Strategic PMO Managed Services

In today's business landscape, flexibility and resilience are crucial for success, particularly when it comes to project portfolios that drive organizational change. Within project management offices (PMOs), the ability to adapt and evolve is essential.

With the support of a PMO Managed Services provider, organizations can achieve these goals by enhancing their assessment, mobilization, implementation and operation of a project, program or portfolio management office.

What is the recipe for delivering business strategy through projects?

Blending structure and flexibility to suit your organization’s taste.

In our “new normal” of constant change and transformation, a business’s survival hinges on its ability to transform. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified this – the ability to stop, pivot, restart and move on is more important than ever. While this is true for business at large, it is especially true for the projects that underpin and drive organizational change. The ability to create and deliver a portfolio of projects in an agile way is now an imperative and companies want to understand how to organize around this and invest in the people and technology required for success.

The essential ingredients for improved project outcomes

Our research has highlighted three essential ingredients to consider bringing together when developing your organization’s strategy for project management:

Fit-for-Purpose Governance

As one of our interviewees, a Finance Program Manager at a global technology firm, says “we need rigor in our approach, to enable the flexibility and quick thinking to assess, pick up and drop projects as necessary. It’s so important to think tactically about projects – more than ever before.”

“We know that managing change initiatives is different than managing a capital project, in terms of the speed and cycles you need to go through - if you place concrete in a capital project, you’re not going to easily pivot away from that action. When it comes to organizational change, we need different management processes to help us work together and prototype to get our outcomes much faster.”

Steve FeliceProject Centre of Excellence, Officer at BHP

A firm understanding of the big picture

Defining specific goals helps the PMO motivate stakeholders and stay focused on why this specific initiative is a priority – this in turn elevates the PMO function and its role as a driver and builder in maintaining the change momentum required to deliver business strategy. If we focus on putting the right measurements in place to provide the supporting evidence to the big picture we’re creating a recipe for success which will be far easier to articulate to the wider business.

“Transformations blur into another transformation - you work on it 2-3 years and it transforms into the new transformation. You then get about 50% of what you want out of that transformation because the goals aren’t clearly defined. Where I’ve seen success in large transformations, they knew exactly what they needed to get out of it - or at least there was some minimum to say, hey, we have completed this transformation, it is a win, because we’ve got these pieces.”

Ajay MchtaManager of Strategy and Continuous Improvement at Southwest Airlines

Flexible approach to delivery

Whatever the maturity of your business’s project management function – be it a web of interlinked projects being delivered with waterfall or agile methodology, a transformation office or a project management center of excellence – cultivating a culture of accountability and flexibility are the key ingredients in a valued project management function that can further the goals of the overall business.

“Having an agile mindset is not about being tied to any one particular process - and of course there has to be boundaries otherwise there would be chaos - it’s about having that agility to be able to pivot and go in different directions and still achieve the ultimate objective.”

Jack MacDonaldFormer Senior Manager, Integrated Support Teams, Department of National Defence, Canada

What is the role of technology?

  • Technology is utilized in a number of different ways to enhance the workforce. Maturity is linked to utilizing technology, yet in the US the use of technology appears to be lower in adoption.
  • Technology, which has enabled remote working, has had the largest impact on improving the management of projects. Over the next five years, technology will help free up project manager time and enhanced information will be more prevalent.
  • A number of barriers exist in the adoption of technology: cost and having a digital mindset. Additionally, cyber security appears to be a bigger barrier to the uptake of technology for organizations in the US.

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Contact us

Jennifer Duignan

Principal, PMO Managed Services, PwC US

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