have not been communicated effectively to the team and the newly added members. Also, there is a lack of clarity on priorities and effective resource allocation resulting in lower team productivity.
Will adding more people to the development team solve the problem?
What else can the leadership do to accelerate the timelines of delivery?
Increasing the size of the delivery team does not always yield positive outcomes. Instead, increasing the productivity of the existing team members by empowering them with effective prioritization, knowledge, and tools always goes a long way in accelerating the delivery timeline.
According to Brooks' law in software project management, "adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".
In the above scenario, investing in world-class PMO is the solution to solve the lack of alignment, mismatched resource allocation, and lower team productivity. The project manager will timely identify critical staffing and project risks, establish governance standards, and deliver compelling outcomes. With a well-run PMO, the e-commerce company will be able to launch a delightful consumer experience with its brand across channels.
Successful businesses are not just consumer-oriented but also utilize best-in-class PMOs to orchestrate on-scope, on-budget, and on-time delivery of value to their customers.
Are you an e-commerce company looking to implement SEO? Are you a start-up struggling to scale efficiently? Are you looking to shift your business model to digital channels and value streams?
Do you have a specific milestone for your business?
What is the common denominator in achieving business success in all of the above scenarios?
Every business has people, products or services, processes, and data that need intelligent orchestration to deliver successful outcomes.
How we can help
Gravitas can help establish, improve, and run the project management office (PMO) for clients. Our deep expertise in transforming project and portfolio teams for large enterprises enables us to deliver outcomes from day one. We can help you run the PMO like clockwork. We bring the tools, processes, and people to establish and operate your PMO. We have launched Laminar, a complete solution to manage the 3Ps - portfolios, programs, and projects. Laminar is a PMO as-a-service offering with in-built best practices of Fortune 500 clients. Sign-up for a free three months pass at www.gravitasconsulting.com/laminarbeta.
Laminar is a pure plug-and-play solution that can be configured in less than a week and sits on top of your current project management tools - purposefully designed to be low-maintenance and fully automated so that you can focus on running the business.
What can a well-run PMO do for the people (the leadership/team/vendors) of a company?
1. Enable strategic alignment of all parties to the long-term and short-term business goals by leveraging project management best practices.
2. Drive efficient resource allocation by considering factors like skills, project priority, the urgency of delivery, and the availability of resources.
3. Create space for introspection and continuous improvement by organizing regular feedback sessions called retrospectives and seeing them as opportunities to find out what the team is doing well and where they can improve.
4. Aid in team communication by providing opportunities for the team and the leadership to engage.
5. Focus on outcomes to increase the team's chances of achieving business results. Engraining the team goals in everyday work, boosting team resilience and ability to respond to change at speed by equipping the team with timely information.
6. Facilitate talent retention by establishing forums to welcome diverse ideas, creating opportunities to share knowledge and promote intellectual growth, and motivating and rewarding the team.
What can a well-run PMO do for the product or service offering of the company?
1. Ensure quality control of the product or service by establishing and driving the adoption of product development processes.
2. Reduce cost by efficiently allocating resources, de-risking the project timelines by organizing timely health checks and maintaining RAID logs, and delivering on time and budget.
Well-run project management results in cost-saving and delivering value on time to help businesses unlock new revenue opportunities.
3. Help gain a competitive advantage and boost your bottom line by utilizing intelligent frameworks to manage resources and product development for a faster time to market.
Set the scope, schedule, and budget from the start and refine the accuracy of the plan throughout the product or service development life cycle.
4. Balance stakeholder goals and customer needs by aligning resources to projects based on priority and time-to-market and juggling scope, cost and timelines.
5. Assist in adopting innovation within the organization and efficiently scaling the product.
Whether you are an e-commerce business, social enterprise, a service provider, a small business, or a large corporate - well-run PMO is a critical and often overlooked factor key to achieving business success.
About Us
Our story began with the deep desire to drive tangible, visible, and measurable outcomes for clients. With that as our guiding beacon, we launched Gravitas Consulting – a boutique consulting firm specializing in bringing Insight to Oversight.
We help our clients scale and improve their businesses by the thoughtful application of Intelligent Information to guide decisions and actions. We leverage our data analytics and visualization, enterprise program and change management, and customer experience design expertise to provide leaders with the intelligence they need to do what they do best, even better.
At Gravitas, we measure success by only one metric: each client’s satisfaction with our ability to drive Outcomes that matter. We stand behind this belief by putting a portion of our fees at risk if we do not meet the commitments we promise.
Our promise to clients is simple: we drive outcomes that matter.
Visit us at www.gravitasconsulting.com/laminar to learn m ore and schedule a demo.
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