Elevate the role of PMO, to accelerate Digital Transformation ROI
Lakshman Yerrmalla - Specialist in PMO, Digital Transformation Program Advisory and Change Management.

Elevate the role of PMO, to accelerate Digital Transformation ROI

Innovations in digital technologies have forever changed and will continue to change at an accelerate pace consumer behaviors and business models. Whether its consumers or businesses, the preference is to subscribe to/offer services, where possible, rather than build assets, products, capabilities etc. Digital transformation does not start and end with deploying a best of breed technology in one part of the business – it’s a transformation journey towards continuously innovating, maturing and sustaining. Companies that can self-disrupt, quickly convert vision and strategy into action and results, win. With digital initiatives Speed, Agility and Outcomes matter most. There’s obvious need to prioritize, optimize and effectively manage the projects with a 'holistic' approach. The objective of this article, is to turn the attention to a critical organizational function that can enable/lead realizing this strategy from 'concept' to 'fruition' – the 'Enterprise PMO' function.

PMO works at the intersection of business, technology, people and process and best positioned to see the ‘holistic’ picture of ‘change’ programs and work with a mission to plan, executive and effect change. Research and data prove, businesses with strong capabilities in program management and change management generate greater shareholder value. With the accelerating pace of change, agile methods, proliferation of digital technologies, PMO is now more relevant than ever before, if done right. A significant number of PMOs are generally focused on operational aspects and to a lesser extent on strategic aspects, primarily due to the positioning in the organization or lack of empowerment. Here’s a practical step-by-step approach to enhance and elevate the role of your PMO, as a key player in digital transformation journey:

Redefine PMO business value – Align PMO objectives and imperatives with business priorities. Knowing your organization’s strategic priorities, culture and investment strategies, redefine the expanded role of PMO and its business value to the organization. Build a dedicated PMO for Digital transformation. Include strategic portfolio management, product portfolio management (not often seen under PMO), program benefits delivery. PMO must be viewed as a partner in success, to business line owners, budget owners. Obtain buy-in and sponsorship for the new PMO charter, from executive management and build a broad sponsor coalition.

Strategic Portfolio Approach – portfolio management is an effective management tool to answer, ‘what and where to focus on’ and where management attention is required. Define your portfolio model, portfolio objectives and align every initiative, program, project to relevant portfolio objective. It’s of paramount importance to create and track performance of your ‘Digital transformation’ project portfolio. PMO must take full responsibility to build and manage an active portfolio, partner with business units and sponsors, closely monitor changing priorities and ensure active and planned projects are always aligned with strategy. Use objective ranking, scoring and rating of every project/program to enable and facilitate ‘starve’ vs. ‘feed’ decisions.

Integrate Change Management Capability – any program that impacts people, process, systems and job roles needs structured change management effort to transition from ‘current state’ to ‘future state’. Program is called 'success' only when the impacted employees, stakeholders are onboard and fully adapt ‘future state’. Whenever change management is an afterthought, full benefits are never realized. CM needs to be integrated into the program lifecycle right from initiation and planning phase. Integrate change management process and practice into PMO function. Ideally OCM capability should be built as a key PMO competency.

Reskill PMO Staff – Most companies have embraced Agile or some variation of agile into project lifecycle. Every transformation project has a digital technology and cloud-based solutions – it’s a necessary skill for the program managers to have broad knowledge and build skills to manage cloud-based solutions. Similarly, Agile is a major cultural shift, if done right and requires formal training and coaching. Acquire these skills through training or hiring experts into the team. Its best to take a step back and evaluate the skills and competency gaps to be filled to fulfill new PMO mandate.

‘Closed-loop’ - PMO must own the process to track and verify the benefits delivery and check back with original business case. As a best practice, the key business case metrics must be tracked through the economic life of the program, at every phase of the program and validate continued viability of projects in the portfolio. It requires active engagement across 'program' lifecycle, and collaboration across the organization, with line of business, product-line owners to track performance of digital initiatives, so that appropriate actions can be taken in a timely manner to bridge any gaps. This is what I call ‘Closed-loop portfolio management’.

These five steps provide a comprehensive approach to elevate the role of the PMO in digital transformation journey, particularly due to the cross-functional nature of these programs.

Pl. reach out Lakshman at lakshman@tapasllc.com for advice and consulting, if you need help with your PMO initiative. Lakshman is a specialist and expert in the field of PMO and Business transformation with 20yrs of management consulting work for several fortune500 companies. He currently runs independent advisory services firm TAPAS Consulting LLC.

Kiran Chari

Sales Executive, Account Manager, Digital Technologies, Banking & Fintech, Healthcare & Lifesciences, Insurance, Property&Casualty, Life

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