Client’s challenge
A $3.5 billion business services company had a significant IT
delivery problem. Struggling to deliver major IT projects, the
company was experiencing budget overruns and communication
issues between the IT organization and key business
stakeholders. The new CIO asked PwC Advisory to help
discover and resolve the root cause of the problem.
PwC Advisory solution
The PwC Advisory team learned immediately that the IT
organization, with a budget of $68 million and more than 120 staff
members, did not have a governance structure for managing IT
projects. Without structure and organization, it was difficult to
evaluate whether IT was adding value to the business—
making the situation ripe for dissent. The solution was to establish
a Project Management Office (PMO) reporting directly to the CIO.
The PMO would provide the IT organization with a consistent and
centralized process to evaluate and prioritize their projects in line
with business goals and objectives.
A charter and sponsorship agreement was developed for the
PMO, with the PwC Advisory Project Management methodology
selected as the operational model. The PMO’s IT governance
and controls were strengthened by reestablishing and making
operational a dormant process for business groups to propose,
approve and prioritize IT projects. This revitalized project
approval process includes portfolio tools that were used to
assess existing IT projects as well. The team then developed an
inventory of IT projects, policies, practices and tools; a staffing
database to enable project management skills balancing; and
a management dashboard reporting system for IT and business
stakeholders. Finally, the PwC Advisory team helped the client
implement a time-capture system feeding a costing model,
to provide visibility and transparency of IT project spending.
Impact on client’s business
The newly created PMO office has established the appropriate
governance with a new set of processes and controls to
expedite projects. Now, the CIO can present all of these efforts
against a framework of overall IT improvement efforts, clearly
showing how IT directly supports overall company objectives.
As a result, the business units have a renewed confidence in the
IT organization. At the beginning of our engagement, the
company had more than 400 projects in its database. Following
our assessment, there are now 220 projects in proposal, with
15 key projects identified and prioritized.
Six months into the new governance structure, the CIO has
reported that as a result of the PMO, the IT organization is better
able to focus on priority projects and deliver faster results against
those projects. The CIO has exceeded cost-reduction goals
for the IT organization, which he attributes in part to the success
of the PMO function and the tools it put in place. Increased
governance is giving the CIO and his stakeholders the ability to
clearly see the value IT is delivering.
