Setting up a PMO, our journey Penn State University Project Management Working Group (PMWG) February 11, 2015 By Huoy-Jii Khoo, Brendan Bagley, Michelle Carr and Madelyn Wagner

OPP ,539 acres of land on 24 campuses 1,710 buildings = 32.1 million sq ft 63 miles of roads and 71 miles of sidewalks 17 miles of underground steam pipes at UP Maintain 550 University vehicles Control the climate/lighting for 350 buildings at UP We track real-time energy and water consumption in more than 100 buildings

Background Are we satisfying business need? Too many “projects” and no information – Ad-hoc – Spotty customer service – Everything was a special project – Hope [verb. to want something to happen and think that it could happen] Need to Change – The way we (ITS) were operating – ITS was making business decisions

Drivers Needed more data  Information  Decision  Execution [___________] needed to be managed Changing the culture – Project actually has a start and an end! – Accountability – Business to make business decisions Ultimately, portfolio management

Challenges Change at all levels – Customers, IT personnel, IT mgmt, business mgmt and senior execs Resources – personnel, funding and time Mixing roles – PMO vs PM – “Hope” for miracle worker  PMO, PM and BSA It takes time, patience and a team – OPP ITS PMO’s major milestones – Hiring the right people w/ personality/empathy – PMO growing pains Didn’t devote enough time

Challenges (from the team) Business and IT staff buy-in and the slope of adoption Having data regarding ROI would have been helpful Every new addition to the staffing of the PMO caused cycling though team formation stages

“It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's OPP ITS PMO” Every PMO is unique Goals – Simple (Easy to use - standards and templates) – Practical (To our operations, red tape) – Implement lessons learned Next phase – Financial awareness – Compliance and audits Biggest lessons learned so far – Need a consistent and repeatable process

SMOKED Sponsor Support Methodology Objectives of the PMO Keep lots of notes – write it all down Engage non PMO members of your unit Don’t get discouraged

Benefits to Having a PMO Lowering stress of the managers (especially with a BSA liaison) Improving customer service with clients/business Being a touch point/spokesperson for the workers and customers Continual process of growing buy-in Influence how the business does business

Testimonials From a director at OPP – “Having worked with a lot of the same people on that team on other projects, I think you deserve a great deal of credit for the success of the effort, and how well the team presented it to us.” From a functional manager in our department: – “I was a bit skeptical at first, but it has been a times saving for us.” – “creating a work plan and schedule has helped keep us and the interested parties on track” – “While this will obviously take some time, in the long run it will beneficial for OPP” – “The creation of this group was a good decision for us” HR's request for guidance Requests from managers for resource coordination sessions Thanks from employees for being a buffer with clients and coworkers

Tools PM info system (task lists, list of projects, dashboard) – Workfront (formerly AtTask) Workfront (formerly AtTask) Box folders organized by process groups – Example: OPP Network Re-implementationOPP Network Re-implementation

Thank you “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.” -- Mary Kay Ash