In this article we take a look at PMO metrics and measures from a brilliant session at the PMOLearn! event in London in 2022. John McIntyre from HotPMO takes a difficult subject and brings a lot of insights and ideas for PMO practitioners
We start off with some individual project reporting and the common reports you are likely to create. We spent some time looking at some examples and actually reading those, understanding what the graphs are actually telling us. Most of these reports are based on SCRUM so you'll find mentioned here burndowns, velocity, burnups etc
The second part of the session turned to the reporting and metrics that happen at the portfolio and more strategic levels. We looked at strategy and investment funding; reporting at a portfolio level and looked at OKRs - which are commonly used in scaled agile. The session also touched on value streams.
Looking for help with metrics and measures in Agile delivery? In this short article, check out the recommendations for further reading - books for your PMO bookshelf
Balanced Scorecards are used by organisations to help develop their strategies and measure how effective those strategies are. For an in-depth look, you can head over to the Balanced Scorecard Institute.
In this article, we take a look at how a balanced scorecard approach was utilised by a PMO within the education sector and see what insights will be useful to other PMOs regardless of the sector that PMO can be found in.
The insights come from a research paper - Measuring PMO Performance – Application of the Balanced Scorecard in a Collaborative Research Context - from Philbin and Kaur (2020) available from the Journal of Modern Project Management.
We often get asked about metrics and measures for the PMO.
You might already be aware of the Inside PMO Report we have which is focused on this subject.
There’s a difference between the metrics and measures that the PMO contributes to – such as project success rates and the ones which focus on how well the PMO services are received by the organisation. There is one other area too that tends to get overlooked, and that’s the metrics and measures of the PMO team itself – is the team meeting the objectives and goals of the organisation.
There is a specific goal system that can be used: OKRs (that’s objectives and key results to you and me) have been popular with tech start-ups for years and they seem to have hit the mainstream with more and more organisations adopting the OKR approach to goal and direction setting. OKRs aren’t just for Silicon Valley, they can be a great tool for PMOs to clearly define what they and the portfolios they support are setting out to achieve – and how the goals of the PMO align with the goals of the organisation.
Do you know your KRs from your KPIs? Are your goals likely to have people saying O-wow!… or simply O-dear? John McIntyre from HotPMO helped us explore what OKRs are and how they can be used to align and accelerate PMO performance. Login to see the session; the deck, the writeup and the insights:
In the final session from the PMO Lab, we're looking at metrics and measures that ultimately help to drive executive and business decisions. The PMO's objective as a function which enables decision-making encompasses many areas. It could be the physical mechanisms that would allow decisions to be made, for example, producing reports, updating dashboards and so on. It can mean helping to create an environment where decisions and approvals can flow - the governance side. Even the more behavioural side of decision-making and ensuring staff are well-trained in communications, influence and negotiation.
We also cover the final two sessions which looked at PPM tools and the PMO business case benefits.
First up, business decisions and the lab rats concentrated on the PMO as a portfolio management office and how it can help drive executive business decisions. No other reason, other than they can!
Let's see what they undercovered:
PMO Labs is our way of getting attendees talking about different PMO themes together. We know that every single one of the PMO Flashmobbers has a story to share, an interesting insight from their careers that others would get a great benefit from. In this PMO Lab, part of the session held at Parliament UK, we continued to look at the insights thrown up from the latest Inside PMO report on KPIs, Metrics and Measures.
In this lab, we looked at data. To gain the data needed to provide the measures and metrics results, well clear, consistent and well-maintained data is at the heart of it. In the report, the advice for those starting out in devising metrics and measures for the PMO is to start with this. If you can work towards getting good data first, all the other parts of KPIs, metrics and measures will become easier.
Let's have a look at the outcomes:
PMO Labs is our way of getting attendees talking about different PMO themes together. We know that every single one of the PMO Flashmobbers has a story to share, an interesting insight from their careers that others would get a great benefit from.
In this PMO Lab, part of the session held at Parliament UK, we continued to look at the insights thrown up from the latest Inside PMO report on KPIs, Metrics and Measures.
This time around we were talking about metrics around a PMO service menu - service levels or SLAs. We started by confirming what a service menu is. Basically, this is a list of all the services that the PMO can perform - the most well-known version of this is Appendix F of the P3O manual.
