In the last post, I covered an overview of how to assess the maturity of your PMO. The reason being that by understanding the current maturity level of your PMO and the desired / required level, this allows you to identify areas for improvement and pro-actively improve.

Over the next 4 posts I want to cover each step of the process in more detail:

1. Understand the current maturity of your PMO
2. Plot where your PMO is on the maturity scale
3. Establish where you would like / need your PMO to be on the maturity scale
4. Identify areas for improvement to achieve desired level of PMO maturity

 

This post will expand on the 1st step, understanding the current maturity.

Overview

In order to complete this step, you need to capture data in a structured manner. However, it is also important to have an understanding of a number of other factors.

Audience

Who will see the results from the assessment? Is the driver internal to the PMO or to yourself so as to understand where you can make improvements?

Are the drivers coming from outside the PMO? Perhaps from senior management? If so what is the driver? Are there concerns with the current level of service (real or perceived) or is it genuinely that management are looking to improve / expand the contribution from the PMO?

Having this understanding will allow you to ensure that the appropriate parties are engage and receive the output.

Expectations

This leads in to the next important factor, what are the expectations? If the assessment is external to the PMO / senior management, it makes sense to meet with the sponsor for the work to understand what they wish to achieve from the review.

This will help the tailoring of the review and improve the probability that the output will be in the required format.

Data Capture Template

This is the engine to the assessment. In order to be able to truly assess the maturity, you need to be able to capture the data against the different PMO services.

The template must consist of pertinent questions with structured options that grade the response. This will allow the maturity of each service to be captured.

For a more sophisticated approach, a weighting system can be used to allow more weight to be added to certain questions.

It is important not to over engineer the process. Do not ask more questions than you need to. Think about who will be providing the input. How can you make the questions easy to understand while still achieving the correct level of quality in the responses.

You also need to think about how “off putting” a long form can be. Years ago I thought it was important to have the “thud factor” in my reports and presentations. Imagine a presentation dropping on a table and the noise it makes, the louder the “thud” the greater the value!

Now being older and wiser, I know the real value is to be able to achieve the outcome in the most efficient way. As they say “time is money”. Plus on a more important point, making a process efficient respects the time of those people who will be involved. This is the greatest gift you can give.

Contributors

Linked to the point above, you need to determine who will need to provide input into the assessment.

Is it a simple case that you will complete the assessment for your PMO – a self-assessment?

Will the input come from the sponsor or another member of senior management?

Is it going to be a single data capture submission or are you going to collect multiple inputs from different stakeholders and then consolidate the responses to an overall assessment?

Understanding this will allow you to plan how you are going to engage the contributors. It will allow you to communicate what will happen and what is expected (including when).
Up front planning will help ensure that the assessment is completed on time and not a rushed input.

Approach

As part of the communication, let the contributors know the approach for completing the assessment. There are a number of options including:

 

Self-service: the data capture form is emailed to each contributor, they complete and return the submission.

Interview: You or nominated person meets with the contributors, asks questions and captures responses. This will typically lead to improved quality in response as answers can be discussed as part of the process to help ensure correct understanding.

Workshop: This is where you hold a workshop with a number of contributors and then work through the assessment capturing the collective assessment for each response. This is a good method to capture balanced input from many people.

 

You also need to consider if submissions will be anonymous. Some people may not give an honest response if they feel that feedback can be traced back to them.

Summary

Following the above guidance will allow you to build out the data capture of your PMO maturity assessment. Just remember the important point of making the process efficient as possible so as to respect everyone’s time, including your own.