Metrics and Measures

PMO Lab: Clean, Consistent and Maintained Project Data

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 Lab: Services

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

PMO Lab: Continuous Improvement

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

PMO Lab: OKRs

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

PMO Lab: Logical Frameworks

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

Inside PMO \\ KPIs, Metrics and Measures

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

Seven Ah-ha Moments

It's another of our 12 Stand Up for PMO Days Before Christmas and in this post we're sharing seven (swans a-swimming) things the delegates learnt plucked from the ah-ha board we had. The idea of an unconference is to share as much of the insights you can and for us that meant good old post-it notes after the Breakout at the Bar sessions and from thoughts after listening to some of the sessions. Here we share seven insights:
Go to article

Agile and Earned Value – A Metric for PMOs?

This week I headed over to Arsenal football ground for the Project Controls Expo. It's primarily aimed at people who work in the heavier project management industries like construction, manufacturing, utilities, oil & gas etc. As the name suggests it is all about project controls - planning, scheduling and the like. I decided to pop in and see what the Expo would be like for PMO people (great if you're working in these industries and these types of roles). Whilst there I decided to listen to a presentation from Sellafield called 'Agile and Earned Value'. I initially thought, Sellafield and Agile?? Gawd this could easily be Mr Burns' Springfield Nuclear Power Plant if Agile is being used! Luckily they are just using Agile for some of their software related projects, not for reactor building!! I wanted to include a few highlights here and some of the slides because I know some PMOs are becoming more actively engaged in supporting Agile projects in their organisation. The earned value aspect of Agile projects could be one way the PMO could monitor these projects. Stephen Jones, Programme Lead at Sellafield and Chairman of the APM PMC SIG carried out the presentation, he has also written a whitepaper to support it.
Go to article