The balance here is to come back regularly with

The balance here is to come
back regularly with measurable value for the following
key stakeholders:
• Operational project managers, who will need to be
sold on changing culture to accommodate the new
process;
• Tactical departmental managers, who will be held
accountable for instituting the new process; and
• Strategic executives, who will want to see the return
on investment (ROI) for the organization.
A common oversight in benchmarking and improving
delivery processes is forgetting the critical role played
by the support organizations (project, program, and
portfolio). Each level of delivery — project, program,
and portfolio — has its own
processes, which are aligned to
support organizations that have
their own processes.
Therefore, to evolve your matu-
rity levels, you need to improve
delivery-type processes and
support-type processes that go
on at the same time. For exam-
ple, say you want to improve a
process related to procurement.
On the delivery side, the proj-
ect manager will undertake
processes for supplier selection,
while the support organization,
in this case the project management office, undertakes
processes for developing parameters for creating and
maintaining supplier lists.
Both of these process improvements would involve
changes to staffing or roles. This means that the sup-
port organization develops rules and guidelines so that
11
Guide to Building a Project Management Office, an Internet.com Project Management eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.
Guide to Building a Project Management Office
[ ]
Increasing PMO Maturity
Through Multiple Releases
By Chris Craig-Jones
A "release" is a project that addresses a group of recommendations
for improving project, program, and portfolio management maturity.
“
”
Jupiterimages

project, program, and portfolio managers can carry out
the delivery processes efficiently and effectively.
Often, when improving the level of maturity in PPM
and the associated processes, organizationstake a
"bottom-up" approach. We often see the different pro-
files of functionality released as an organization moves
up the maturity level from "Active" through "Business-
Driven" on groups of processes.
A possible approach with a four-partrelease implemen-
tation could be:
Release 1: Implement basic project management
including initiation, planning, (plus resource assign-
ments), control, execution (plus time capture), and proj-
ect closure.
Release 2: Add project risk management to the basic
project management functionality; basic program man-
agement of projects and services (mainly grouping
projects and services into programs for progress report-
ing); and portfolio management processes and capabil-
ities for both projects and services.
Release 3: Add project cost management, project pro-
curement management, and project quality manage-
ment; program risk analysis; and program resource
management.