1. Ahead of the Curve PMO
Information Management in a 21st Century PMO
Mark Walsh
June 2013
1

2. Hello!
• Status reports (and PMO in general) can be cool & sexy - Discuss
Well, that isn’t really what we are here for, but you’ve got to admit – Programme and
Project Status Reporting isn’t really the top of anyone’s ‘that’s interesting’ topics! Not
many of us spend Saturday nights in the Pub telling their friends what a great status report
they produced this week. In fact, when people ask me what I do, I just go all vague and say
‘Programme Management Stuff’, as a) I can’t be bothered explaining to the un-initiated
what a PMO is and b) even when you do, it’s hard to make it sound exciting.
So, I’m hoping that this evening will be the start of making it sexy – putting some exciting
and cutting edge stuff to what we do, that we can tell our friends about down the pub.
2

3. Information Overload!
• Status Reports haven’t really change in 20 years and neither have
PMOs
• The way that people consume their information has changed
dramatically
• PMOs deal in information, lot’s of it, sometimes far too much of it
• PMOs often don’t understand much of the information they are
processing, they just are concerned with getting it out on time
• How do PMO catch up and join the 21st Century Information
Revolution and give Execs, Stakeholders and Managers the
information updates they really want?
I started working in PMOs in the mid 1990’s. Back then, how people consumed
information was very different, but PMO’s sent out status updates, and managed issue logs
and tracked dates and put RAG status on projects and added commentary to reports and
sent them out on a regular basis. But today, things have change and PMOs now, erm…
well, they collect updates and send them out on a Status Report! And they don’t look that
different from what they looked like 20 years ago. The graphs and charts might change as
people get better at presenting the information, but it’s still basically the same process. A
load of information is committed to paper and circulated. And the PMO spends lots of
time collecting that information.
Who reads Status Reports anyway? We all do, every time we look at Twitter or Facebook,
we are reading some ones status report, or we are posting and creating one ourselves. We
aren’t waiting for the end of the month to look at the status, we are choosing to do it on a
regular basis because we are interested in to. There is a message here somewhere….
3

4. Sending everything to everybody just in case they may need
some of it really doesn’t work anymore
When I put my Linked in Page together, I made a comment around ‘give people
information they want on a page, not in a phone book’. It wasn’t something I put much
thought into, it was just a reference to the size of some status reports I’d seen issued. (I’d
recently done some work with a PMO that was sending out a 90 page status update every
month) However, a phone book is a great example of the sort of information overload we
used to see, because there wasn’t a real alternative. The phone company would send out
a book with all of the numbers in your area to all of the homes listed in it, on the off
chance that someone might need a tiny fraction of the information contained in it. No one
would dream of doing that now, because of the cost and that we have the internet, a ready
made information set that we can query when we want to, so that we can find out the
specific piece of information we need at that time. However, I still come across PMOs that
send out an update pack on all of the projects and programmes currently underway and
this goes to a fairly wide distribution list. There is a better way….
4

5. Asking people to read your stuff doesn’t mean
anyone actually will
And just because you send out something to a distribution list, doesn’t mean anyone will
read it if it is too long, no matter how important you might think it is. People have to a)
want to read it, and b) have the time to read it. In todays lean and mean corporate
environments, time is a luxury we don’t have.
To quote Eddie Izzard “No one in the universe has read the Terms & Conditions” - He
might have well as said “No one in the Universe ever gets to page 3 of a status report”
5

6. On the flip side, few people will ‘like’ something on a
networking site that they haven’t actually read
0 Likes 612,321 Comments
George Osborne I think its time to put up
the price of beer, increase taxes and end
paid holidays at work. Please like my Status.
6 Days ago Comment Share
54,543 Likes 9,241 Comments
George Osborne Beer Price increase a bad
idea – going to reduce price instead and put
in extra bank holiday
2 Days ago Comment Share
Social networking has driven a massive behavioural change. People ‘subscribe’ to the
information they need, they get alerts when that information appears and they stop what
they are doing and go and read it. They like and retweet things they agree with or think
other people might be interested. They do this, mostly, after they’ve read them (or
sometimes when they press the wrong button). So, in this context people are reading
things and digesting them.
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7. And it’s not just status reports…
• Steering and progress review meetings haven’t changed much either.
• Do you go to many meetings where people actually smile like this??
We’ve all seen the picture, usually in a consultants presentation. The happy meeting,
everyone smiling. Crumbs, the PRINCE 2 manual used to have people in a meeting
applauding on it’s cover. Why do I never get to go to meetings like that??? No, most
meetings are death by powerpoint. It’s time to change it…
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8. The Steering Meeting Flow Diagram
PMO desperately
chases info updates
from PMs.
PMO stays in office
until midnight in
order to get the
pack out 2 days
before meeting
PMO issues pack to
distribution list 2
days before meeting
Forage for snacks,
raid vending
machine, dial out
for pizza
PMO gets
hungry?
No one reads it
PAs hand printed
pack to attendees
on way to meeting
Pack is presented
whilst attendees
read e-mail and
fiddle with
blackberry’s
Pack goes in recycle
bin
Yes
No
This is the traditional steering board meeting process. Or at least, what it seems to be to
me. The information used is often a week or two old anyway, and how many times do we
hear the phrase “Sorry this has moved on, the data is out of date”? Lots!
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9. A real life example: 6 months worth of papers in an NHS Trust
for meetings I was invited to in 2012/13
I spent a year in an NHS Trust recently, the last 6 months of which I had ‘Director’ in my job
title and this meant I got invited to lots of meetings, mostly about the status of something
or other. When you go to a meeting and you have ‘Director’ in your title, you have a PA
who prints off your papers for the meeting. So, whilst it might have arrived in your inbox a
couple of days ago (or a week ago in some cases because, you know, we have to post it out
to some people!), you haven’t read it or even opened it (You are too busy). You walk into
the meeting with the pack and then hope someone points out the important bits. You
then leave the meeting. My problem was, I didn’t have a recycling bin, so I just used to
‘store’ the papers in a drawer in the hope that sometime in the future I would get a recycle
bin. The bin never arrived, and I took this photo on the day I left. There has to be a better
way….
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10. Stakeholders & Managers shouldn’t have to go searching to
actually find the information they need
Having to look for something wastes time and sometimes ends up with people getting
stuck. What people need should be easy to find and easy to access. They shouldn’t have
to go searching for it, especially if the nugget they want is buried in a 90 page status report
they threw in the bin last week.
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11. So, to summarise…
• PMO needs to get its reporting into the 21st Century – issuing updates
in real time to people who really want the information, no longer
being a slave to monthly cycles
• Information can be disseminated in a much more ‘social networking’
style, but tailored for business needs and being mindful of the risks
around such an open approach
• Status reporting can still happen, but becomes a genuine summary of
what has previously been issued, but at a very high level and so fits
on a single page
The social networking style concept is out there. You can get corporate versions of twitter
that live behind you companies firewalls (which is mostly a good idea as many people will
take things out of context). However, it’s still new and there is no real ‘best practice’
guidance out there.
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12. Be careful with your language and context. Ensure your
audience understands
Talking of risks around information and taking things out of context here is an example of
what I mean. This is a news story from 2009 about the BBCs move to Salford. The ‘Leaked
Documents’ referred to in the headline turns out to simply be the programme risk log
(which becomes clear when you read the article if you have a basic understanding of
Project Management). But in the wrong hands it is a prophecy of doom for the project and
scare mongering headlines for the papers.
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13. However…
• In order for this to work, PMOs need to change they way they collect
and assimilate data. They need to ‘manage information’ in real time
and move away from template driven, cycle based data collection
• We have to build information management into every aspect of day
to day programme life, not just for PMO but for Programme
Managers as well
• The PMO needs a real time information set that can be accessed at a
moments notice to generate targeted, appropriate reporting
• Break the cycle – do it in real time
To much PMO activity is based on a timed cycle – Monday we do resource scheduling,
Tuesday we do costs, Wednesday is issue reporting day, Friday is status reporting and plan
update, etc…. No more! Everyday is programme management day! We need to build in all
of our needs into what Programme Managers are already doing. In this way, we can
provide the support they need to manage their projects/programmes and at the same time
we can extract all of the information we need from what they already have. Want a status
update? Simply go into the project plan and run a report against key milestones – if you’ve
set the plan up right, this information can simply be lifted out when needed.
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14. Collecting the data – Destroy All
Templates!
• If a PMO needs to send out a template to collect data from Project
Managers its not doing it right
Central PMO sends a resource
spreadsheet out to each
project manager every two
weeks, containing the data
submitted previously, asking
for an updated sheet
Project Manager (or
PMO support) looks
at Project Plan for
information and
then updates the
template
PMO prove how
clever they are by
automatically
combining the data
into a single
template
There are the gaps as the plan
doesn’t have the right level of
detail in it. Project Manager
then enters this data into the
spreadsheet as a best guess
An Example
Project Manager
can’t be bothered
and just sends the
template as is and
says it’s correct
PMO send out a
very clever report
with lots of info on
it
Project Manager phones resource
people and negotiates the resources he
needs, not once referring to the report
No one reads it as
most people know
it’s wrong
That first line is quite a contentious (deliberately!) statement. I’ve seen many PMOs were
massive amounts of data are collected via templates. What this means is that the data
extracted from those templates is then only valid at the point the data was entered into
the templates. For me, this isn’t adding value. If we’ve got the models right, the
Programme and Project Managers don’t need to be interrupted and asked for data. They
will already have it, in their programme information set, supported by the PMO.
The example above is real – it was actually happening in a large organisation and is a
perfect example of how the PMO resource that was engaged in chasing and compiling the
templates would have been better deployed working with PMs to get the right level of
resource data in their project plans so that it could simply be extracted. The PMO should
then be highlighting resource clashes coming up in the future across all of the plans. The
information collected was useless because the PM’s saw no value in it – it didn’t HELP
THEM. It was seen as an administration overhead so they paid little attention to it. Even
the PMO folk doing it knew it wasn’t adding value. We are smart enough to put PMO
processes in place that work for everyone, not just us in PMO. We have to do this.
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15. How to Manage Information
• We build everything we need into the overall processes for things
such as planning and governance
• We embed PMO support resources in the Projects (Most places do
this anyway) and they act as assurance as well as support
• We extract information as and when we need it
• No one in the Programme teams notices it is happening because it is
what they do anyway
In the previous resourcing example, we saw the wrong way to do it. If the Central PMO
had worked with the Project Managers to build their plans in such a way that they could
simply extract the resourcing information they needed from the ‘live’ plan, then all of the
form filling could be avoided. We are starting to see this more and more anyway as people
use ERM systems with a common resource pool to plan from, but Project Managers are
still not embracing this as they feel restricted. (The system in use where I am currently
working is called ‘GEM’ – PM’s refer to it as “f**king GEM”) A good PMO can form a bridge
between how the PM wants to manage the plan and what the corporate requirements are
around plan management, so that resourcing, as well as all other process, can be seamless.
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16. Project Mgt
Framework
Project
Information
Set
Project Information Set
Plan / Dependencies
Budget / Cost
Issue/Risks
Deliverable Definitions
Etc…
Governance
Process
Governance Processes
Approval Forums
Decision Making
Issue/Risk Escalation Paths
Reporting
Stage Reviews
Healthchecks
Project Mgt Framework
The ‘How To’
Planning Guidelines
Status Definitions
Project Stage definitions
Risk/Issue Management Processes
QA Processes
Change Control
Etc…
Governance process are effectively ‘wrapped around’ the maintenance of the project information set
and are themselves contained in the overall framework. This way, they simply become a part of day to
day life
How Governance is embedded in project
activity
The PMO needs to put guidelines
around this information set so as
to seamlessly link it to the other
elements
I don’t usually like circle diagrams, but this just shows how everything that Programme
Management entails is interconnected. All companies will normally have some sort of
Project Management framework, or a lifecycle process. It could be out of the box
PRINCE2, but most people seem to like to create their own, with lifecycle phases. And
there will be a Governance framework. Ie, defined escalation points and meetings that
deal with approvals, exceptions etc.. . The PMO needs to add something else. Clear
guidelines (NOT templates) as to how to implement the PM framework and embedded all
of the governance requirements. For example, a regular governance meeting may need a
portfolio wide view of finances. PMO ensures that costs are tracked by PMs (as they do) in
a certain way and format to allow required data to be extracted. Doesn’t have to be a
same templates, but has certain fields/calculations in certain fields that can be extracted
by a PMO. And if there any internal project finance review meetings that they are
scheduled just before the main portfolio cost review. Therefore, PMs don’t even notice
they are complying with the Governance process need for a financial report to a certain
board as they are doing it anyway, and PMO is providing a validation to pick out any
obvious shockers in the data.
16

17. A PMO REALLY needs to understand its
data
When a PMO receives a request for additional information, the answer is
not to change the reporting template and ask PM’s to fill in a different box!
This happened to me this week – The dashboard on the left was in use for a while. PM’s
would send the completed dashboard off to a Central PMO who would collate the
information for an Exec Board (The data was mostly extracted from a project plan – good
idea!!). The Exec Board requested that the PMO provide more of a ‘general overview’
around the bigger picture, rather than the commentary against milestones. Seems like a
reasonable request to me, after all the PMO would have this information and would just
need to present it in a different way. However, the response from the PMO was to change
the template to the one on the right, removing the milestone commentary and inserting a
new box for ‘General Project Commentary’ and issuing an instruction to PMs to fill this box
in with the ‘stuff happening around the project in general’. This really misses the point
and is a great example of how a PMO should manage the information. It proves that this
PMO didn’t understand that it already had the data, it just needed interpreting. The PMO
could really have added value by understanding the detail data it was collecting and
producing intelligent summaries and business impacts that Exec Board would be interested
in. But it didn’t. It passed the request straight through to PMs.
17

18. Creating the information set
• You need a few things:
• Programme / Project Plans with a few levels in them
• Issue and Risk Logs
• A few headline comments from the PM
• And that’s about it…
• Because everything you need should be in the Project Plan
• Dates, Deliverables, Outcomes, Resources, Benefits, RAG status, dependencies
• Even the Risk/Issue log should have references to the part of the plan they relate to
• And that plan is managed on a daily basis by the PM with PMO support
• And not a template in sight! (OK, you might need a change request
template and a log to go with it…)
Well, according to me anyway. Now, this might scare a few people, but it can work if you
get the plan right. And that means not ‘over planning’. Keep the level meaningful, don’t
break tasks down to things that last a day or two, focus the plan on the key deliverables
and advise the PM that he doesn’t need to set out, for example, all of the steps needed to
generate a requirements doc, because the BA’s know what those steps are and how long
they will take. Now I may be veering off into PM world there, but this approach needs that
total change across all Project Management areas. A PMO can’t do this in complete
isolation.
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19. Storing the data set
• You don’t
• The data stays in its source, whether that be a project plan or a
spreadsheet log
• PMO extracts it from the source when its required.
• That way, it’s always ‘live’ data
Now, there are clever ways to do this and there are manual ways to do it. I prefer people
over systems. Keeping the human element in there means additional validation and no
spurious data slips through. One of my finger slips in a report once moved a project
delivery date back a year. (easy mistake to make!). No one in the central PMO I sent it to
checked it and it ended up generating a query from a Director as to why such an obvious
mistake appeared on a form. If that data had been extracted from the plan it wouldn’t
have happened, and if someone in the PMO had actually read it, not just cut and pasted it,
it wouldn’t have happened.
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20. Getting it out there
What do you do with the information now it’s available?

21. Give your stakeholders information they want, not
information about things that don’t concern them…
Asteroids don’t concern me Admiral,
I want that ship, not excuses
Asteroids didn’t concern Lord Vader, and many things we like to put on reports don’t really
concern our stakeholders. Find out what your stakeholders really want before you get into
trouble by reporting things they think are excuses.
21

22. What are you reporting on?
• Do people really want to see a list of projects and their RAG Status?
• What does that actually mean for managers?
• For example:
• 10 projects - 3 are Red, 4 Amber, 3 Green.
• So what? What if all projects are interdependent so that benefit realisation
only happens if they all deliver?
• Or, what if the deliverables of one of the Red projects drive 50% of the
benefit?
• Report on what really matters – in this case, the overall benefit
realisation. Make detail available if people want it, but don’t issue it
as a matter of course
Whilst I’m driving at the elimination of standard reporting, there is a still a place for
sending out MI. And this is where the PMO of the future can really add value. The above
example works at all levels. I’ve seen plenty of reports shouting from the rooftops around
how many milestones are late, what % of milestones are complete, etc.. Is that really
telling us what we want to know? I’d say not. And even if it is, is that what everyone
wants to know? What about the impact of all the combined issues on the business
benefits?
22

23. How do we know who wants what?
• Well, we can always ask them what they want…
• Also, we can use our information set to find out who needs to know
what.
• Our plans will have benefits in them, as that will be one of the things
we baked into our guidelines. And those benefits will have business
owners.
• The PMO can build an information flow ‘down’ from that benefit
realisation to the project delivery milestones that trigger that benefit.
We can then ensure that the business owner for the benefit receives
any updates impacting those milestones and not other milestones
they are not interested in
I once walked into the office of a CFO to take him through the PMO report (which I’d
already got down to a page, admittedly, it was A3, but no one is perfect!) and at the end of
it I asked him was there anything else he needed. His response was, that whilst all this
information was all well and good, what he really wanted me to tell him was what he
personally needed to do to get those failing projects back on track. I’d not really
considered walking into the CFO’s office and telling him what I needed from him, but it
made perfect sense. I, as the PMO lead, was perfectly placed to give him a summary of all
the things he needed to do to get projects back on track. So, that’s what he got from that
point forward. Now, that won’t work with all stakeholders as some of them need us to tell
them what they need to know, and this is where information management comes in.
23

24. Outcome
Benefit
Outcome
Milestone
1
Milestone
2
Milestone
3
Milestone
4
Milestone
5
• The person in the business who is the owner of that benefit and other business leaders impacted
by that benefit need to be kept information of the milestones 2, 4 & 5, irrespective of what
projects they fall in
• They might not realise this, but it’s up to the PMO to help in their “education”
How do we know who wants what?
I’ve concentrated on benefits here as it should be the main focus of everything we do
(Benefits Management is another great topic for debate). The business understands
benefits, even if they don’t get Programme Management. My recent NHS experience was
made all the more interesting by a CEO that didn’t just not get Programme Management,
he didn’t think it added any value. He was a CEO – what he says should just happen.
However, he did understand benefits, so by reporting to him on benefits and the potential
realisation (or not) of those, it made him focus on resolving the issues and blockages to
those benefits. He might not have realised it, but he was a part of my Programme
Management culture, because I gave him the same information about programme
progress, just focussed in a different way.
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25. It’s all about the behaviours
• You can have the greatest PMO in the world, if the managers,
stakeholders and execs are not behaving in the right way it won’t
make a jot of difference
• PMO has to influence those behaviours.
• By managing and disseminating information at the right level and at
the right time we can create a bond of trust with our stakeholders
• Let’s wean people away from the regular Status Reports.
• Even if they don’t read them, they can still complain when they stop
arriving!
OK, so, if my wife goes to the hairdressers I know about it when I come home from work.
If one of my online friends needs ‘Candy lives’ (Whatever that is!) or seeds for their farm
then I know straight away! Likewise, if they’ve met a celebrity, I find out instantly and see
the photo. So why then, if I’m a senior manager, do I get my information updates either
once a month or once a fortnight in a pack of stuff that I can’t be bothered trawling
through? Why can’t I find out straight away? And, also, I often hear about the ‘no
surprises’ stuff, ie, before a status update meeting, they need to be briefed so they know
everything that is going to come up. So, we can kill those two birds by switching to real
time, social networking style, updates.
25

26. Earn your trust
• Getting the trust of your Programme Managers is crucial
• You are interpreting and presenting their data
• You have to convince them you are getting it right
• They don’t want to be checking everything that goes out of the PMO
• Build your relationships
It’s vital Programme / Project Managers trust the PMO to send out accurate information.
A single slip of the finger can turn a Green project Red. Again, this is about PMOs building
relationships with PMs, not just demanding the completion of templates. Human
interaction is the key. Work with your PMs, get them to like PMO.
26

27. How do we get information out there
• Why not get stakeholders, managers etc.. to subscribe to information
feeds?
• This builds on obsessive use of blackberry and phones
• These can be project focused, or benefit focused, or any other focus
depending on what they want
• The PMO information set can be used to ‘slice and dice’ information
into the bite sized chunks people crave, really giving people what
they want and need
In the 21st Century, human beings have evolved to react to message tones and vibration
alerts. If a fire alarm goes off, people look around nonchalantly to see what others are
doing and assume it’s a drill. House and car alarms are routinely ignored. But, as soon as a
mobile device gives a little beep, or a discreet vibration, then it’s action stations to see
what information snippet caused it, no matter what the situation from the meeting room
to the pub (just see the news for people who crash cars whilst texting!). We should be able
to tap into that and completely change our traditional reporting methods and embrace the
twitter and facebook revolutions.
It’s a huge step change, but one I firmly believe it possible, but it’s going to take a massive
effort from PMO to drive this.
27

28. What we want
Requirements spec for system signed off by all. #success
@CFO Important workshop request about to be issued for Project X.
Please ensure your team attends. #project #buyin
Project implementation delayed 1 week – major bug found in testing,
fix takes 2 days.
I’m being deliberately vague here as this such an unknown area of how this will actually
work. And this is the key area of debate. How do we utilise social networking information
dissemination successfully in our PMO World. Can this work?
28

29. What we don’t want
@CEO OMG! OMG! Project disaster! And I’m not even joking
#notontime #notonbudget
Gr8 meeting, best evs, totes amaze. #ilovemystakeholders
From: The Business
@programmemanager: Ur programme sucks, y am I spending £’s on
this? Epic Fail #morons
John updated his status
I’ve just been sacked. Goodbye
Unfortunately, when you provide this sort of environment, things can go wrong and people
can abuse the system somewhat. However, by creating the right environment, this
shouldn’t happen (well, not too often). PMO will provide moderation on any feeds. (The
last one on the slide is a quote from an actual mail someone sent round on a company
distribution list that I was on – I’m sure we’ve all seen them!)
29

30. The new Steering Meeting Process
• People get the information throughout the month via mobile device
or feed on their computer.
• No packs are issued prior to meeting
• PMO prepare a 1 page summary sheet as a hand out in the meeting
• PMO supports the meeting by sitting with a machine that has direct
access to the live information set (Project Plans, issue logs, etc..) Any
questions to drill into detail can be immediately facilitated by the
PMO rep in the room.
• Everyone gets much more done, no paper is wasted and we all feel
better about ourselves
It doesn’t even warrant a process diagram as it is so simple. If we can get people’s
behaviours right around this sort of process then we really start to add value. The PMO
can become the single most valuable resource in an organisation because it has its finger
on the pulse. After all, this is how operational data in areas like investment banking is
managed. Oddly enough, the company who issued the 90 page status report every month
actually provided systems to companies that fed live (or as near as could be) pricing
information on stocks and stuff. Now, they would never dream of running their business
like that, so why run a PMO function like that?
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31. Don’t create information systems that
become cottage industries keeping them up
to date
It’s all too common for companies to jump on an idea, such as information management,
and then create an unwieldy system that take a ton of effort to maintain update. I am not
talking about the next phase of ERM. I talking about human beings having direct access to
information in its raw form and using their skills, judgement and experience to interpret
the impacts of what that data is telling them. The information set I talk about is not in a
single system. It is in various places that are being used to drive projects forward. And it is
extracted as and when it is needed. Now, that’s not to say a clever person couldn’t build
something smart, value add and totally intuitive, but if they’ve done than it many other
areas of ERM then I must have missed that…. Keep the focus on the human element –
people drive success, not systems.
31

32. They’re all a bit complicated really!
Measuring success
Everything has a KPI these days and yes, the certainly have their place. But there is one KPI
that I think trumps them all…
32

33. The happiness scale
• One simple question – on a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you?
• If everything the PMO is doing is working then people will be happy.
• You can put as many KPIs around it as you want, but it’s the people
and how they are feeling that is important
• PMO can’t be happy until we get 10’s across the board! And then we
need to keep it at 10’s.
Happiness is a powerful measure. If senior folk and stakeholders are happy, then things
are going well. Let’s face it, these folk know their stuff (well, mostly) so one thing to ask
them is to rate their happiness on a scale of 1 to 10. The happiness indicator (and I stole
this from my good friend and Portfolio Management Guru Craig Kilford, so credit where it’s
due) is a real measure of whether the PMO is giving people what they want. The
underlying truth here is that the senior managers know what they want, they can tell when
things are going well because we are feeding them all the information they need. And they
often have other sources to back this up, so if they don’t believe an update, we’ll know
about it!
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34. That’s it
Any final comments / questions?
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