Programme delivery support

Medium term engagement, fees by agreement

Got something big going on?

Are you a programme director running a large, strategic change programme? Are you well versed in the business side of what you’re delivering, but need some PMO services to help with the project or programme management side of things?

We can help with that.

We understand what you want

…because we have been where you are now, having spent several years delivering projects (from regulation to relocation) across sectors as diverse as Engineering and Insurance. And we have the scars to prove it.

We understand what the Portfolio or Enterprise PMO wants

…because we have led and worked in Portfolio Offices and Enterprise PMOs developing and implementing P3M governanceassurance and methodology, and improving reporting approaches.

We know what your CxO stakeholders want

…because we have extensive experience of gathering data and transforming it into meaningful Management Information for CxOs. We can create a dynamic programme schedule and use it to seek out potential problems and overcome them.

We have a knack of ensuring there is just enough process and documentation in place to make sure things are being done robustly and justifiably, but not so much that it interferes with Getting Things Done.

Sure, a lowest-common-denominator project support person would cost less, but would they represent better value? Do you want someone who can just keep your documentation up to date, or do you want someone who can create it all from scratch, who understands what it means, who actively seeks out gaps and then does something about them?

Do you want someone to knock a few items off your To Do list and make a few holes in your diary, or someone who can read the situation and provide the PMO services you need before you even ask for them?

You know, support you can lean on?

“I engaged Pragmatic PMO on a strategic programme that had been running in feasibility mode for 8 months, and was about to move into implementation.

When Pragmatic PMO was engaged, we had no project management function or framework to support the programme I had come in to recover. As a result the programme had little in the way of basic project management infrastructure. Some of the suppliers had no purchase orders in place and had been working on (steadily diminishing!) good faith for months. Within three months, Pragmatic PMO had put in place:

1. A financial framework.
Pragmatic PMO raised purchase orders and made sure that suppliers were paid up to date (including one who had been owed more than £300k for more than 8 months). They designed and built a programme cost tracker that gives me an overview of how >£85m was being spent against budgets across >200 suppliers and >50 projects, and identified a looming >£1m cash flow crisis that we resolved through a change of approach.

2. An integrated programme schedule.
Pragmatic PMO created a schedule that identified and modelled dependencies between the programme’s projects to give visibility of how any delays in one project would lead to delays in other projects and hence the programme overall. From this they created a “look ahead” view of tasks that are overdue, under way, and coming up over the horizon, and focused the team on delivery with a Key Dates and Countdown tracker showing the most important dates for each phase (with a simple colour-coded floor plan diagram), and a colour-coded countdown showing the time remaining between now and the project Go Live date.

3. Programme framework and governance.
Pragmatic PMO set up a “heartbeat” of regular meetings for the programme team and steering committees (with agreed terms of reference) and created the information packs these meetings would discuss. They set up shared registers for risks, issues, decisions and so on, and ensured that meeting outputs were issued promptly and followed up on.

This list is not exhaustive; essentially Pragmatic PMO implemented just enough project management fundamentals and discipline to enable the programme to robustly deliver some fantastic outcomes for the client.

If you are looking for strategic programme delivery support services that you can actually lean on, Pragmatic PMO should be at the top of your list.

Mark Ferguson, Programme Director

So, what are you going to do?

You know what to do…