Central Government Owned Company – PMO Setup

We were asked to manage an organisation-wide Development Programme consisting of multiple high-priority business improvement initiatives and corporate milestones.

As the organisation was still in its infancy, it quickly became clear that the lack of governance and contradictory information surrounding these projects made it impossible to prioritise work, manage project resource requirements or provide any business justification. Due to projects already happening outside of the programme, it was clear that managing this programme in isolation was not sufficient because the company needed to consider the resources and time already committed elsewhere. The organisation had seen an increase in the use of back-office staff by hiring agency staff to deliver projects, which was an unplanned and unnoticed growth leading to an unplanned overspend.

The impact of this unmanaged change was one of change saturation, competing and conflicting timescales and priorities, and staff availability leading to delayed or cancelled projects. This included projects which had already been invested in. This led CI Projects to recommend the implementation of a Programme Management Office (PMO), to include a new project approval process based on a robust business case and related approval processes. Having evidenced the need, the organisation quickly agreed this approach.

We advised the creation of a new role within the organisation; PMO manager, and the set-up of a business function for that role to manage which was signed off. We then set up this function through consultation, best practice, and extensive knowledge and experience within the industry and the organisation, to tailor an approach that would deliver the best results. This was implemented through a detailed and thorough handover from selection and recruitment of the PMO manager right through to the handover of tools and processes.

The benefits included:

• The ability to prioritise work against the corporate strategy
• Management of resource including permanent staff
• Ability to demonstrate Value for Money (VFM)
• Error proofing to ensure that a project only goes ahead with a valid business case which will allow for benefits realisation and return on investment
• Focussed sponsorship from senior management
• Controlled and managed impact of change
• Ability to manage dependencies
• A reduction of projects from over 300 initiatives down to 20 strategically focused projects

By working in partnership with the Government Owned Company and challenging the status quo in a constructive, trusted and objective way, we have been able to mobilise this new PMO function to support our client control their change programme internally.