Project Management Office (PMO) for Management Consultants

In the second section I will show you different situation in which PMO can be used. We will go through the difference and the goals of PMOs. PMO can be created in: Juggernaut situation, Performance Improvement situation, Turn Around situation, Private Equity situation, Drastic growth situation and others

Some companies are so big that they need PMO to provide the visibility on what happens in the firm. Without PMO the Management is blind and powerless

In this case the goal of the PMO is to: Provide visibility about projects happening

What PMO has to do in this situation:

• List projects happening in the firm

• Provide information about projects to the Board of Directors

• Coordinate them (so they don’t contradict each other, have sufficient resources etc.)

• Provide consistency – reporting of projects, analyzing, presenting results, managing etc.

• Organize official reporting system of the project progress

In some cases the firm is loosing profitability or cannot catch up with competitors. In such cases PMO may also be a good idea to change the profitability

The goal of the PMO in this situation is: Make sure that the goal is achieved (increased EBITDA, net profit, etc.)

PMO in this situation does the following things:

• Generate ideas how to increase the EBITDA / net profit

• Ensure that projects get sufficient resources

• Supervise execution of projects that are supposed to deliver the set goals of EBITDA / net profit

• Provide analytical & project management resources

• Help get external resources if needed

• Escalate if problems occurs

In some cases the firm is almost dead. It has lost its liquidity (no cash) or profitability. In such cases PMO may help you turn around the business

The goal of the PMO in this situation is to: Make sure that the firm survives and achieves goals (regained liquidity or profitability)

PMO in this situation has to do the folllowing things:

• Generate ideas how to increase liquidity & profitability

• Set projects to achieve it

• Ensure that projects get enough resources

• Supervise execution of projects & manage the most important ones

• Provide analytical & project management resources

• Solve problems

• Help get external resources if needed

• Escalate if problems occurs

When the firm is bought by PE quite often it has to grow very fast or drastically improve it’s profitability. This requires additional resources and focus. In other words it requires PMO

The goal of PMO in this situation is to: Make sure that the firm increases the value according to goals set at the purchase date (3x-5x the Enterprise Value)

PMO does the following things:

• List the projects that have to happen to ensure the value creation

• Ensure that projects get sufficient resources, sometimes from the PE

• Supervise execution of projects that are supposed to deliver value creation

• Report progress to Management Board & owners (PE)

• Escalate if the pace of value creation is too slow

In some cases you want to grow so fast that you need to set up PMO to make sure that the growth happens, and the firm does not fall apart in the process

The goal of PMO in this situation is to: Achieve set size (# of users, market share, production capacity, revenue size)

PMO in this situation concentrate ont the following things:

• Generate ideas how to grow

• Identify bottlenecks that limit the growth

• Set priorities

• Provide resources

• Supervise execution of projects

• Provide analytical and management resources if needed

• Report progress to Management Board & owners

In this section we will summarize all the different types of PMO

In this lecture I will show you other reasons when you set-up a PMO like: Big projects (new factory, change of head office, new systems), PMO for IT projects, PMO for M&A situation etc.

In this section I will show you the step by step process that will help you establish the PMO.

Below the general process of building PMO in the organization

• Define the role & Goals of the PMO

• Select Projects

• Recruit & Train PMO team

• Provide resources & teach

• Execute & Supervise

We will describe this process in more details in this lecture

As we previously said the role and goals of the PMO to a large extent depends on the situation. Therefore, teh goals will be different in different situation. We will describe them in this lecture

Let’s start with what kind of general PMO we had. Each and one of them will have different KPIs

Let’s see how involve the PMO can be. There are  7 levels of PMO involvement:

• Be only informed about project existence

• Give opinion about the project

• Monitor regularly its progress

• Accept project before it starts

• Provide resources for the project

• Supervise actively the project

• Execute projects – act as Project Managers

In this section, I will show you a different method of selecting projects that you will be supervising as a PMO Department. We will have a look at:

• Strategic alignment

• Value proposition Framework

• Bottleneck Framework

• Portfolio Approach

In the strategic alignment framework we divide projects into 4 groups using 2 criteria:

• Is it aligned with the overall strategy?

• Estimated impact

I will show you in the next lectures how to use this in practice

Imagine that you have to help a producer of products from milk to decide which projects he should implement and which to neglect

A few information about the firm

• They want to 3x EBITDA in 5 years

• They have defined a strategy for the next 5 years

• They have 10 projects that they consider

Let's help them select projects given their strategy

In this lecture I will show you how to solve the case shown in the previous lectures 

In this lecture, I will show you how to solve the case shown in the previous lectures 

A strategic alignment framework can be used in many situations. Below some of them

• You have many projects

• Projects were generated by different departments

• Projects are not necessarily aligned with the strategy

• You have limited resources (money & people)

• The organization has to be focused

• There are many stakeholders

Here we will discuss the second method we will use for project selection.

Now let’s help Fast Food Salad Chain pick the right projects to improve the customer value proposition.

A few information about the salad chain

• 100 locations in Eastern Europe

• Their NPS is currently 30%

• They want to improve the NPS to 50%

• They are analyzing 6 different projects

In this lecture I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In many cases, you don’t have to be right on every decision but only on average. In this case, portfolio decision making comes in handy

Below how you should use portfolio management to make decisions

• List potential projects you consider

• Estimate their potential impacts & probabilities

• Group them by risk groups

• Define the number of projects you will invest in

• Pick the projects diversifying the risk

Let’s have a look at a plywood producer that considers 15 different projects

• 3 plants

• They have 15 investment ideas

• Use portfolio management to decide which one to pick

• You cannot spend more than EUR 30 M

In this lecture, I will show the data available for the case study that you will need to solve the case

In this lecture, I will show the data available for the case study that you will need to solve the case

In this lecture, I will show the data available for the case study that you will need to solve the case

The bottleneck framework is a mix of 2 methods

1. Low hanging fruit framework

2. Theory of constraints / Removing bottlenecks

To help you better understand the bottleneck framework we will go through the following things in this section:

• The process of using the bottleneck framework

• Low hanging fruit

• Bottlenecks

• Bottleneck Framework – Case Study

• When it makes sense to use the bottleneck framework

In this lecture, we will talk briefly about applying the low-hanging fruits in practice. I will show you the principles of using it as well as a practical example

In every company, you have bottlenecks that limit your ability to go forward and deliver more goods and services. Here I will show you how to estimate what is the impact on the whole system and how you can remove and improve them. I will use a simple production example to show you the effect on the whole system. You will see how the bottleneck can shift from 1 shift to another. You will also learn how to prioritize where it makes sense to invest to get the best results.

Before doing this lecture I strongly encourage you first to take the OEE lecture – we use the OEE concept here so if you are not familiar with it please start with the OEE lecture as a warm-up.

Your friend Ivan works in a content marketing agency and wants to improve the work of his team. Help him use the bottleneck framework

In this lecture, I will show you the solution to the previously introduced case study

Below is how you should use the bottleneck framework to select projects

• List potential projects you consider

• Estimate their potential impacts & resources needed

• Identify low-hanging fruits

• Check bottlenecks for projects & try to remove them

• Pick the projects & Execute

Imagine that you have to identify which projects should be done for an international chain of drugstores. Use the bottleneck framework to select projects.

A few information about the firm that we will be analyzing

• They have 4 000 stores

• They have named 9 projects

• They mapped which people they need for the projects

• Select the projects you think they should do

Here we will show you data that you need for solving the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

In this lecture, I will show you the data you will need to solve the case study

The bottleneck framework can be used in many situations. Below are some of them

• Middle-sized firms

• Firms in which a limited # of people is involved in most of the projects

• Firms owned by PE

• When a lot of projects happen that the firms have no experience in doing

• After a period of drastic growth of the Head Office

• After a change of power – new CEO or Management Board

In the 5th section, I will briefly discuss the process of recruiting and training team members that you will need to run the PMO. If you are working in a consulting firm you simply get well prepared people, but if the PMO is built internally then the task is much more difficult

If you want to have an effective team you should know what you want and implement it. The first step is to create the profile of an ideal team member.

Consulting is teamwork so you have to define what values you want your team to follow. This is crucial as it will be something that will be the basis for the team culture. In this lecture, I will show my values that provide a good ground for managing properly the consulting project

As we have discussed previously you want to turn inexperienced graduates into seasoned consultants. This gives you greater chances of success during the project. Therefore, you have to define the profile of an ideal consultant and set your team member on the course to achieve this level. In this lecture, I will also show you the profile I have defined for an ideal team member 

For your team to cooperate you have to create and teach them standards, templates as well as turn them into modules as much as possible your process and end-products. In the next lectures, I will show you in details how to achieve it

You have to make your team constantly improve to get a self-improving machine for work. In this lecture, we will discuss how to achieve it.

Here I will show you how in practice to train your people

In this lecture, we will discuss what you should deliver as a PMO. There will be examples of main deliverables

Here I will show you an example of a project charter/project card that you can use to manage a project. It will take the form of a list of tasks/to-dos that you assign to specific team members.

In this lecture, we will have a look at how you can summarize projects in Excel as well as PowerPoint

During every project, team members along with the PMO team will produce a lot of deliverables

• Summary of findings in PowerPoint

• Detailed Analysis in Excel supporting the presentation

• Additional materials (manuals, tools, etc.)

Attached to the lecture you will find a summary of a project done for a DIY chain devoted to process optimization

Here I will show you deliverables from projects

In the last section, we will briefly discuss the tools used by the PMO such as project management tools, slides templates, and a library of slides.

To manage projects it is a good idea to use one of the following tools that will help you keep track of projects and help the project teams work

• Project Cards in Excel

• Project Cards in Google Sheet

• Asana

• Monday

• Airtable

• Trello

• Jira

• Basecamp

• Nozbe

In this lecture, I will share with you the library of the most useful slides