In order to resolve these basic problems, the work of the strategic PMO can be broken into four main process areas:

• Project Intake – concerned with evaluating and approving new requests.
• Portfolio Balancing – monitoring and balancing the current slate of projects.
• Resource Planning – ensuring human resources are optimally utilized.
• Project Management – methodologies to improve project execution and delivery.

So, for this first article of the series, lets look at project intake, the process that really sets up the workload and gets the ball rolling.

Most project-driven organizations I’ve run across seem to follow the same basic process for on-boarding new projects. A request is submitted by a business sponsor, is then analyzed by a business analyst, who along with the sponsor creates a project charter or similar document. This document is then submitted to management for approval. What’s the problem with this? Many organizations will tell you this is where they suffer from the dreaded “paralysis-by-analysis” syndrome.

In order to produce that project charter and gain project approval, a lot of analysis must be performed. The business case must be developed and documented. A financial analysis, often with ROI, must be completed. Resource requirements must be compiled. An elaborate PowerPoint is often created for presentation to management.

Most project managers are familiar with this initiation process in the project lifecycle, and it consumes a lot of time; often 20 to 40 hours or more of precious business analyst effort. For any given project, this type of initiation may make sense. But rare is the company with only a few requests in the hopper. Indeed, for most of us there is no shortage of great project ideas or sponsors willing to trumpet the value of their particular request. What there is a shortage of is business analysts and time from supporting players like engineers and subject matter experts. So, multiply this very common-sense approach to intake by a significant load of requests, and it becomes obvious why so many projects projects get stopped right at initiation.

Prioritization

Another issue is prioritization. If each request is considered on its own merits, and thrown into initiation ad-hoc, how does one prioritize among competing requests? New requests are essentially competing against what are now existing projects. Sponsors are arguing to delay or replace an in-flight project and that’s a tough train to stop. So, what really happens is most requests get approved on the merits. The classic result is the IT department that can’t say no; leading to over-promising and under-delivering.

The mistake is thinking that initiation is the starting point for projects. It may be the first phase in project management, but best-practice organizations today put a portfolio process in front of initiation. This is the project intake process. It has three main features that eliminate paralysis-by-analysis and the churn created by continually re-prioritizing existing projects.

First, project intake is cyclical. All project requests are reviewed on a clean slate on a periodic basis. In this manner, requests can compete fairly for available resources, with the winners moving on to initiation without interrupting in-flight projects.

The frequency of these cycles varies, but the most common is quarterly. I have seen many companies try to do this as part of their AOP (annual operating plan) process. As you can imagine, too many project needs come up during the course of a year, once again creating churn. Some succeed at monthly request reviews, but this generally puts too much pressure and work on the organization. So, quarterly seems to be the happy medium.