The Cloud Based PMO Service – “Do More Faster with Less”

Introduction

Organizations need to constantly change through adaption and innovation in order to match and surpass market forces. Outcomes and benefits are the measure of these constant changes. Programmes and projects deliver the necessary outcomes and benefits.
Efficiently executed programmes and projects drive down costs and optimize the benefits. This enables organizations to adapt and innovate more dynamically, thereby achieving strategic goals faster.
This article describes the attainment of greater project and programme delivery benefits through the exploitation of cloud based PMO services.

The Problem : “Do More Fasterwith Less”

Organizations are challenged to generate more joined-up outcomes and benefits with an ever-shrinking capital investment (MORE). The same organizations are under increased pressure to deliver to market earlier (FASTER) so market capture can be optimized. The resulting earlier “Time-To-Market” provides for a longer revenue life for the same product/solution/service.
These multi-pronged demands present a cyclic problem for delivery teams. There is a higher demand to deliver in order to allow the organization to adapt faster, innovate to secure market share and plan strategically to forecast and surpass market trends. All the while, the delivery teams are being pressured to reduce operating costs (LESS) in order to increase operating margins.
In other words, delivery teams must figure out how to “do more with less” in order to get the jump on the competition. All the while, delivery teams are being faced with the additional dilemma of :
  • Ballooning labour costs—IT budgets
  • Sky-high energy consumption
  • Growing Demands from users
  • Chaotic data silos
  • Exponential growth in data volume

What is:“Do More Fasterwith Less”?
Do the Right Thing

Organizations must constantly validate their own strategies to ensure the whole organization is doing the right thing and only the right thing in terms of generating outcomes and benefits.
Management must constantly determine which outcomes and benefits best suit the organization’s needs. These needs could be classified as short term, operational and strategic.
To Do The Right Thing, organizations must subscribe to a strategy that will link Business Drivers through Executive Plans, Portfolios, Programmes and Projects across organizations. This traceable linkage will highlight which outcomes are needed and when. It will also highlight superfluous high risk ventures, orphaned initiatives and low return outcomes. Each of these should be removed. A PMO charged with governance of these traceable linkages will identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks that may very well threaten delivery. The PMO will either have the authority to change processes in order to enable strategic mandates or they will have the capability to recommend to decision makers appropriate changes.
The EPMOWORX™ mandate is to constantly validate and measure. This will confirm that the organization is doing the right thing at all levels including Business Drivers through Executive Plans, Portfolios, Programmes and Projects.

Do the Thing Right

Doing things right requires structure, discipline and an appropriate framework of governance. It’s time to retire the last of the free-wheeling cowboys. Organizations must deliver outcomes and benefits through a cohesive monitored, measured and managed delivery cycle across the organization.
If organizations seek to Do the Thing Right, it must find a low cost high return method of delivery. It must reduce ever increasing labour costs, reduce energy consumption, meet the growing demands of users, concentrate information to defeat chaotic data silos and scale in order to accommodate the inevitable exponential growth of data.
EPMOWORX™ provides an industry proven governance framework. The framework has been designed to consistently measure outcomes in respect to efficiency and meeting the organization’s standards. EPMOWORX™ is equipped to measure trends to confirm that “things are done right”.

How to:“Do More Fasterwith Less”

Organizations should grow their core business in accordance with their strategic goals through adaption and innovation. Often, this implies that more resources should be re-directed from support services and into their own core business. Therefore, an efficient and scalable service is required to replace the redirected resources.
EPMOWORX™ Cloud computing PMO digital service offers such an opportunity for organizations to acquire sufficient levels of PMO service to reduce resource FTE costs, thus allowing the redirection of limited funds back into the core business.

Advantages of Cloud Services:

EPMOWORX™ cloud PMO services are designed to offer clients:
  • Minimal risk - per user, per month payment model with no long term commitment
  • Scalability - that meets companies changing demands immediately
  • Improved mobility - remote access via any web browser to email, documents, software and applications
  • Enhanced security - with centralised secure data storage & ISO certified processes
  • Improved performance - more consistent service with guaranteed uptime
  • Expert support - delivered 24/7 support desk
  • Reduce total cost of ownership - capital expenditure up front is minimal
  • Web based - management of software and applications via intuitive control panel
  • Simple - access to the latest software with managed data migration and onboarding
  • Application management including: servers, updates, software upgrades and patching is all handled by the cloud services provider.

The Cloud Based PMO Service

EPMOWORX™ cloud based PMO service allows the client organization to adopt and exploit industry best PMO standards for a minimum investment. This releases costs of potential hardware / software capital which could then be re-directed to acquire high value specialist PMO staff. These staff would identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks in linkages that may very well threaten delivery (DO THE RIGHT THING) and measure trends to confirm that the delivery agents DO THINGS RIGHT.
The outcome of deploying the EPMOWORX™ cloud based PMO service is:
  • Accelerate outcomes and benefits
  • Faster time to market to increase revenue lifespans
  • Reduce reliance on internal infrastructure resources
  • Remove scaling limitations
  • Expose powerful solutions to the masses of the organization immediately
  • Deliver constantly improving industry recognized governance
  • Introduce organization wide metrics
  • Propel efficiencies in business delivery
  • Make Business Models more dynamic
  • Access new customers globally
  • Drive innovation and revenue models without scaling

Characteristics of EPMOWORX™ Cloud Based PMO Service

Governance – Grow the complexity and depth of delivery governance at a sustainable rate according to the adaptive tolerance of the organization’s needs
Regionalization – low cost offshore software delivery is here to stay. Therefore the ideal Cloud Based PMO servicemust be customised to meet the regional demands of time-zones, language and currency conversions. All these regional parameters must be incorporated and configured to deliver consistent metrics and identify organization wide delivery trends no matter what the geographic boundaries are.
Adaptive Standard Metrics – Delivery metrics are difficult change practices to introduce into organizations, especially via a “Big Bang” approach. Most organizations introduce metrics incrementally and often through pilot schemes. Metrics may include resource and cost allocation, progress measurements, risk and issue management, change management and interdependency management. An accommodating Cloud based PMO serviceshould be able to incrementally expose the organization to new metrics. In addition, it should be able to pilot metrics to sub-sets of the organization’s delivery agents.
Scale to Meet the Demand – EPMOWORX™ Cloud based PMO serviceoffers clients with the capability to scale up data volumes and account numbers based on planned or organic demand. It also offers the client organization a low cost approach to incrementally standardize governance across projects, programmes and portfolios.
Integrated Services – The power and value of a Cloud based PMO serviceis greatly enhanced if the service can be integrated with existing information services and solutions within the organization. Cloud based PMO serviceintegration should include integration with common enterprise solutions. This level of integration greatly extends the capabilities of the organization through its own standard and known toolsets. This includes enterprise systems such as
  • Email – to generate and push tasks, alerts and reports through standard email channels.
  • Shared Drive Access –– allowing immediate collaboration with project related documents and the integration of workflow capabilities.
  • Scheduling Integration – EPMOWORX™ uploads and analyses standard scheduling data sets from applications including industry recognized solutions such as Microsoft Project™ etc. EPMOWORX™ Cloud based PMO service integrates, extracts, transforms and loads the disparate scheduling data sets into a central conforming data set in order to measure metrics consistently.

Conclusion

Organizations need to constantly change through adaption and innovation in order to match and surpass market forces. Outcomes and benefits are the measure of these constant changes. Programmes and projects deliver the necessary outcomes and benefits.
Efficiently executed programmes and projects drive down costs and optimize the benefits. Delivery agents inside organizations are pressured to deliver benefits faster with less. In order to improve delivery, organizations must always validate that Delivery agents do the right thing and do the thing right.
EPMOWORX™ cloud based PMO service assists Delivery agents to reduce costs, focus on doing the right thing and assist them to do the thing right.