Its one thing for a project management consultant to
provide training and coaching and have appropriate processes and templates
defined. Its another thing for the new processes to actually be adopted and
utilized by the project teams. If you want to change an organizations culture
and make sure that the new processes are sticking, you must make sure that the
project teams are using them correctly.Project audits are one way for an organizations Project Management Office (PMO) to validate whether the project teams are utilizing the appropriate project management processes. Auditing can also be an opportunity for coaching by helping the project managers understand how the methodology is applicable to their project.
Consultants who help their clients establish a PMO may later find themselves helping the same clients determine whether the PMO has taken. In this column, Ill cover a couple of important ways that the PMO can validatethrough a combination of project auditing and organization assessmentswhether all this work is effective.
Project-level audits
During the project audit, a member of the PMO asks a series of questions to ensure compliance with the required processes and procedures. For example, the types of questions would include:
- Did the key stakeholders participate in the planning of the project?
- Have the sponsor(s) and major stakeholders formally approved the project definition?
- Is the work plan being used to manage the work performed by the team?
- Does the work plan accurately reflect the remaining work effort?
- Can the project manager clearly explain where the project is vs. where it should be at this time?
- Will all the deliverables specified in the project definition be completed?
- Is the project on track in terms of cost, duration, and quality?
- Are old risks being managed and new risks being identified?
- Are issues being addressed and resolved in a timely manner?
Although the internal PMO will handle this service in most companies, project auditing is a stand-alone service that service providers can also handle. In fact, there are consultancies that have special expertise in auditing.
In some cases, having an outside party perform the audits gives the process an extra air of legitimacy that will cause senior management to pay attention.
If your organization is set up with the project managers reporting directly into the PMO, the adoption of project management processes is within the control of the PMO. However, in most organizations, the project managers continue to report into their functional organizations.
In any culture change initiative, middle management plays a key role in overall success or failure. Middle managers can be a huge asset if they are behind the culture change. They can also be the biggest obstacles to overcome if theyre not totally on board. (Unfortunately, this is more typical of the general role that middle managers play.)
To help reinforce the responsibilities of the managers, the results of the project audit should be documented and sent back to the project manager, as well as the manager of the project manager. The results should also be summarized and sent to the project sponsor and other management stakeholders.
If a team is not using the processes that have been championed by the PMO, the senior managers and the sponsor ultimately need to ask questions in an effort to bring the middle manager into compliance.
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