The IT PMO’s work is a Catch-22. Praised one day for doing an exemplary job of guiding projects to completion on time and on budget, only to realize that this metric is no longer enough and then suffer from a lack of perceived value. Reports for IT PMOs are a given, but what should those reports show?
A recent ESI International survey shows that 72% of PMOs are regularly questioned by senior management about their contributions. ESI adds that the PMO has “a long way to go when it comes to demonstrating value through considered, quantitative measurement.”¹
No doubt, PMOs need to show stakeholders the vital difference they make in organizational performance. However, generating reports to show that value can sometimes be more time-consuming than the work they generate.
Clearly, showing strategic business results will lead to a better PMO-executive management relationship. For starters, PMOs should add strategic planning through portfolio management functions to their capabilities. It’s also important to understand what organizations are looking for in high-performing PMOs. According to the PMI, executives want PMOs to:
- Actively engage sponsors (81%)
- Align projects with business strategy (57%)
- Focus strongly on knowledge transfer, which boosts the chance of project success by 20+%
With a confident grasp on the health and status of all the actions and people that form their portfolios, the IT PMO can show how they enable the strategic success of projects across the entire enterprise.
A newly published eBook shares Top Six Reports that can drive actionable decisions quickly and prove PMO value. The eBook highlights:
- Investment and Capacity Planning – Answer the question “What should we do?” by creating and modeling decisions in different scenarios, then zooming to just the differences between those decision sets.
- Financial Planning – Use financial burndown charts for your whole portfolio and for each project without losing sight of the big picture.
- Resource Capacity and Demand – Clearly understand overall resource capacity against demand. See the data by various dimensions, slice the time, and display it as needed.
- Process Analysis – Show your true value by improving project repeatability and delivery. Analyze throughput, volume, and cycle time to see trends and optimize progress.
- Monitoring Project Health – At a glance, see how a project is doing – its current condition, and how this project has trended historically – to make the best decision quickly.
- Plan vs. Actuals – Quickly spot and remediate problem areas in a project or portfolio by analyzing the difference between planned resource demand and actual reported time.
Ultimately, these reports will make it easy for PMOs inform key stakeholders consistently, confidently, early and often to drive actionable decisions quickly and prove their value decisively. I invite you to download the eBook “The Top 6 Reports for IT PMOs: Inform Your Stakeholders Consistently, Confidently, and Often” to take a deeper dive into these reports and to learn how Planview Enterprise delivers the analytics you need and streamlines the reporting process.
What do you think about the reports presented in the eBook? How is your PMO currently generating reports to show value to the organization? Share by leaving a comment below.
¹ The Global State of the PMO: An Analysis for 2015. (n.d.).
