Establishing PMO Standards and Metrics
The standards and metrics are the foundation of a successful Project Management Office (PMO). These standards and practices help a PMO to suggest and implement best practices and the corresponding tools to advance and gauge the performance of the project management methodology of an organization (Hill, 2013). Therefore, the vital objectives of this critical thinking report is to highlight these fundamental elements and showcase how the standards and metrics can be used effectively within the scope and responsibilities of a PMO. Moreover, with the help of a few practical examples the benefits of the PM standards and practices for the PMO would be described, along with the Information Technology (IT) needs
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The PMO should define simple and concise dashboard and include metrics, which showcase the value generated by the projects to the senior leadership. According to Kerzner (2013), the value specific dashboard and the corresponding metrics should include the fundamental elements of quality of the final outcome, cost of the implementation, safety and security process implementations, functionality progress, and schedule monitoring for implementation success. Furthermore, a weighting factor should be assigned by the PMO to all the desired KPIs, and the selected metrics should showcase the progress or performance of individual KPI, based on these weighting factors. Ultimately, the metrics related to progress, status, and forecast would be used by the PMO to achieve the primary responsibilities of performance tracking and trigger the corrective measures when necessary (Kerzner, …show more content…
Ranging from the fundamental requirements of managing cost, scope, quality, and schedule, up to the cutting-edge requirements of benefits, value and customer satisfaction management, the advantages of formal standards and metrics are endless. Therefore, the use of well-defined standards and metrics to strengthen the integral activities, demonstrates the high standards of the PMO maturity within an organization, and helps establish the coveted vision of Center of Excellence (COE) for the
Ebert Ronald J and Griffin Ricky W. (2011). Operations Management and Quality (8th edition) Business Essentials.(pp.128-132), Boston [Mass];London: Pearson.
For more than 25 years, The Little Black Book of Project Management has been introducing project managers to the incredibly effective and logical project management skill and methods to help them achieve their goal. This book has been flooded with very nee project management techniques as well as the latest standards of the Project management body of Knowledge (PMBOK) .accepted by PMI (Project Management Institute).
After a period of meticulous planning, project managers (PM) anticipate that their projects will be executed on schedule and within the proposed budget. According to Maheshwari and Credle (2010), there are internal and external factors that can impede a project’s progress. Therefore, once a project is in motion PMs often rely on tools to assist them with staying on course - and to mitigate project risk. One such tool is the Earned Value Measurement System (EVMS) that can be used to quantify a project 's progress and assist PMs with managing and controlling project costs, instead of merely monitoring costs during various stages of a project. The EVMS can also be used to forecast a project’s completion date and present an analysis of variances, which may occur due to additional or misinterpreted requirements, to determine a project’s earned value (Kerzner, 2013).
Graham, R. J. & Randall, L., Creating an Environment for Successful Projects: The Quests to Manage Project Management, second ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 65-113, 2003.
In the mid 1980s, and into the 1990s, business leaders realized that a renewed focus on quality was required to continue to compete in an expanding global market. (NIST, 2010) Consequently, several strategic frameworks were developed for managing, and measuring organizational performance. Among them were the Malcomb Baldrige National Quality Award, which was created by and act of congress and signed into law by the President in 1987, and The Balanced Scorecard, which is a performance management tool that was born out of research conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Robert S. Kaplan, and David P. Norton published in 1996 (Kaplan, 1996). Initially, the renewed emphasis on quality management systems was a reaction to the LEAN approach to quality management implemented by many Japanese businesses to great success post World War II.
Choosing a KPI as the desired organizational improvement for a capstone project is not a good idea. KPIs are used to measure how well an organization is performing; subsequently, they do not address strategic goals and objectives of an organization. KPIs present an overall picture of long ranged improvements based on a multi-cycle action project; consequently, they do not provide a plan of improvement that can be utilized immediately to solve a problem that can address the performance level of the organization.
Gray, C., Larson, E. (2008). Project Management: The managerial Process. New York, NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.
Performance Management offers real-time KPI (Key Performance Indicator) dashboards that relate to the company’s operational objectives in the form
Performance Objectives and Standards Measurement of performance standards are based on: • Knowledge of customer needs and actions taken to meet
This software has many components including key performance indicator (KPIs), management dashboards, interactive mapping
Project Management Institute (PMI) (2013). Project Management Professional (PMP) Handbook. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.pmi.org/certification/~/media/pdf/certifications/pdc_pmphandbook.ashx. [Last Accessed 20 April 2014].
Project management is said to be completed within time when it completed within the “triple constraints”: cost, time and quality. And in a lot of causes, one them is sacrificed so as to meet the other two. Project managers prioritize which ones are the most important.
Project managers have to improve their skills every day to deal with the organizational change and especially the world’s Megatrends. However, it can be a challenge for a project manager to comprehend what skills they should be improved, what sections of project management knowledge that should be tried to perceive, and how to measure and enhance their performance.
For Key Performance Indicators (KPI) to be successful, it needs to have the following characteristics:
When planning a new project, how the project will be managed is one of the most important factors. The importance of a managers will determine the success of the project. The success of the project will be determined by how well it is managed. Project management is referred to as the discipline that entails the processes of carefully planning, organizing, controlling, and motivating the organization resources so as to foster and facilitate the achievement of specific established and desired goals and meet the specific criteria of success required in the organization (Larson, 2014). Over the course of this paper I will be discussing and analyzing the importance of project management.