the 5 critical elements to creating a project management center of excellence
TRANSCRIPT
The 5 Critical Elements to Creating a
Project Management Center of Excellence
Contributed by Michael Stanleigh on December 8, 2015 in Management & Leadership,
Organization, Change, & HR
Creating a Project Management Centre of Excellence is the driving force that takes an
organization forward to realize their project management mandate. It encompasses the
process of creating a strategy for project management, re-shaping the culture to be more
focused on the consistency in the management of projects and implementing a project
management process.
Creating a Project Management Centre of Excellence
A Centre of Excellence is a business unit that
has organization-wide authority. The key elements of a successful Project Management
Centre of Excellence include:
1. Vision and Strategies A clear vision of what it represents and the strategies to identify how it will reach this
vision in the short and long term.
2. Competencies The selection of resources based on project competency requirements compared to
actual project resource competencies. The identification of coaching, training and
other developmental activities to close any competency gap.
3. Culture How to re-shape the organizational culture to be more supportive of the consistency in
the management of projects.
4. Processes The right processes, tools and templates that are helpful and meaningful to project
managers and their teams.
5. Quality The quality criteria for the project management framework, processes and documents.
1. Create the Vision and Strategies
One approach to creating a vision for the Centre of Excellence is to brainstorm ideas that
focus on what the future will look like. Start by creating scenarios that describe what the
Centre will be doing 5 years into the future. What are some of the things that they will be
doing that reflect a successful Centre of Excellence? What will employees and customers be
saying about them? How did they get there?
The outcome of this process is the creation of a vision statement for the Project Management
Centre of Excellence. Determine how this vision aligns and supports the organization’s
strategic direction.
The alignment of the Centre of Excellence to the goals of the organization is key to driving
strategy implementation. Strategies translate this vision into reality. They close the gap
between the present and the “ideal” future described in the vision scenarios. These strategies
must be described clearly so that the organization understands and accepts them.
Vision Statement Examples
Create a project culture where project management is a valued competency embedded
in the organization and where project leaders and their teams embrace the project
management processes to ensure that the organization’s projects deliver on their
customer, quality and regulatory goals.
To foster and support an organizational culture of project management to ensure
greater accountability and consistency
Strategy Examples
Develop a productive project culture where everyone involved in projects understands
their role and responsibility in ensuring project success.
Sustain a continuous communication link between the senior management team and
the Project Managers and provide them with accurate measurements on the progress
of all projects.
Develop intuitive and simple to use project tools, templates and reports that deliver
the right level of documentation and information to stakeholders
Assess project manager and team competencies in order to create developmental plans
which will increase their competencies for project roles.
2. Identify and Develop Competencies
A key responsibility of a Centre of Excellence is to help in the selection of the right project
managers and core team resources. Without competency evaluation tools, the best people
with the right knowledge, skills and experience will not always be assigned to a project.
A competency is the knowledge, skills, ability, and characteristics associated with high
performance on a job. Competencies can also help distinguish high performance from
average and low performance. Develop competencies for the Project Sponsor, Project
Manager and various types of Project Team Members. Create a competency assessment to
identify the competency requirements for a specific project which can be compared to the
competencies of the individual resources to be assigned to the project. Identify the gaps
between the project requirements and the resource capabilities. Provide training, coaching
and/or mentoring to help close the gap.
3. Develop the Project Management Culture
If project management is built into corporate culture than everyone who works on a project
will immediately know what they have to do. They won’t have to locate a PMO to tell them
how to manage a project, what tools to use, what templates to use, etc.
Project Management will be a competency embedded into everyone’s role.
The steps to re-shaping the organizational culture to be more project focused are:
Create a definition for “Project Management Culture.”
Research the organization (focus groups, surveys, etc.) to determine what they would
expect from a strong project management culture. (Use a Project Culture
Assessment)
Validate that the Project Management Centre of Excellence’s vision and strategies
align with the results of the project culture assessment. It is common that additional
strategies will be added to ensure the gap between the current and ideal project
management culture will be successfully closed.
Review projects managed over the past year to identify their challenges and to create
the opportunities for improvement that a strong project management culture will
provide.
Develop project management competencies to ensure the right people will be assigned
to projects.
Identify training requirements for everyone who is engaged on a project.
Sustain the new project culture through project health checks and audits.
4. Develop Project Management Processes
Some organizations lack a consistent approach to the management of projects. Others have
implemented tools, templates and methodologies – but project performance hasn’t
changed. Most organizations operate with a diversity of project cultures that change from
one project to the next, from one department to the next. Every time a resource works on a
project they have to learn a new approach, new templates, etc. This is very time consuming
and decreases project productivity. The missing elements are consistent project management
processes, tools and templates that can be used on all types and sizes of projects.
Project Management best practices must be embedded into the very framework and support
systems of the organization. Having effective, predictable and reusable project management
tools, techniques and processes make it much easier for project teams to successfully deliver
projects. Research shows that the main reasons that projects fail is due to poor planning. It
shows up as a breakdown of communication, missed deadlines and running over
budget. Therefore, having proper project management tools and templates combined with
training on how to use them will help organizations to significantly improve the success rate
of their projects.
5. Develop Measureable Quality Standards
There are three international standards that help to provide the foundation for the
development of quality standards for project. These are:
PMBOK – The Project Management Body of Knowledge created by the Project
Management Institute.
ISO 10006:2003 – Guidelines for Quality Management in Projects
ISO 21500:2012 – Guidance on Project Management
The Project Management Centre of Excellence should develop quality standards for all
project processes and documents. Examples of project quality standards:
Project Team
Project roles and responsibilities are defined, documented, and communicated to all
stakeholders.
Each project team member’s competency is compared against competency
requirements.
Project team competency gaps are closed through training, mentoring and/or
coaching.
All project team staffing-related issues or risks have been appropriately identified and
managed.
Scope Statement
The project goal identifies, in a single statement, what is the project and why it is
important.
Each deliverable will identify the work to be accomplished and how it will be
measured.
By accomplishing the work described in the scope, the project requirements will be
satisfied, the project’s goal will be achieved, and the identified stakeholder’s
expectations will be met.
Project Plan
All lower level tasks will be no more than 5 days in duration.
All tasks will have a resource identified
All tasks will have a predecessor and successor
There will be no more than double the number of milestones to the number of
deliverables.
The Project Management Centre of Excellence
A Project Management Centre of Excellence will help your organization realize its strategic
imperatives. It will assist projects to be managed within their constraints and to meet their
deliverables. It’ll create the quality criteria to provide the right measurements to
management. It will help reshape the project culture.
Our research shows that a Centre of Excellence can have a profound effect on: reporting
structures, performance systems, communication systems and resources. Employees need to
be prepared for the changes that will be necessary and to understand the benefits of the
change. As well, organizations that do not follow best practices are at a competitive
disadvantage to those who apply a structured process to each project. Project management
best practises include a disciplined approach to planning, executing and learning from
projects and applies quality management principles. And finally, a quality-based approach to
the management of projects gives corporations the ability to successfully execute projects
time after time.
About Michael Stanleigh
Michael Stanleigh, CMC, CSP is the CEO of Business Improvement Architects. He works with leaders and their teams around the world to improve organizational performance by helping to define their strategic direction, increase leadership performance, create
cultures that drive innovation and improve project and quality management. He has been instrumental in helping his clients increase productivity and profits with his innovative approaches and focus on quality. For more information about this article, please contact him at [email protected] or phone, 416-444-8225.
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