Case study

PMO consultancy support - a case study

Our role:

PMO Specialist support in the role of an external consultant on Client’s programme: replacing an employee in conducting daily program and projects tasks and providing training and onboarding for a new, permanent, team member.

Country:

Poland

Introduction

Most companies face all kinds of challenges while delivering projects and carrying out their Business As Usual activities. With projects, there may be schedule delays, overspending, incorrectly identified scope but also lack of proper Project Management or PMO resources - permanent absence from the organisation’s structure or a case of a sudden staffing issue, e.g. leaving company, lengthy sick leave, etc.

In an instance of missing PM and/or PMO resources, few different options are available, such as introducing a chosen employee to the role, urgent recruitment or, used as an interim or a permanent solution, outsourcing such needs to a company specializing in Project Management and PMO. Below case study describes an instance of a temporary outsourcing PMO position while awaiting new, permanent team member to join.

The challenge

We were approached by a local office of one of the leading global banks with a request for a skilled and experienced PMO Specialist that could immediately join an established and running Program with a structured PMO team. The aim was to replace for a full time an absent employee by taking care of their tasks and responsibilities. As a second step of the support needed, our specialist would then onboard a new, permanent team member on the Client’s side, handing over all the work. The nature of the engagement required our resource to work directly on Client’s premises, in an on-shore model.

The main challenges faced by Client were as below:

Need for an immediately available, high priority on-shore PMO support, to ensure business as usual activities run without any disturbance.
Incorporating a new, permanent member to the team.
Requirement for PM tools management and comprehensive reporting.
Need for high quality support with managing the program’s schedule and all other documentation associated with it.

We have presented three highly experienced team members from our team to choose from by conducting interviews with the Client and going through a detailed assessment. Based on the criteria, one of the experts was chosen.

The solution

Our team member has started her assignment and very quickly obtained all the training and knowledge needed to become a full time and valuable PMO team member. She joined a team of few resources being led by a dedicated PMO Lead and cooperating on various tasks. The main responsibilities included:

Daily management of all projects’ opened tasks,
Regular updates of projects’ schedules and charters,
Organizing and moderating projects’ and program’s meetings,
Preparation for a monthly Program review - status of all projects, opened tasks assessment (in a RAG - Red, Amber, Green and RAID - Risk, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies systems), risks to be flagged; facilitating the overview and sharing notes and follow up actions,
Daily communication with Program and Projects’ Managers and other team members,
Daily projects’ management in Jira,
At a later stage of the assignment - full onboarding of a new, permanent team member,
Introducing project closure process to the Program,
Carrying out a comprehensive tasks and milestone audit, with corrections applied and recommendations to improve proposed.

The assignment was completed after a new team member was fully introduced into their new role, all tasks and responsibilities were handed over and all additional tasks were completed with success.

The result/success

Overall, the assignment has been judged as a success both from the Client’s and PwC side. The PMO resource that took part in it has had an opportunity to learn new skills and widen her knowledge about the banking and financial sector, at the same time using her expertise and know-how to support the Client in a difficult situation of filling in for the absent team member.

In summary:

Direct on-shore support for the Client has been provided for as long as it was required and all challenges have been completed. Continuance in Client’s business as usual activities has been preserved and in some cases improved,
High quality support has been provided by our PMO, who managed all documentation, change requests, project’s milestones, proper communication and RAID/RAG statuses,
All standards in PM tools maintenance and reporting have been preserved and in some cases improved by extended knowledge and experience of our team member,
All Program related documentation has been properly maintained and required updates have been carried out,
Professional relationship has been established that allowed for new opportunities in the future,
Comprehensive onboarding and training have been provided, to a new team member, to the point of the Client being confident that the new PMO will be able to handle all challenges associated with the role,
Very positive feedback received from the Client at the end of the assignment with willingness expressed for cooperation in the future.

Additionally:

New solution for the project closure has been established by our PMO that improved the Client's past system,
Comprehensive and high quality audit of all tasks and milestones have been conducted to benefit our Client in the future.

Overall, the assignment has been judged as a success both from the Client’s and PwC side. The PMO resource that took part in it has had an opportunity to learn new skills and widen her knowledge about the banking and financial sector, at the same time using her expertise and know-how to support the Client in a difficult situation of filling in for the absent team member.

Summary

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are many unknowns for a company related to Business as Usual as well as Project Management activities. One of the solutions for the latter issue is to engage a highly skilled PM or/and PMO professional from an organisation specializing in outsourcing such skills. The benefits here are twofold: filling in missing position to ensure project, program or portfolio development runs smoothly and a great learning curve from a highly skilled professional.