Overview

70% of failing projects attribute the failure to lack of communications or lack of project management training.  Other questions keeping leaders awake at night are:

• How much risk is too much? 
• What projects can we really afford to implement with accurate estimates?
• What is the price of missing critical project dates?
• Can you identify and resolve potential issues in your projects?
• What is the real status of our projects?
• Are we wasting our limited resources on duplicate projects?
• Who will provide the information and resolution of issues affecting more than one project or projects across a division or department?

The goals of an Enterprise Project Office are to:

• Create and maintain a consistent world class project management methodology and process for all project management engagements across the company
• Train, certify if possible, coach, and mentor project managers in not only project management, but also project delivery to ensure skill mastery and consistency in planning and execution 
• Manage corporate and project priorities matching business goals with appropriate technology solutions and provide increased resource utilization across the organization matching skills to project needs
• Provide centralized control, coordination, and reporting of scope, change, cost, risk, and quality across all projects
• Increase collaboration across projects
• Provide increased Client Satisfaction with project-related work through increased communications, collaboration, training, and awareness
• Reduce time to market by providing better coordination and the right resources with the right skills for the projects
• Reduce project costs because common tasks and redundant projects could be eliminated or managed at the central level
• Reduce corporate project risk

Enterprise Project Office Advantages

Designing and implementing solutions and services in today’s environment or even managing change in today’s environment is more complex than ever before. With multiple hardware and software vendors, as well as a diverse range of partnerships and alliances, today’s infrastructure landscape is as complex as it has ever been. Trying to manage projects for multiple divisions or groups adds more complexity to the management team. Unresolved issues, lack of consistent training, or miscommunications can delay projects for weeks and months and can turn into lost revenue, a lost competitive advantage, and an unhappy client.

A dedicated Enterprise Project Office provides the oversight to deliver all projects on time and on budget by managing, controlling and reporting on all project schedules, scope, and resources while watching the cost, change, and quality. The Enterprise Project Office provides expertise tailored to our business requirements while taking responsibility for all projects included in our portfolio. An Enterprise Project Office provides the extra focus and resources that complex projects demand.

The focus of the Enterprise Project Office is to provide a conduit for communication, coordination, and training for all projects in the corporate portfolio and be the center of excellence that supports project managers in the implementation of the functions required to achieve successful projects. The Enterprise Project Office is staffed by project professionals with the goal of providing support to project teams to consolidate project resource plans, financials reporting, project schedules, change, risk and quality information to deliver projects on time and on budget.

The Enterprise Project Office offers project management tools, support, mentoring, project portfolio management, and quality assurance. The Enterprise Project Office provides economies of scale not found in a single project team and offers a single point of contact for all information on the projects in the corporate portfolio. The Enterprise Project Office keeps critical projects on time and within the budget by providing accountability and support at every stage, from planning to acceptance. The Enterprise Project Office identifies and resolves issues before they add time to already short time to market pressures. The Enterprise Project Office provides expertise tailored to business requirements along with the extra focus and resources that complex projects demand maintaining project momentum by contributing in these areas:

• Consolidated Administrative Support – Enterprise Project Office personnel can make the lives of project team members easier by assuming administrative chores for project scheduling, report production and distribution, project management software operation, and maintaining the physical or virtual project "War Room" along with project documents or ensuring document consistency. The Enterprise Project Office receives, consolidates, and distributes information for all projects in the corporate portfolio. 
• Providing Project Management Consulting, Mentoring, and Training – The Enterprise Project Office personnel will oversee the operations of each individual project and project manager; offering mentoring, support, and training as needed. Advanced training can be coordinated or provided by the Enterprise Project Office and each project will undergo periodic Quality Assessment Reviews during project milestones and at closeout. The Enterprise Project Office can coordinate with a project management-training provider to certify Washington Mutual Certified Project Managers.
• Resource Allocation – With limited resources, it is critical to have the right people at the right place doing the right jobs. The Enterprise Project Office is in a position to assign the project managers and project team members to match project needs with specialized skills, availability, and geographic needs as well as balance the workload of project managers and project team members. By doing so, the Enterprise Project Office ensures resources are being used efficiently throughout all projects.
• Project Coordination – Using corporate objectives as a guideline, the Enterprise Project Office will coordinate across departments and divisions to communicate project charters and ensure duplicate projects are not initiated.
• Vendor Management – Many details need special attention when purchasing hardware, software, and services from any vendor. The Enterprise Project Office provides objective accountability to identify and resolve issues that can delay the specification and delivery of the right equipment to the right place at the right time. The Enterprise Project Office has the authority to hire and fire contractors, assign the contractors to particular projects, and manage contractor issues centrally.

Formation of an Enterprise Project Office

In a number of cases, the Enterprise Project Office is both a physical location and project personnel. To start an Enterprise Project Office, the company officer responsible for project delivery, will have to select an individual or individuals capable of:

• Creating and maintaining a consistent project management process, methodology, and templates
• Training, mentoring, and coaching project managers
• Managing, coordinating, and communicating on all levels of project delivery with multiple projects at the same time
• Tracking and reporting project portfolio information to the corporation 

Steps for Enterprise Project Office Creation

1. Establish charter for the Enterprise Project Office
2. Identify and define desired business benefits and measurement methods
3. Define governance structure
4. Define the management process
5. Define leadership and communications protocols
6. Define risks and develop mitigation strategy
7. Define project support function
8. Define integration approach and methods
9. Create a corporate presence
10. Get Started!

The following paragraphs give a brief description of what is to be done in each step and why each is important.

1. Establish charter for the Enterprise Project Office - It is critical to be very clear concerning the purpose and goals of any Enterprise Project Office. This should not be taken for granted and the specific charter for the Enterprise Project Office must be documented and agreed by stakeholders. What is the authority of the Enterprise Project Office? What is it expected to accomplish, exactly? How will it be measured and by what process?
2. Identify and define desired business benefits and measurement methods - The Enterprise Project Office must understand the desired business benefits. How will success be measured? One of the functions of an Enterprise Project Office is to ensure that the targeted business benefits are clearly documented, agreed among the stakeholders and communicated to all concerned. A means of gathering, measuring, evaluating and reporting metrics related to business benefits must also be defined. 
3. Define governance structure - The need for governance is one of the best reasons to institute an Enterprise Project Office. Very often the strongest rules of governance related to a business initiative will be found within an Enterprise Project Office. Some of the questions are -- How will the Enterprise Project Office itself be organized? How will the Enterprise Project Office interact with the operational and developmental functions in the organization? What will the reporting structure look like? Who will be responsible to whom? What reporting processes will be used for status and progress reporting? Where will the Enterprise Project Office itself report? In some cases the Enterprise Project Office reports to a steering committee. In other cases it might report to the CIO. It's of critical importance to spell this out during Enterprise Project Office set-up.
4. Define the management process - The process for management, tracking and resolution of issues, impacts, changes and risks must be established. This will include information gathering and reporting, a means for defining when these events have occurred, escalation paths, reporting and the means for resolution and mitigation as well.
5. Define leadership and communications protocols - Governance is focused on management. Leadership is related to keeping the vision and purpose of the Enterprise Project Office in mind through constant communication regarding both a reiteration of purpose as well as clear communication as change occurs. In setting up an Enterprise Project Office, the means of communication and the leadership principles that will be applied must be defined. How will change be communicated, and the decisions related to change be executed? Who will be responsible to keep the vision and direction that should drive the Enterprise Project Office constantly in everyone’s mind? 
6. Define risks and develop mitigation strategy - Known risks associated with the initiative and a means for mitigating them must be documented as part of set-up. Once the Enterprise Project Office is under way, risk management is a function of impact management.
7. Define project support function - The projects within the corporation will require support so that methods, tools and procedures can be used in a uniform manner and economies of scale can be achieved. This function by itself is of tremendous value and is sometimes mistaken for the Enterprise Project Office function itself. In any case, project support is an important aspect of a Enterprise Project Office.
8. Define integration approach and methods - The means of managing and integrating each of the streams of work required to achieve the business objective and deliver the business benefits of the initiatives the Enterprise Project Office is supporting must be defined. If the initiative is to be supported by many projects, a master schedule of all the projects and their dependencies must be maintained. How this will be accomplished on a day-to-day basis must be defined and communicated to all stakeholders and managers within the initiative and Enterprise Project Office.
9. Create a corporate presence - Additionally, it is recommended the company set aside either a physical or virtual "War Room" to be used for the Enterprise Project Office. The physical room should be set up to accommodate the tracking and management of information such as whiteboards or bulletin boards to allow the posting and tracking of project schedules, financials, changes, and resource schedules. A web or other collaborative workspace should be set up to allow the project teams to deposit project documentation and draw from company supplied project templates. The collaborative workspace would also allow the Enterprise Project Office personnel to consolidate the information from multiple projects, provide mentoring for improvement and consistency, and highlight best practices or other noteworthy items. An Executive Information System front-end or entry point into the collaborative workspace could provide real-time status on all active projects to company and/or client management.
10. Get Started!
    1.  Hire the Enterprise Project Office Director or Chief Project Officer
    2. Set up the web-based Project Office and the physical space if needed
    3.  Agree on the project management methodology and templates to be used
    4. Assess current skills and create the training course
    5. Train all project team members in the process, the collaborative workspace, the methodology, and the templates
    6. Start managing all projects with the methodology as a guide and use the collaborative workspace
    7. Coach and mentor project teams
    8. Consolidate all project documentations into Enterprise Project Office documentation