Creating the project office 20. 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 | 168 Creating the Project Office Staff and operate In or out Establish sense of urgency clear danger The tale we tell Make change stick new PBO culture Create guiding coalition powerful forces Develop vision and strategy focus establish infrastructure people processes and tools manage stakeholders Leading Organizational Change to PBO Develop broad-based action keep moving implementing Manage the change short-term wins broad-based Communicate the change vision tell the tale evolve capabilities and capacity review case studies action consolidate gains At the beginning of the project Bucero the assigned senior program manager ran a survey to determine how well HPC supported project management. Sixty-five percent of the staff answered the survey. The results identified specific areas where the project culture was weak No holistic view of the project portfolio Lack of knowledge or access to reuse previous work No consistent approach for complex projects Lack of project culture No consistent PM skills Poor scope definition validation and management Bad risk identification Lack of sponsorship Project closing delays The results indicated HP needed an effective infrastructure for people processes and tools in the project office. Mission and Objectives People who have never worked on a project have difficulty understanding that to achieve project success the organization must support the project manager. It took almost six weeks to get an agreement with the management team about the reason for this project. Implementing the Project Office 169 The big question Bucero had to deal with was Why do we need a project office at all He explained to the management team that the project office adds value to project team members by providing mentors consultants training structured intellectual capital and tools to be more effective. The project office also adds value to HPC by providing culture shift to project management reusable tools and techniques document and methodology support .
