Successfully Market your PMO

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Successfully Market your PMO

Tom Mochal

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Agenda

• Background

• PMO Communication Plan • Marketing the value

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High

High--level Value Propositionlevel Value Proposition

• Companies define goals/strategies toward a desired future state

• Projects move a company toward goals / strategies • Project management enables projects to be more

successful

• PMOs implement good project management practices and support projects

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Understand Your PMO

• There are a thousand PMO types

• Determine which one is best for your organization • Difficult to market PMO without knowing purpose

– Purpose might come from your sponsor – Purpose might come from discovery

• Current State, Future State, Gap Analysis • Need solid foundation to push back

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The Value of Project Management

• First, more predictable results • Second, better/faster/cheaper

– Reduced cycle time and costs

– Improved quality of product deliverables

– Better understanding of problem and how to solve

• Better estimating and scheduling

– More proactive management of the project

• Communication, issues, risks, scope, …..

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The Value of the PMO

• Helps project teams be more successful

– Develops and deploys common methodology

– Determines skill gaps and areas of training focus – Accelerates adoption of project management

– Helps ensure compliance with PM standards

• Provides consolidated view of projects and status • Measures project and project management value • Drives the culture change for project management • …..

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Communicate Early and Often

• Communicate, communicate, communicate

• Proactive communication can help change culture • Get out front with a value proposition

• Deal with any skepticism early

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Determine Stakeholder Groups

• Know who your sponsor is

– Do they have organizational power?

– Do you need to rely mostly on persuasion to be successful?

• Identify your PMO customer

– Is it the project managers? – Is it the entire organization

– Is it your business managers and sponsors? – Need to know who you are trying to please

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Set up Communications Plan

• Determine stakeholder groups and communication needs

– What information do they need? – How will you provide it?

– What medium? – How often?

– Who will do it?

• In a larger PMO, this could be a substantial part of a person’s job

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Communication Plan

• Compliance

– Mandatory, “push”

• Informational

– General information, how-to, “pull”

• Marketing

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Compliance Examples

• Status reports • Status meetings

• Meetings with Steering Committee

• Government required reports and other information • Union reports

• Safety reports • Audit reports

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Informational Examples

• Awareness building sessions (not training)

– Lunch and learns – Brown bag meeting

• PMO documents placed in a common repository

– Tell people the information is there – Place in a location people can access

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Marketing Examples

• PMO newsletters with positive marketing spin • Contests with simple prizes to build excitement • PMO slogans to portray positive images

• Celebrations to bring visibility to the completion of major PMO accomplishments

• PMO memorabilia to celebrate accomplishments

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Branding the PMO

• More sophisticated form of marketing communication

• Establish identity that conjures up a positive image • Associate an emotion when a person hears of PMO • Proactively build your brand, rather than have one

branded on you

– All PMOs get branded

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First Phase of Communication

• You don’t have accomplishments – focus on awareness building

– Explain purpose of PMO and how it will impact people – Perhaps separate messages for staff and managers – Lunch and learns, staff meetings, intro emails

• Get your brand out

– Logo, pins, pens

• Establish website

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Second Phase of Communication

• “Quick hitter” projects

– Provide value as soon as possible

• Communicate and make a big deal out of early wins • Solicit and distribute testimonials

• Communicate about harder work ahead • Ask for more input

• Communicate accomplishments so far

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Third Phase of Communication

• Continue marketing message, but not as frequent • Find reasons for positive communication

– Celebrations – Now content

– Good class feedback

• Start to mix in long-term statistics

– Total number of staff trained

– Number of project managers adopting good processes – Disasters avoided

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The Holy Grail

Provide and report evidence of

the PMO value

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The Key to Successful Marketing

• YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO DELIVER VALUE! • What is the PMO doing?

– Consolidated reporting

– Methodology management – Training / coaching

– Project Quickstarts

– End of project reviews – Governance model

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Focus on Providing Value

• Focus on external value to the organization

– Not internal PMO-focused value

• Validate that each product/service is providing value

– Communicate the value provided

• Write value-added status updates

• Seek performance feedback to ensure you are meeting expectations

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Activity vs. Value Activity vs. Value • We trained 25 project managers • We built 31 templates • We have successfully

deployed common project management processes

• Project managers rank their confidence level 4.2 out of 5.0

• Project managers report they have the tools they need to do their jobs

• We are completing 75% of projects within expectations vs. 55% one year ago

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Common Problems

• Staffing the PMO with poor communicators • PMO does not know what they are doing

• PMO does not believe they are providing value • People are talking … about what a poor job the

PMO is going

• PMO is doing great things but no one knows

• PMO communicates accomplishments but not value • The sponsor cannot articulate the value of the PMO

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Summary

• Make sure you know what you are doing and why • Successfully marketing the PMO is a matter of:

– Creating a set of value-added products and services – Communicating purpose and value provided

– Defining and executing a Communication Plan

• Focus on marketing communication

– Delivering successfully against expectations

– Proactively communicating PMO value (not just accomplishments)

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More Information on TenStep

TenStep, Inc.

Tom Mochal, President 877-536-8434

[email protected]

• Contact us via the survey or email for: • Copy of the slide deck

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More Information on ASPE

More Information on ASPE--SDLCSDLC

• Software/Systems Development Life Cycle Training

• Public courses taught in over 75 cities • Customized on-site delivery

• Free white papers & resources available on www.ASPE-SDLC.com

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Questions??