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.
Go to article
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:
Go to article
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:
Go to article
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:
Go to article
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.
Go to article
We had the first PMO Lab at the April PMO Flashmob held at Parliament UK. The PMO Lab is all about getting deeper into the themes that are explored in the Inside PMO Reports. It’s an opportunity for the community to learn from each other too. Over the next week we’ll be sharing the lab results from the session in a series of posts.
The sessions were about exploring PMO KPIs, Metrics and Measures. It wasn’t about coming up with a load of different measures and metrics, it was more about exploring themes around that – perhaps there are different ways of thinking about this – or maybe people have some models or processes to share. We didn’t know what we would come up with.
At the session there were different lab benches with different areas of related subjects being looked at, prodded and poked to see what came out.
Donning the white coat, we looked at Continuous Improvement.
Here's Ken Burrell giving us a run-through of what they learnt:
My table focussed on “Continuous Improvement in PMO” (and the metrics and measures around that) and the discussion was prompted by the following questions:
When we talk about continuous improvement in the PMO - what do we mean?
Improvement in the PMO services (in which case how do we know what we are doing is an improvement?)
Improvement in the project results?
Improvement in the Business results?
What is the impact of perspective (portfolio board vs sponsor)?
Does it help to know where the improvements come from (e.g. Suggestions box, training, LL)?
Does it help to measure SLAs?
Where does the data come from?
What if there is no data currently?
Go to article
We had the first PMO Lab at the April PMO Flashmob held at Parliament UK. The PMO Lab is all about getting deeper into the themes that are explored in the Inside PMO Reports. It’s an opportunity for the community to learn from each other too. Over the next week, we’ll be sharing the lab results from the session in a series of posts.
The sessions were about exploring PMO KPIs, Metrics and Measures. It wasn’t about coming up with a load of different measures and metrics, it was more about exploring themes around that – perhaps there are different ways of thinking about this – or maybe people have some models or processes to share. We didn’t know what we would come up with.
At the session there were different lab benches with different areas of related subjects being looked at, prodded and poked to see what came out.
Donning the white coat, let's have a look at OKRs - Objectives and Key Results.
Go to article
We had the first PMO Lab at the April PMO Flashmob held at Parliament UK. The PMO Lab is all about getting deeper into the themes that are explored in the Inside PMO Reports. It's an opportunity for the community to learn from each other too. Over the next week days we'll be sharing the lab results from the session in a series of posts.
The sessions were about exploring PMO KPIs, Metrics and Measures. It wasn't about coming up with a load of different measures and metrics, it was more about exploring themes around that - perhaps there are different ways of thinking about this - or maybe people have some models or processes to share. We didn't know what we would come up with.
At the session there were different lab benches with different areas of related subjects being looked at, prodded and poked to see what came out.
Donning the white coat, first up Logical Frameworks.
Go to article
Over at Project Challenge we presented on the latest report from PMO Flashmob, "Inside PMO: KPIs, Metrics and Measures".
Go to article
PMO Flashmob presents the Inside PMO report bringing insights from experienced PMO Managers and looks at the question – can we measure the value of a PMO to the business?
The report looks at different aspects including PMO metrics; Service Level Agreements; organisation KPIs and the links to PMO and where our PMO Managers focus when it comes to metrics.
Go to article
