PMO Development

I have the opportunity to help this organization with process improvement, project management, and developing a PMO. Before I was onboarded, the organization did not have a system or process in place and the projects are primarily initiated by the Senior Management and are the sponsor of the project. I am a year in and still learning about the organization, but I do have some feedback that may help some of you that are just starting a PMO along with the Wrike tools that help with the consistent processes I have implemented.

Managing Senior Management expectations has been the most crucial

I am able to communicate closely with senior management to help understand their department's ways of working. As we all know, no project is the same. I have to understand the why of a decision and how we will implement the decision. 

Wrike Tool - Average Effort Overview per project and per year (custom built)

By Project:

By Year:

This is reviewed weekly with Senior Management to discuss some bottlenecks, possible issues and how we can arrange projects to avoid burnout. This is part of the process when the project is in the business case phase. 

Another way I help communicate the project expectation and how it is impacting the team is through Gannt charts. These are high-level views that will show how many are active at the same time and managing expectations of completion date, possible issues, and helps bring awareness to how new projects may impact productivity.

Wrike Tool - Project Gannt Chart (3 categories: Working, Business Case, and Future)

This is new to the process when researching new projects to understand what we have in the pipeline. This view is sent to the Senior Management group weekly and discussed in person monthly. 

With all these two processes, there has been a positive shift in making sure the group is aware of high-level project status, discussions have been productive in planning upcoming projects, and senior management's expectations are clear and, more importantly, documented in each of the projects for tracking.

This is just scratching the surface - I have a lot of work to do and I'm looking forward to what other Wrike tools I can implement to tighten up the governance of the PMO. I hope this helps!