Exploring PSO Support Functions

The six functions mentioned earlier in the chapter and discussed in the following sections are fairly inclusive of those that a PSO might offer. A word of caution is in order, however. It would be a mistake to implement all of the listed functions at once even if that is the ultimate goal of your PSO. Introducing a PSO into the organization is asking management to absorb quite a bit. You will have a much better chance of success if the functions are prioritized on the basis of the contribution they can make or on the ease of implementation and introduced a few at a time. I will have more to say about this later in the chapter when I discuss the challenges of implementing a PSO. For now I will simply define what each of these functions involves and leave for later the discussion of implementation.

Project Support

This function encompasses all of the administrative support services that a PSO might offer to a project or program manager and the project teams. They are as follows:

• Schedule updating and reporting
• Time sheet recording and maintenance
• Report production and distribution
• Report archiving
• Report consolidation and distribution
• Project notebook maintenance

The PSO project support services are an attempt on the part of the PSO to remove as much non-value-added work from the project team as it can and place it in the PSO. Obviously, you would rather have the project team focused on the work of the project and not be burdened by so-called “administrivia.” More important, the PSO staff will be much more knowledgeable about how to provide these services because they will be very familiar with the tools and systems that support them. A goal of the PSO is to provide these non-value-added services at a lower cost than would be incurred if done by the project team. More to the point, the PSO staff members who will actually provide the service need minimal office skills, whereas the project team members' skill set is not likely to include the skills appropriate to provide these services. Therefore, the service will be provided by a less costly employee who is appropriately positioned and trained for the assignment.

Apart from supporting project teams, the PSO also has an administrative role to play in supporting project portfolio management. Chapter 14 explores this role in detail.

Some organizations allow budgeting for administrative support that would be assigned to the project team. Usually the needed support is calculated by taking some percentage (10–15 is common) of the total labor planned for the project. For example, if a 12-month project has 5,000 hours of direct labor, 10 percent of that would be 500 hours of administrative support spread across the 12 months of the project, which is approximately 10 hours per week.

Consulting and Mentoring

The PSO professional staff members are available to project teams and project managers on an as-requested basis. They stand ready to help with any specialized assistance. The following is a list of the consulting and mentoring services they can supply:

• Proposal development support
• Facilitating requirements gathering meetings
• Facilitation of project planning sessions
• Risk assessment
• Project interventions
• Mentoring and coaching project managers
• Mentoring senior management

The PSO professional consultants are the most experienced project managers in the company. Their experiences are broad and deep. Because they have heard and seen most situations, nothing will surprise them. They are qualified to help the project manager even in the most complex of circumstances.

The PSO staff is uniquely positioned to gather and archive best practices from around the company. That makes them particularly valuable as resources to project teams. Those resources are made available to teams through the PSO professional consultants.

One service that I believe is particularly valuable is the facilitation of project planning sessions. The PSO consultant is the ideal person to conduct a project planning session. That relieves the project manager from the facilitation responsibility and enables that manager to concentrate on the project plan itself. The PSO consultant can concentrate on running a smooth planning session. This PSO consultant will have better planning facilitation skills than the project manager by virtue of the fact that he or she has conducted far more planning sessions. It is a win-win situation.

One other useful practice that I have seen is to not have the PSO consultants actually assigned to the PSO. Acting as virtual PSO consultants, they are out in the field running projects but have particular areas of expertise that they are willing to make available to others as needed. The PSO simply becomes the clearinghouse and matchmaker for such services. With this setup, confidentiality is critical. Project managers are not likely to bare their souls to these consultants and mentors if what they say will be the topic of conversation in the lunchroom the next day.

Methods and Standards

Methods and standards represent a service that every PSO must provide. A good Return On Investment (ROI) from a PSO will not happen without a standard methodology and a means of monitoring and enforcing it. The following list contains the services included in this function:

• Collaboratively developing project management processes
• Establishing, monitoring, and enforcing standards
• Project selection for the portfolio
• WBS construction
• Project network diagram development
• Maintenance of a tools and processes library
• Bid preparation
• Risk assessment
• Status reporting
• Scope change management process
• Documentation
• Change orders

The establishment, monitoring, and enforcement of standards are major undertakings for a newly formed PSO. Perhaps more than any other task that the PSO will perform, this one affects the culture and operation of the organization. As I discuss later, a plan to put standards in place must involve as many stakeholders as possible. I am talking about a cultural change in every business unit that is involved with projects and project management. The affected parties must have an opportunity to be involved in establishing the project management processes and the standards to which they will later be held accountable or the whole effort will be for naught.

Project selection for the portfolio should extend all the way from recommending projects to the portfolio for senior-management consideration to providing complete portfolio-management support for senior management. Chapter 14 discusses process design and portfolio management in detail.

Risk assessment should be an area of constant attention by the PSO staff. They have oversight of all projects and are in the best position to assemble a library of risks and mitigation strategies to be shared across all projects. Lessons learned from other risk management efforts are valuable lessons. Asking project managers to contribute to such a library and to use its contents when planning new projects is wishful thinking. Someone must be in charge of this asset and make it useful to others. The only place where such responsibility should be placed is the PSO.

Software Tools

Every PSO should be looking for productivity improvements. As teams become dispersed, it is essential that they remain productive. In this technology-crazed business environment, you can't let time and distance erect barriers to performance. The PSO is the only organizational unit that can provide the support needed for the ever-changing set of tools available on the market. It is responsible for soliciting, evaluating, selecting, and contracting with vendors of these tools. The following list describes the software services that the organization depends on the PSO to provide:

• Software evaluation
• Software selection
• Software acquisition and licensing
• Vendor negotiations
• Software training
• Software management and maintenance

Training

Training in project management has probably been around longer than any other methodology an organization is likely to have. Unfortunately, senior managers incorrectly assume that the solution to their high rate of project failure can be found by giving everyone some training in project management. They are looking for that silver bullet, and there simply isn't one to be found. What has happened in many organizations is that several different project management training courses have been taken by the professional staff. Accordingly, there is no central approach that they follow as a result of their training. In a sense, everyone is still doing his or her own thing (Maturity Level 1). Some follow the approach they were taught, others do what they have always done, and yet others teach themselves. Under the PSO, all of that needs to change.

One school of thought says that if you teach concepts and principles effectively, project managers will be able to adapt them to whatever situation they encounter. That sounds good in theory, but it usually doesn't work. I have found that most project managers don't want to think and typically convey this type of message: “Just tell me what I am supposed to do. I'm not interested in the concepts and theory.” That's a truly unfortunate attitude, but it's reality; you can't change it very easily. If you happen to attend one of my workshops, you will hear me say “I'm going to teach you how to think like a project manager so don't look for any recipes or task lists from me. I'll teach you how to build those for yourself.”

The trends are clear. To be an effective project manager means that you must be a chef (able to build recipes) and not just a cook (routinely follow recipes). You have to be firmly grounded in the principles and concepts of project management. Every project is different, as is the best approach to managing those unique projects. The effective project manager takes the project characteristics and the environment (both internal and external) into account, and chooses and continuously adapts a best-fit project management life cycle (PMLC) model for the entire life of the project.

With all of this in mind, the PSO and the organization's training department must jointly assume the responsibility of designing and implementing a curriculum that is aligned with the organization's project management methodology. Furthermore, the PSO must assume whatever responsibility the training department is unwilling or unable to assume. Whatever the case, the job must be done. The following list describes the training services that the PSO should be prepared to assist with:

• Project management basics
• Advanced project management
• Project Management Professional (PMP certification exam preparation)
• Specialized topics
• Support of the training department
• Development of courses and course content
• Delivering courses
• Project management training vendor selection

When it comes to project management training, the relationship between the training department and the PSO must be collaborative. The development of the project management curriculum should involve both the curriculum development experts from the training department and the subject matter experts from the PSO. The curriculum can be delivered either by the PSO or by the training department. If it is to be done by the training department, then the curriculum design must have followed a facilitative design. That relieves the training department from having to find trainers who have practical project management expertise, which is difficult at best. In most cases I have seen, the trainers are project management subject matter experts, and this is the preferred method. There is no good substitute for frontline experience by the trainer — no amount of book knowledge can replace experience.

Staffing and Development

In the absence of a Human Resources Management System (HRMS) administered out of an HR department, both project staffing and professional development of project managers is often the responsibility of the PSO. This might be done in collaboration with an HR department that administers an HRMS, but it must be done. Staffing projects with qualified project managers and team members is critical and complex and the HRMS must have the capability of providing that support.

Project Manager Resources

The final function in the PSO as I see it includes a number of human resource services revolving around project managers. The following list is quite comprehensive — it encompasses assessment, development, and deployment services:

• Human resource development
• Identification and assessment of skills
• Selection of team members
• Selection of project managers
• Assessment of project teams
• Professional development
• Career guidance and development

This function is delivered in one of following ways:

• In some cases, project managers will be assigned to the PSO. They then receive their project assignments from the PSO.
• The more common arrangement is for the project managers to be assigned to a business or functional unit. Even in this case, the PSO can still make project assignments and deliver the human resource services listed under this function.

Project Team Members

Even when the PSO is responsible for assigning project managers, it is unlikely that they will have that responsibility for team members. That rests with their functional manager. However, I am aware of enterprise-level PSOs in strong matrix organizations that do have a responsibility for maintaining the inventory of available skills and competencies as an aid for staffing project teams for projects in the portfolio. These same PSOs will often have a training and professional development responsibility that may extend to team members as well. That would place some joint responsibility on the shoulders of the project manager to assign team members according to their skill profiles and in line with their professional development plans. This establishes a collaborative environment between a functional manager, the PSO, and the project managers to act in the best interests of the individual.

Projects provide a lucrative source of development opportunities but are often overlooked as such. They offer on-the-job as well as off-the-job opportunities. For example, suppose that Larry is the best planner among the current project managers. Curly is a new project manager whose planning skills are less than nominal. Moe wants to become a project manager, but knows very little about project planning. If Curly could attend one of Larry's planning sessions, it would be an on-the-job training experience, because Curly is improving a skill needed for his current job assignment. If Moe could attend one of Larry's planning sessions, it would be an off-the-job training experience, because Moe is acquiring a skill needed for a future position. The development part of a great HRMS would have the capacity to bring the Larrys, Curlys, and Moes together. I am not aware of any commercial HRMS that has that capacity.

Projects also provide another interesting on-the-job development opportunity that I have used with great success. A person who aspires to be a professional will always rise to a challenge. I knew that more than 35 years ago and used it as the foundation of a program to reduce the annual turnover in the IT department that I managed from 27 percent to 6 percent in three years. My strategy was as follows: If I give you an assignment that aligns with your professional development plan and that you are qualified to complete except for one skill that you do not have, and I give you the opportunity to learn that skill and apply it to complete your assignment, you will rise to the challenge. You learn the skill and master it with succeeding assignments. Then I repeat the process with a new assignment that you can do except for a missing skill. You get the picture. I implemented that strategy and reduced turnover as stated. Specifically, I was able to grow a computer operator into an applications programmer, a data entry clerk into an operations shift supervisor, and an applications programmer into a systems programmer. Those career-development stories and others were the sole reason for the significant improvement in retention.