We typically provide either solutions or services for our clients. Here’s what you can expect when we work together.
PMO Solutions
For when you want The PMO Professionals to deliver a solution as a one-off, self-contained piece of work in the short- to medium-term.
Examples here include running a retrospective on a project or programme, or providing independent advice on PPM tools.
We will agree a statement of work (SoW) with you, which will set out what we will be doing for you, when, and how much it will cost.
You will need to make some choices about how much of the work you want us to do, and how much you want to do yourself.
Most consultancies give advice, make recommendations and then step away for you to get on with implementation on your own. The PMO Professionals can do that (of course!) but we can also stick around to help you through the hard part – the implementation and adoption that gets from where you are to where you want to be.
Strategy only
This is the traditional consulting engagement model.
- We gather information about your current (“as is”) situation – how you do things currently, and why it perhaps causes you problems or has challenges associated with it.
- We identify what you want to achieve (your objectives and goals), and the stakeholders that would be affected by, or have an interest in, any changes you might want to make.
- We create an outline vision statement that describes where you want to get to (“to be”) and draft an outline business case capturing an initial impression of the activities and required, and the likely costs involved.
- You then set up and deliver the PMO project to move from “as is” to “to be”.
Done with you
If you need a bit more support than strategy-only, then we can take things a stage further and work alongside you to deliver.
- We help you to build a team (although naturally all hiring decisions would be yours),
- We refine the vision statement with you, and develop the business case to include benefits and measures.
- We help you to develop outline activity plans
- We are at your side to support and advise you as you run the PMO project to move from “as is” to “to be”.
Done for you
If you would just like it to all be taken care of, then we can provide full end-to-end delivery services.
- We build the team, sourcing our own resources
- We run the PMO project to deliver the new capability
- We help you transition to new ways of working and reach steady state as these methods become the new “business as usual”.
- We monitor performance against the metrics set out in the business case, and track the delivery of benefits and organisational value from the change.
- We close the project and capture lessons learned
If you opt for ‘Done with you’ or ‘Done for you’ then we will typically use our four-stage delivery approach – with each stage as a deliverable in the statement of work.
PMO Services
For when you want The PMO Professionals to help you on a longer-term basis.
Packaged PMO services
We have developed 3 main PMO service offerings; in our experience these provide a good starting point for discussions about what you’re looking to achieve, plus the breadth and/or depth of capabilities and capacity needed to make that happen.
Our PMO Services are provided on a ‘pay as you grow’ basis and each offering has its own flat monthly fee – we will review with you each month whether the service level needs to be moved up or down a notch. We can do that or stop entirely with one month’s notice (although if you need to notch up the service level we will do our best to help you sooner than that).
Our services don’t have to be expressed in whole numbers of FTEs either.
Whether you’re looking for us to take on services that would amount to a couple of days a week or 6 days a week, we can help either way – and we will take care of the resourcing at our end. The PMO Professionals have systems and processes to ensure that any and all people working on your requirements will be up to speed.
Typically the operation of existing PMO services on a day-to-day basis, for example:
- Risk and issue management across a programme or portfolio, with escalations as required.
- Management of change requests; ensuring these are appropriately impact assessed before presentation to the relevant decision-makers, with associated progress tracking and communication.
Typically everything in Essentials plus the monitoring of existing PMO services to agreed service levels, for example:
- Effectiveness of the approach to risk and issue management; review of total risk exposure, identification of common risk themes and development of standardised responses.
- Quality checks on change control registers, including identification of any breaches to cumulative tolerances.
Typically everything in Everyday, plus enhancements to existing PMO services or the design and set up of new PMO services.
Examples here include:
- Design and set up risk management framework – process, procedures, standards, templates, tools; carry out training and provide initial support.
- Design and set up change control framework – processes and systems to capture proposed changes to agreed baselines; agree and set tolerances and escalation routes for exceptions; carry out training and provide initial support.
NB: we would recommend that any large-scale PMO design or PMO set up work is best delivered as a PMO Solutions engagement.
Traditional day rate contracting
If it’s best for the engagement, then The PMO Professionals can work with you on a traditional day rate contracting basis.
Our PMO professionals work on an outside IR35 basis only – after all, you’re coming to us for our expertise and experience – so that means:
- We work without your supervision or control
- We work wherever and whenever we need to be in order to deliver the objectives of the engagement in the most efficient and effective way
- We will provide the best PMO professional(s) for the engagement, which may change during the course of the engagement – we will take care of handover at no additional cost to you
- You are under no obligation to provide us with any work beyond the scope of the initial engagement, and we are under no obligation to accept such work if offered
This approach means that our PMO professionals are not considered to be your employees for tax purposes – you do not need to run payroll, operate PAYE or make employer’s National Insurance and Apprenticeship Levy payments to HMRC – which ultimately saves you money!