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Program Management

Large program management initiatives exist across projectized, functional and hybrid business organizations. Projectized environments have evolved efficient designs for executing projects. On the other hand, hybrid and functional organizations, focused mostly on operations, still require an efficient setup to optimize execution of projects. This is especially true in order to carry out business intelligence (BI) engagements that help company executives address analysis and reporting needs. In business organizations, departments often suffer from a lack of rapid turnaround for analytical requests submitted to the information technology (IT) division. Instead frustrated business leaders bypass the IT department and service their BI needs by developing technology competencies within their departments. This study advocates an approach to the setup and use of a Program Management Office (PMO) in bridging the business and technology divide when servicing BI needs.

Issues

  • Limitations in the mandate of the PMO. Typically housed within the IT department, the PMO is not permitted to manage projects throughout the enterprise. BI endeavors suffer acutely since cross-departmental collaboration is unstructured. Communication of strategic initiatives originating from top management is funneled through the IT organization before being delivered to the PMO, which creates significant biases. Ultimately BI projects are undertaken without central coordination and without alignment with overall strategic goals.
  • Lack of Transparency & Mutual Suspicion. Analytical projects require collaboration between business and IT departments. This can be a difficult process because knowledge sharing and transparency are limited. Inadequate cross-departmental accountability at a project level does not promote a sense of partnership that transcends interdepartmental territorialism, ultimately leading to a significant slowdown, and even paralysis of analytical exercises.
  • Lack of shared resources. Without adequate oversight, similarities between analysis requests across departments are difficult to identify and manage. Small data extraction teams are duplicated across business departments, yielding lower productivity and increased labor and infrastructure costs. Identical data are copied repeatedly across departments, resulting in a general decline in the company's overall efficiency around strategy development and execution.
  • Lack of Uniform Quality Assurance Oversight. Data analysis and validation standards if enforced are done so without adequate enterprise-wide oversight, leading to inconsistent reporting results across departments. Instead of deliberating what should be done about a problem, executives end up having to defend their reports and analysis.
  • Differences in Management of Scope. Business analysis projects sharply differ from technology exercises on the management of scope. Analytical exercises are iterative in nature and require frequent change requests in order to arrive at a novel business discovery. Requirements must be progressively elaborated as a greater understanding of the business occurs. This is antithetical to most IT operational projects where scope is rigorously controlled. IT organizations believe (correctly) that the number of scope changes and project risk are positively correlated. How can these two approaches to project execution be reconciled?

Solutions

  • Organizational Strategy. BI and other interdepartmental projects require an independent PMO whose leadership reports directly to top management (Figure 1). This body must coordinate delivery of BI projects by leveraging business and technology experts through a rigorous project management and communications framework. Translation of business requirements to IT and communication of implementation challenges to the business community requires multidisciplinary knowledge that should be cultivated by organizing the PMO into department-specific verticals. A rotational program should encourage project managers to periodically cross verticals and expand their functional knowledge. Project managers from the "frontline" should provide regular feedback to the PMO on potential improvements. A Project Controls Group should audit projects for compliance with PMO standards. Coordination between program managers should facilitate the management of interdepartmental projects using project portfolio management techniques.

Figure 1: A sample PMO organization chart

  • Enterprise-level Accountability. The PMO head should report directly to top management and should meet regularly with senior strategists to prioritize analytical requests and to obtain adequate visibility into the key questions challenging departments. Project prioritization should be based on alignment with business needs. Sponsorship should provide enough clout to encourage interdepartmental collaboration and ought to provide transparency for all analytical projects underway. The PMO must have input into all project member reviews.
  • Standardize Project Execution Project execution should be standardized using industry-accepted methodologies such as RUP (Rational Unified Process). Project portfolio management techniques should be employed to govern enterprise engagement activities. Integrated project plans should provide milestone-level visibility into initiatives underway that are intended to meet company goals. Business intelligence skills ought to be categorized, commoditized and tracked. This should not only expose skill gaps, but also help to allocate skills to projects more efficiently.

A PMO that is centralized and objective within functional organizations can ideally expedite business intelligence initiatives without being biased by departmental politics or technology solutions. Top-level transparency into the PMO ensures that business intelligence strategies are properly aligned with the overall business objectives of the company. Excellent use of industry-wide project management methodologies and practices help ensure that execution is rigorously controlled and yields predictable results.

Waleed Khan, PMP is a manager at a global management consulting firm, DiamondCluster Intl. He can be contacted at waleed.khan@diamondcluster.com.


Waleed Khan, PMP is a manager at a global management consulting firm, DiamondCluster Intl. He can be contacted at waleed.khan@diamondcluster.com.

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