A long term vision for PMOs

A bonus for a Danish public sector organisation

In November, I was in Copenhagen to work with people from the IT side of a large Danish public sector organisation

The plan was to focus on training about PMOs, but we went much further. They got their training but they also got a bonus.

The training was loosely based on P3O. The Danish team uses Prince2 for Project Management, and MSP for Programme Management. These are the existing cornerstones of the OGC guidance, so quite logically they are now looking at P3O, which is the OGC guidance on PMOs.

The P3O guidance for OGC is about Projects, Programmes and Portfolios (that’s the P3); and about how to support the P3 with an “Office” structure. That’s where the acronym comes from: “P3” plus “O” gives P3O.

In the first half of my visit, we covered all the P3O basics, of how to justify a PMO solution (that’s called the P3O value model) and how to design a PMO solution (that’s the P3O model itself).

In the second half, I expected to explain how to roll out a PMO solution (that’s called deploying the P3O model). But I spotted an opportunity. As the Danish team are skilled users of MSP best practice on programme management, we could do more than training. I put away my training material and all my prepared case studies, and focussed on the one case study which really interested my client – their own organisation.

So we started work on designing and implementing the client’s own PMO solution. That’s better than training. As the Chinese proverb says, “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.”

We drafted several MSP documents
- Vision statement
- 5 year blueprint
- Risk analysis
- Project dossier

This went fast, and was very productive. As the Chinese proverb says, the Danes were involved, and they understood. But they didn’t only learn. They also concretely started work on their future P3O programme. That’s a bonus.