Creating the project office 14. This is a book about improving organizational performance by implementing a project office system that develops project management as a core competency and thus adds value to the organization. A project office consists of a team dedicated to improving the practice of project management in the organization. The improvement in organizational performance is achieved by obtaining more value from projects, making project management a standard management practice, and then moving the organization toward the enterprise project management concept | Pathway to Organizational Change 10. Refreeze 9. 6. 8. 7. Change This chapter tells Bob Storeygard s story of the project office evolution at 3M. It describes a systematic search for the pain sense of urgency and the processes used to address it. He describes how they gathered and disseminated best practice information across the organization. He shares some of the methods used to communicate and spread the word about the project management process. The story describes how a grassroots approach can effectively harness internal support for the change and bring recognition for the profession of project management and shows how the project office fits in with other business initiatives especially in the midst of major organizational changes. Y CHAPTER FIVE TELL THE TALE HARNESSING INTERNAL SUPPORT Robert Storeygard 3M We hope by now you believe project management is a discipline that has tremendous merit and bottom-line impact for organizations. You may have even come to the conclusion that a project office or similar PM function may be a good idea for your organization to embrace in order to shepherd and sustain the introduction and practice of this discipline. But unless the function is tied to the very lifeblood of the organization it will be short-lived at best. Finding Out Where It Hurts How did Bob Storeygard tie the project office functions to the lifeblood of the organization at 3M First of all by knowing the starting point. As a number of areas at 3M were beginning to put together efforts to launch project office initiatives they first collectively needed to address two questions Do we have sufficient value to offer the organization in terms of project and portfolio management skills and techniques that would merit establishment of physical entities to deploy and sustain them Is there enough identified and focused pain in the organization that people recognize the need for such help 109 110 Creating the Project Office The tale we tell Establish sense of .
