In the last blog we explored the idea of strategic planning, and replanning within the concept of strategic portfolio management (SPM). But strategic planning isn’t just about executives. It takes collaboration and alignment from the entire organization to make planning, and delivery successful. Few areas of the business are more important to this process than project management offices (PMO).
The modern PMO is going through a reimagining, and some aren’t even being called PMOs anymore – transforming into strategy realization offices (SROs) value management offices (VMOs) or other similar titles. This shift reflects the alignment between the strategically focused, enterprise level PMO and portfolio management and delivery. However, you still can’t deliver a portfolio without being engaged in the strategic planning process.
PMOs have a number of critical functions in ensuring that strategic planning is effective and efficient, and that the planning results in a portfolio that can not only be delivered, but can also achieve the strategic goals of the organization. These functions include:
- Subject matter expertise around organizational capacity
- There is a tendency for more projects to be approved than can actually be delivered due to resource limitations, scheduling challenges, etc. The PMO can provide insight into capacities, propose different portfolio mixes, and identify potential opportunities and challenges.
- Consulting to identify areas where additional work can be undertaken
- PMOs shouldn’t simply react to proposals from leaders, they must also identify where pockets of excess capacity exist, where work can be rescheduled to improve efficiency, and where efficiencies can be realized by adapting ways of working. All of these serve to improve organizational returns.
- Visibility into previously committed and required work
- Strategic portfolios don’t exist in isolation and PMOs can provide insight into how work can be integrated into the ongoing committed investments from previous business cycles, regulatory requirements, maintenance and related work.
- Streamlining continuous and adaptive planning
- PMOs facilitate the flow of accurate, complete, and timely performance information to enable leaders to make quick and effective decisions. These decisions often cover the need to change investments or otherwise modify the portfolio to maintain alignment between priorities, work and benefits.
- Implementing decisions
- PMOs take planning and replanning decisions and ensure all stakeholders are given this information in a timely manner, with a context that allows them to initiate, adjust or continue work with minimal disruption. PMOs then validate that those changes have occurred and are having the expected impact.
PMOs can’t do any of that without technology support. With ServiceNow SPM, PMOs have accurate and complete insight into resource capacity, allocation and utilization information. They can see the status of all work underway, regardless of how it is being delivered, and they can see where future commitments have already been scheduled.
With access to powerful reporting and analytics they can provide not just information, but real value adding insight that leads to better planning decisions in less time. That’s what makes planning effective, that’s what makes execution effective, and that’s what drives strategic success.
To learn more about Strategic Planning, check out the latest ServiceNow podcast series.
