Client Profile
Leading SaaS company
Business Challenge
The PMO of a leading SaaS company was looking to improve their project management skills and process. The business challenge, as presented, was to improve the project management skill level of the team and thus improve the management of projects.
Additional challenges included inconsistently and inaccurately budgeting, planning and providing project scope, resulting in deadline, delivery and financial misses for the business. As a result of these challenges, the PMO was unable to use project data and project management processes on which to base decisions; a primary objective of the project was to enable data-driven decision making.
Project Objective
Key process areas (KPAs) were defined for the PMO, and they represented the key processes the PMO wanted to focus efforts and improvement on. The approach was to identify KPAs, develop a compliance review checklist for each KPA, conduct training with the members of the PMO to review modified processes and to conduct a 5-week adoption evaluation period. After analyzing existing standards and artifacts of the PMO, a proprietary compliance review checklist was developed for each KPA and graded assessments for members of the PMO were conducted using the compliance review checklists.
A 5-week adoption review was put into place and graded assessments were conducted weekly for each PMO member. A weekly progress report and executive summary was then created for PMO stakeholders.
In the first phase, KPAs included mini-charters and project charters to better plan projects and measure key performance indicators (KPIs). In the second phase, KPAs included project scoping and scheduling.
Delivered Results
LABUR provided strategic advisory services to better position the PMO for planning and execution, resulting in timing and cost savings to the business, and significantly improved adoption rates of the PMO in several key process areas. These improved adoption rates and standardized performance processes resulted in the overall effectiveness of the PMO increasing. Mini-Charter: +37% Issue Management: +55% Risk Management: +55% Communication Plan: +52% Status Reporting: +18% Scope: +20% Schedule: +5%.
