The performance portfolio positions business initiatives in a quadrant of business strategy.The approach helps us gain an in-depth understanding of why doing a particular business activity at a specific time and stage.

PMO manager onboarding establishes the foundations of PMO arrangement. We use "basic five" to refer to the PMO project manager onboarding principles. 

1. Document Template 
Every project manager in PMO is required to be familiar with the PMO documentation templates. The most crucial element of this includes: 

• Review the project summary page to comprehend the project scope, roadmap, significant milestones, project team, stakeholders, and the current project status. A project manager needs to make sure the status is up-to-date. 
• Review the business requirement, design, and test document templates to understand content requirements and manage gate review meetings and sign-offs. 

​2. Processing Workflow 
Processing workflow specifies the steps taken during project execution, especially the gate reviews needed to maintain project management quality and governance. 

3. Meeting Guideline
The meeting is a critical and high-cost method in project execution. We required a session to cover PMO project meeting guidelines. 

4. Tools 
PMO requires all project managers to use tools recommended by the PMO office, including project management (Wrike), content collaboration (Quip/Box), communication (Slack), Agile board (JIRA), and know how these tools are worked together to support projects execution. PMO usually outlines the relationship and role of these tools to ensure proper understanding. Training the trainers is suggested so that their peers can provide mentoring assistance when a new PM joins the team. 

5. Governance 
PMO governance ensures consistent quality across all programs and over time. The requirements could include the following:

• Invite the PMO leader as optional to all your customer meetings, project gate review meetings, weekly project status meeting, and monthly project review meetings. As discussed in the meeting guideline, all these meetings require meeting minutes. The PMO leader reviews quality and assesses project risk by reading the meeting minutes and communications. 
• CC the PMO leader to business communications, escalations, and announcements. The goal is the same, ensuring the PMO leader can clearly backtrack the progress in project execution to assess risk and provide suggestions. 
• PMO reviews with project managers in PMO review meetings to going through weekly management reports and monthly project reviews. The weekly review focuses on status and risk mitigation. The monthly review will request PM to go through the project summary page outlining the project scope, roadmap, major milestone, the current project status, team, stakeholders, project current situation, and risk mitigation. 

In practice, we require every project manager in the PMO to go through this and be able to schedule 30min meeting with PMO leaders to confirm completely understand everything before starting full speed in the management project. ​

The project management standard formalizes project execution to prevent team members from getting bogged down in details, not following best practices, or needing more coordination. A well-defined standard allows the project team to stay organized and implement a consistent and structured execution plan. Here is a summary of the PMO standard. 

Engagement Standard defines engagement practices, such as roles and responsibilities and how PM interacts with the project team and stakeholders. 

• Project Management Engagement Model
• How to Create a Project Summary Page
• How to Start a New Project

Project Execution Standard is defined using document templates and a process requiring document reviews and sign-offs at the end of each significant project stage. A well-organized template can help the project team stay organized and mitigate risks by adding directions within the templates. ​

• Project Team Engagement Ground Rules
• Project Meeting Guideline
• ​​How to Create Project Documents
• PMO Project Management Tools Guideline

In summary, the PMO standard must implement the best practices from industry standards, such as the PMI Standard, and address the organization's specific needs. 

Project status meeting needs to keep the project moving forward. PMO suggests the project manager follow the guideline as follows to run the sessions,
​
Before the meeting 

• Schedule the meeting regularly and preferably every week. The recommended duration is a 1-hour meeting.
• Include the project summary and a brief agenda in the meeting invite.  
• Invite critical stakeholders. Some of them can be added as optional to participate whenever interested. 

During the meeting 

• Start the meeting by going over the project plan, reminding the team of the end goal, updating the current status and significant milestones. 
• Go over the project details by checking overdue tasks.
• Remind the team what is planned next by over the tasks due in the coming week.
• Make sure every team member has an opportunity to update and raise issues and address them within the meeting. If more discussions are needed, set up the breakout sessions right away. 

After the meeting 

• Send the meeting minutes within the same day.  Check How to Create Meeting Minutes. 
• Always include the meeting invitation and agenda in the meeting minutes  to show who is invited and the agenda planned before the meeting. 
• CC project notification email group in the meeting minutes to keep all stakeholders informed. 
• Ensure the meeting minute is updated in project management documentation to keep track of communication history.

In summary, the project status meeting requires status updates, project status review, issue resolution discussion, and plans examination. 

 To ensure an IT project success, product managers and business analysts have to work together to build trust, reduce risk and engage stakeholders. The goal is to deliver the project on time, within budget and with measurable business result.  

The summary of the responsibility and interests of these two roles is as follows [1]:

As a project manager, you would ask the following question to your business analyst [2]: 

• ​What are the requirements? 
  The requirements would includes both people and technical resources, technical knowledge and features, and timeline. It's also important to setup a clear goal and value of the project. 
• What are the challenges for the project? 
  If there are challenges. It's important to the causes of the challenge:
  • Is it because of not clearly defining the project requirements?
  • Is it because of lacking technical knowledge or lacking resources? 
  • Is it because of communication gaps between IT and business team? 

It's essential for the two people to understand the challenges and resolve problems together. ​​

​Notes

1. Business Analyst and Project Manager Collaboration
2. Partnering for project success project manager and business analyst collaboration

Starting a new project is the first step of the project management process. We define the following recommended steps:

• Create project summary/charter and the PMO onboarding document.
• Review with PMO Leader before the kick-off meeting, which includes the following:
  • Project requirement
  • Project scope clarification
  • Project benefits and values
  • Initial project plan and methodology
  • Project communication plan
• Start the stakeholder engagement to collect inputs 
• Run the kick-off meeting 
  • Record the session to set the communication-based line
• Finalized the project requirement and scope 
• Work on proof of concepts or technology validation as needed. You may consider using the Front-End Loading (FEL) approach.
• Review with PMO Leader again when your requirement is finalized. 

In early 1990s, Monday through Wednesday, 30 regional managers visited 9 Walmart stores and 6 of their competitors' stores. They gathered a basket of goods and compare the prices. They not only saw the price but also the merchandise, how it was presented, what consumer were buying, what stores looked like, what the ambience was, what new practice competitors were using, and how employees were behaving. On Thursday mornings. Sam Walton conducted a 4 hour session with a group of some fifty managers including those regional manager who visited the stores along with buyers, logistic manager, and advertising people.

Unfiltered information is being exchanged and integrated. decisions are made, and everyone get a total picture of the business and a feel for the competition that is no more than one week old. People are acting on unfiltered information gathered is directly from consumers and frontline employees. Walmart's Social Operating Mechanism brought priorities (8% lower cost than competitors) from 50,000-foot level to 500-foot level where the synchronization had to take place. 

The mechanism simulate the flow of information, information dialogue, zero filters, frequency and boundlessness. However,  You have to decide where the information sharing and trade-offs are critical when design such mechanism. ​

 Sprint planning meeting creates a plan for Sprint in agile project management with engagement from product owners, scrum masters, and the development team. PMO suggests scrum master take ownership of the sprint planning meeting and follow the guidelines to run the Sprint planning. 

Before the Spring Planning Meeting

• Schedule a 1-hr session before the Sprint starts.
• Make the request in email for the team to get ready for the sprint planning meeting with (1) product owner providing the list of to-dos for the next Sprint, (2) all the team members logging all the tasks they are working on or planning to do with the up-to-date status, (3) dev manager assigning all the tasks to the dedicated team member. The goal is for the team to have a clear scope and prioritization and effectively estimate the workload during sprint planning. 

During the Sprint Planning Meeting

• Start from the big picture by confirming all preparations are complete, including tasks in the current sprints, tasks in the plan, and the backlog. 
• Confirm the Sprint objectives by going through the tasks requested by the product owner. The team understands the requirements and goes over the tasks in detail with the scope, impacts, and dependencies. 
• Going through the current task and planning for work for each person in the team. 
• Review the tasks per Epic to make sure the sprint objectives are met. 

After the Sprint Planning Meeting

• Send meeting minutes with a report of the tasks assigned and the decisions made.

After the Sprint planning, all new requests will have to go through the change control process. This helps The project team stay focused on the planned tasks. 

Standup meeting, also called daily standup or scrum meeting, is used in agile project management to keep the team closely collaborated. The discussion, in general, focuses on solving problems and making decisions within the project team. To run standup meetings successfully, we can look at the following best practices: 

Select Clear Objectives  The meeting allows teams to share updates briefly and get teams aligned and focused on goals. Note that this is not a status meeting, so updating the status should be relevant to the dev discussion. 

Keep it short. Standup Meeting should be brief (aim for not more than 15 mins). It's a quick check-in rather than a lengthy discussion.

Cadence: Choose how often to meet (daily/ every other day or once weekly) depending on the workload and deliverables but make it consistent.

• Recurring: Meet at the same time, whatever is the cadence. Ensure everyone involved is available.
• In-charge: The project manager should be in charge of keeping the meeting productive. 
• Clear Structure: Everyone involved should share the below three
  • What's Completed since the last meeting
  • What is Planned to be completed before the next meeting
  • Issues and help needed (Schedule for a separate meeting to discuss the issues should be decided during the standup meeting)
• Walk the board (optional): Instead of doing a round-robin, the project manager should display a visual project management report or project plan so that the standup meeting moves through each work item. 
• Meeting Minutes (optional): sending minutes after the meeting, incredibly the actionable ones. This will also help any team members who could not stay on the same page as the rest of the group. Minutes should be shared on the same day (preferably within 2 hours)​

Communication suggestion: Although we have standup meetings, we recommend offline communication with your team and business users. ​
Standup meetings should focus on problem-solving rather than status checking. Otherwise, the discussion can become a micromanagement burden to the project team. ​

When new project managers join PMO, it is essential to help them to understand their scope of work, get to know the team, learn PMO guidelines on project management process and standards, and understand the organization's structure and culture. Here is a detailed guide to building a 21-day (3 weeks) onboarding process. 

Day 1-7 (1st week): Taking the Training 
We need to ease new project managers into their role in the first week. We need to be efficient but also consider the challenge for people working in a brand new environment. Some critical tasks to consider: 

• Assign a PM in the group to be the buddy for the project transition. We can create a knowledge transfer (KT) document outlining the immediate responsibility and a 3-week transition plan. The plan should include 1 week for training, 1 week for the new PM to shadow the current PM, and 1 week for the new PM to take the lead and let the current PM follow the sessions. All the training documents, tool instructions, KT sessions, and organization overview documents should be recorded in the KT document. This helps review if there is any knowledge gap later. 

Day 8-14 (2nd week): Introducing to the Project Team

• Invite the new PM to the PMO team meeting. Introduce the team, and explain their role with the team. 
• Create 1on1 meeting to go over PMO Project Manager On-Boarding Guideline to explain the project management process, documentation standards, meeting guidelines, tools, and governance rules. It's essential to outline communication basics such as how to update status.
• Assign the PMO some simple tasks to familiarize him with the tools and project management process. 
• Get ready to report project status without managing it. 
• Arrange 1on1 meetings with critical stakeholders 

Day 15-21 (2nd week): Getting Feet in the Water 

• Go over key responsibilities and expectations for their role in 1on1 meeting 
• Review project management process and task plan. 

Note that the onboarding process is short (21 days) to enable contractor-based business. The onboarding process can be longer (30-60-90 days) for employee-based PMOs with more career development effort. We will chat about it in the future. 


​Project Manager On-Boarding Guideline ​

​Summary - Learn about your role 

• The project manager's main focus includes
  • Execution of PMO standard and process 
  • Lead project coordination and communication 
• Sample Daily Activities
  • Host project meetings with sprint planning and status updates
  • Write document meeting minutes, decisions, and communication memos.
  • Create and review project plans.
  • Provide management reports

Week 1 Setting up and Attend Training 

• ​Setting up the computer, install software and tools (collaboration tools, email, presentation, project management, document repository, corporate directory) 
• Attend knowledge transfer sessions (KT) and training classes 
• Review PMO Guideline 

Week 2 Getting Started 

• Identify people you'll need to meet with on an ongoing basis and schedule introduction 1:1 calls. 
• Make sure you're invited to all critical meetings or schedule your own in Calendar.
• Update the tracking document for your 1:1 sync with your manager and review project management guidelines in the 1:1 meeting
• Create with weekly project report with the current project manager providing the information. 
• Shadow current PM for the projects

Week 3 Start with Help 

• Take over the projects with the current PM shadowing and providing assistance. Depending on the project's complexity, this can last 1-2 weeks. 
• Review the project management plan with your manager and get ready for the weekly review report

Frequently Asked Questions 

1. What should I do if developer keep asking me to follow-up with their technical requests?
2. Why do I need to include project summary page in project status meeting agenda?

​A risk register is a project document that lists potential risks to a project. This document is created from a risk breakdown structure (RBS). 
​
A Risk register can be used to identify risks, understand their likelihood and impact, and recommend risk mitigation actions. You can download the document to quickly set up risk mitigation practices.​

​Establishing a standard risk register helps the project teams follow the best practices for dealing with risks. The following is an example risk register with 46 typical IT project risks with a calculated risk assessment on RBS.

To help the team adopt defined standards with a sustainable result, PMO leaders need to implement coaching practices. Because establishing PMO standard practices is a habit change for the team, we need to apply the change management principles such as people's emotional readiness and adoption cycle. Changes also require time and energy. It's useful when we can sense the right coachable moment and give clear and easy-to-follow instructions one step at a time. The followings is an example coach process for standardizing PMO meeting procedures.​​

Step 1: Start with Meeting invitation Guideline | Book Meeting. 

• First, confirm all meetings have the correct name. A proper meeting name starts with the project name, followed by the meeting function. For example, the project name is Hummingbird, and the meeting function is a daily scrum. The meeting title should be Hummingbird Daily Scrum. The typical issues are incorrect project names and inconsistent function names. 
• Next, check if each meeting includes a meeting agenda and links to related project documents.  
• Last, verify all attendees so that they are up-to-date and are invited with a good reason. 

Step 2: Review Meeting Minutes Content Guideline | Meeting Minutes.

• All critical content elements are required and should be presented in order. However, the detailed format may vary. 
• Encourage actionable statements with a structure of who is doing what by when. 

Step 3: Practice the same day meeting minute principle.​​

• Make the clear requirement and then ask for feedback to understand the challenges.
• We would encourage the brief meeting minutes to send a minute quickly. 

Step 4: Reduce or combine meetings 

• Combine meetings when sharing the same audience and the projects are related. 
• Shorten the meeting time 
• Cancel meetings as many as until we can't run the project well without them. 

Remember that effective coaching requires a realistic but inspiring plan, the right questions to engage, and timely and actionable feedback. 

​Questions to Ask by the Coach

• Why do you have the meeting? 
• What are "the right things to do" when initiating a meeting?
• What would be the loss if someone were not invited to the meeting? 
• What should be the top messages from the meeting minutes? Is there anything your audience can get from the exisitng project documents/reports? 

​Reference 

1. YRichard E. Boyatzis,, Melvin Smith, and Ellen Van Oosten, Coaching for Change, HBR, Oct 2019
2. HBR Guide to Coaching Employees, HBR 2014 

​The Project Management Office (PMO) defines and controls project management, program management, portfolio management, and change management processes. The primary function of PMO is standardizing management structure (project management standard and portfolio management standard) and disciplining execution to improve operational efficiency and mitigate risks. ​ Defining the PMO project management engagement model has proven successful in setting the right expectations and avoiding conflicts. ​ ​

In practice, we recommend at least three PMO engagement models.

Supportive (20% Engagement):  PMO defines procedures and standards and recommends methodologies and tools based on the research and analysis of the business. In this model, a PMO service is like a consulting service that designs solutions and provides professional suggestions to business users. PMO can invest time in delivering project management training sessions and materials but will not engage beyond this. We describe this as a 20% engagement model. ​

Controlling (60% Engagement): PMO controls the project execution, defining who, how, and how often to govern the project management process. PMO provides project management oversight and ensures that the project team follows the standard procedures and best practices. The typical controlling methods include scorecards, weekly review meetings, or project reports. PMO service is an operational governance service in this mode, but not it doesn't involve daily project management activities. We describe this as a 60% engagement model. 

Directive (100% Engagement): PMO takes ownership and holds accountable for project management. Project-related planning, execution, and issue resolution are all handled by project managers from the PMO office. We describe this as a 100% engagement model. ​

The best practice is to discuss choosing the engagement model at the beginning of PMO engagement with your business partner. If they are unsure, you can always start with a supportive model and adjust to deeper engagement models later. ​

Editor's Note: Because of cultures, people, and operational environment differences, PMO engagement can't be the same across all the business units. Instead, be prepared to be flexible in defining the PMO function to avoid rejections or resistances.

​It's a best practice to guide PMO on what tools to use for project management for project planning, scheduling, content collaboration, and others. The standardized tool in the team can reduce teamwork frictions.  The following is an example PMO recommendation: 

• Spreadsheet: Use Quip (New Document embed @ Spreadsheet). For advanced features, use Microsoft Excel.
• Documentation : Use Quip
• Project Management / Planning / Task Tracking: Use Wrike
• Presentation: Use Keynote
• Conference Calls:Use Webex
• Text messages: Use Slack
• Large Files (when you cannot use box eg: recordings, secure files: Use Box
• Bug Fixing / Agile Dev Project : Radar 
• Production Ticketing : Central Station 
• Changes to Production: Corporate change control system

In the guideline, the functionality coverage is described for each tool. This is an evolving list. As new demands or new tools come out, PMO will constantly evaluate the options and recommend best practices. ​​

Wrike is a recommended project management tool in our PMO. We standardized the process as follows: 

Before writing a Project Plan, please following the described steps 

• Create a project folder in Quip using the Small template. 
• Create the project summary page by collecting the following information
• Gather requirements from stakeholders
• Define Scope of the Project
• Define Success
• Create the Project On-boarding document and review with PMO Leard to confirm the project execution plan. 

Create the project plan in Wrike

• Create a new workspace and a new project 
• Add the Work Breakdown Structure
• Define Project Activities - What are the activities that must be performed to create the deliverables of the project
• Estimate the timelines or plan backwards to deliver at a given timeline
• Assign resources to the Project activities 

Adding Tasks

• Per project standardization, we should have the placeholders for all the major tasks in D2P process (refer to D2P blueprint ) . Only for risks or special occasion, we don’t add new task because we are using task turndown rate to tracking the project delivery progress.
• Please review your plan before publishing and consult major changes in your plan with @Jinyu Wang for review. 
• If you plan to run project in Agile (You can refer to Agile blue print) , please
• create Sprint folder with Active, Completed and Backlog folders 
• Split tasks into logical and doable Sprints 

Task Update

• Before closing each task (marking it as completed), please add the project details and attached the related documents. 
• For meetings, please refer to where to find the meeting minute/recordings and presentation. 
• For document creation, please add the links to the documents. 
• For communication with decisions, please record done the email record. 
• For dev issues, please add radar ticket and necessary tech information. 
• Please follow-up with all overdue task in your daily standup meeting and clean up weekly to make sure there is no overdue pass the week.
• Please create a report listing overdue of your projects. 
• If the task change impacts project or sprint plan, seek feedback form PMO Leader before closure of tasks sprint and if needed make changes to the subsequent Sprint and tasks to include changes required if any. Goal should be to deliver success defined and agreed with the stakeholders.

Status Meeting During the status meeting, avoid directly jump into each task and request for status updates. Instead,

• Show the project plan first so the team know where they are from overall project plan perspective and emphasis the project objectives/goals. 
• Review what has been done and what is coming soon (all tasks to be started and due in next week) 
• Please keep annotate the task as you get updates to tracking the conversation. 
• Update the task status as soon as the team get started 
• Void changing due date to shirt the project schedule. Instead, add notes to the project to show delay. If there is a date change, add notes to explain the reason for future reference 
• Copy the meeting minute email to the status meeting task before closing. ​

The following is an example guideline on how to organize project documentation :

• Quip Folder: We require all project create the quip folder using the template defined.. The template folder provides the document structure and allow project team to easily navigate through project related content. Please following the standard document format for all your document creation. 
• BOX folder: please create BOX folder to keep presentations, recordings or files that needs securely stored or too large to upload to quip. Add links to the quip document for easy navigation
• Access: Please make sure to give appropriate access to Quip and BOX to people you are sharing the documentation with. 
• Archive document: we don't leave unfinished or not used documents in the project folder. Please archive them and also remove duplicated. 

Quip Document Requirements

• All document should have a document owner "Document Owner: <name>" so people know who to direct questions related to the content. 
• All documents should start with the Objective / Purpose of the document
• All document should have a document owner and list creation date at the beginning of the document
• It's recommended to include a table for acronyms in the document 
• All cell in the spreadsheet should be filled or dark out or put "N/A" to make sure you looked at them and properly updated. 
• Please sync up your document with the standard updates when have time but review quarterly and before closing. 
• No broken link: make sure all the links in the document are valid and people you are sharing with have been given appropriate access
• Reference section with links to documents referred to create the document

Project Summary Document Requirements:

• Making sure all the stakeholder name on project summary quip document are shown in blue which means they can access the project summary page. 
• Please keep all stakeholders using one row per person

The Project Management Office (PMO) defines and controls project management, program management, portfolio management and change management processes. The primary function of PMO is standardizing management structure (project management standard and portfolio management standard) and disciplining execution to improve operational efficiency and mitigate risks. ​

​The first step to do on boarding is persuade your stakeholders that PMO can bring values.

Defining the PMO project management engagement model has proven successful in setting the right expectations and avoiding conflicts. ​ ​In practice, we recommend at least three PMO engagement models.

Supportive (20% Engagement):  PMO defines procedures and standards and recommends methodologies and tools based on the research and analysis of the business. In this model, a PMO service is like a consulting service that designs solutions and provides professional suggestions to business users. PMO can invest time in delivering project management training sessions and materials but will not engage beyond this. We describe this as a 20% engagement model. ​

Controlling (60% Engagement): PMO controls the project execution, defining who, how, and how often to govern the project management process. PMO provides project management oversight and ensures that the project team follows the standard procedures and best practices. The typical controlling methods include scorecards, weekly review meetings, or project reports. PMO service is an operational governance service in this mode, but not it doesn't involve daily project management activities. We describe this as a 60% engagement model. 

Directive (100% Engagement): PMO takes ownership and holds accountable for project management. Project-related planning, execution, and issue resolution are all handled by project managers from the PMO office. We describe this as a 100% engagement model. ​

The best practice is to discuss choosing the engagement model at the beginning of PMO engagement with your business partner. If they are unsure, you can always start with a supportive model and adjust to deeper engagement models later. ​

​Collaboration The core of collaboration is to deliver the best result by leveraging the best capability from each team member and showing sincerity when working together. 

Spending time in a meeting is a personal investment. Since time is our most valuable asset, we would want to get most out of our meetings. In summary, you would consider when joining a meeting as a participant. ​

PMO MetricsPMO metrics demonstrates the value and operation status of PMO. The value metrics are use to present to sponsor or stakeholder for their support, which includes the strategic alliance metrics, return on investment (ROI) and the delivery result. The operation metrics help PMO leader to gain insight to PMO exception status and take actions to fix issues. Resource allocation. 

• maintenance/dev work 
• Project cancelled/on-hold.
• Project failure rate.
• # of change requests happened.
• Resource utilization 
• Risk mitigation history

We can use PMO maturity model to evaluate how a given PMO is developed, starting from an essential structure for managing tasks to systematic processes tightly integrated with the organization's culture and strategy. This session explains the model described as follows and discusses how to use the model to perform systematic PMO evaluation and a roadmap for future improvements.

Setting up a new PMO office needs an easy-to-remember mission statement. The following statement is an example : 

• Reduce churn - by executing with best practices, risk migrations, and measurable outcomes.
• Innovate - on new tools and methodologies such as Wrike, agile, and lean for optimized project planning and execution.
• Standardize - processes to push efficiency and productivity. PMO needs to carefully design the standard, provide governance on the standard adoption, and measure the results for calibration.
• Engage - with stakeholders with trusted relationships and collaboration.