How do you build a world-class project office?

Start at the beginning and get the foundations right.

Why it matters? 

Building a world-class IT Project Office isn’t a one-off exercise but more of an evolving development. As business strategy changes over time, so does the IT Strategy and with that comes the need to make changes to both the technology you deliver and the team that delivers it. Having the right roles and people inside your IT Project Office is essential.  

If you take a look at your existing IT Project Office, do you have a perfectly formed structure, specifically designed to deliver your current strategy? Or an organically grown team which has emerged over a number of years, which you tweak to accommodate your changing priorities? 

Getting the foundations right 

So, where do you start when you are looking to either build a new project office or restructure an existing one? It's easy to jump in and start recruiting for roles that you think you need but before you do that, take a step back and look at getting the foundations right.   

This means starting with the business strategy, which may either be focused on increasing revenue through growth or acquisition or decreasing costs through removing elements of cost of sales or operating costs with the added requirement to comply with legislative changes too. By ascertaining the direction of travel for the business, you will see how this impacts the IT strategy and you will be able to identify the technology changes that are necessary to achieve this.  Sounds obvious, but you will be amazed by how often this connection between the business and IT strategy is missing.  

If you sit back and ponder these business strategies in relation to your organisation for a moment, it is likely you could come up with a number of unique examples of IT projects that those simple strategies will create. Take a business strategy to grow by acquisition, you will need to consider the impact of a sudden increase in users, desktop devices, applications and finally network and storage infrastructure and services. How will the incoming organisation’s technology integrate into your own organisation’s estate? Often integrations centre on getting all staff using the same desktop devices and core applications to facilitate collaboration, whilst “lifting and shifting” the more specialist applications for areas like product development. You can now say with a degree of confidence that a desktop transformation project is certainly on the cards. One thing you should consider is talking to other members of IT. Pose the same question to the infrastructure team and they may tell you it would need additional data centre space to accommodate any type of acquisition. Again, another project has just come to mind. Logical thought, coupled with your experience will start to help you draw some conclusions. 

Going through this thought process will give you your first insight into what you could be delivering over the next two to three years.  Each project you identify from your initial analysis will create a unique profile and it is these profiles that are the foundation to building your Project Office. You will still need to consider what projects you already have in your portfolio, but you will also now have a longer term view giving you that all important vision.

Choosing the right structure 

Now you have established what your Project Office is looking to achieve, the next step is to drill down into projects that the IT team will need to deliver and establish whether they are large-scale, unrelated technology changes or a major overhaul of core technology and connected services. Identifying whether you are delivering a portfolio of unrelated projects, a programme of dependant workstreams or a combination of both, will help you define the right structure.  

Here it is important to understand the difference between a portfolio and a programme.  A collection of unrelated projects that are centrally managed form a portfolio. A programme is a collection of related projects that require management across their interdependencies. Programmes fit inside a portfolio, especially if they are drawing on the same resources as other projects being delivered along similar timelines. So, why is this important? They are two very different constructs with two very different governance models. Yes, they share similarities, but fundamentally they will run in different ways. A portfolio will generate far more artefacts than a programme, all requiring separate governance and different individuals’ involvement. This volume will in itself promote a far heavier load on the people that administer it. Getting a portfolio right, is a much bigger challenge than standing up one off Programmes and require very different people to be successful.

With an understanding of the vision for the team, the projects you have to deliver and the right structure now in mind, you are in a great position to break this down further and look into the processes and roles you will need to achieve this, something we will be discussing in more detail in our next blog.

If you would like to discuss getting the foundations right for your project office, we would love to hear from you at [email protected].