Requirements for PMO Reports in Project and Portfolio Management
Discuss about the Project Management Professional Exam Study Guide.
The Project Management Officer (PMO) is always mandated with the responsibility of ensuring that he or she manages the reports in project and portfolio management(PPM). This responsibility does not only include focusing on the structure of the reports but also they should concentrate on the selection of the information presented. The PMO also have another responsibility that is not that simple to execute. This is the responsibility to ensure that the reports given are of very high quality in terms of their correctness and currency (Aubry and Lavoie-Tremblay, 2018). This essay is a conceptual report discussing the information systems and the tools needed to collect data, the reports needed in Program management Office and how this information can be reported for the management of new projects, continuing projects as well as the termination of projects that are not performing well. The introduction of project program and portfolio management(PPM) has always been considered that the reporting solution is always been done lately. It wore be more ultimate if the PMO introduce the necessary reports at the beginning of the projects. If this is done then it would give the PMO the opportunity to plan the Project program and portfolio management system based on the reports and their users.
The reports make us to what is going on and they provide a guideline for making decisions based on the current factors surrounding the project. The reports developed have to be flexible and up to date so as to ensure that the PMO can react very fast to the developments in the project environment (Bolles and Hubbard, 2015). Understanding the realistic and up to date information will help the officers to get the most out of the PPM system and emphasis on the essentials of the project.
The development in information technology has enabled us to display reports very quickly on our screens in a range of desired detail levels as well as different colors. The real reporting requirements are very realistic and a single sentence can be used to sum them up. Making relevant information available to the right people in a meaningful and efficient way to be able to control projects. There are several questions that the PMO officer should ask themselves when they are formulating a reporting system. The questions include what do I aim to control and plan? Who will be working with the reports afterwards? What information will I require for the plan? Will the recipients of the reports be able to understand the content of the report? What do I want to achieve with which report? Having honest answers to the various questions above questions will ensure an efficient plan is formulated that does not have unnecessary data baggage (Heldman, 2018). The information of the reports must have the following characteristics: indestructible, modifiable, filterable, readable, detailed, intelligible, concise, correct, printable, have permission and it is possible to historize.
Reports for Different Stakeholders at the Company
Different companies are made up of different hierarchy levels and they require different reports. The information needs to be more condensed as it goes higher up the hierarchy of the organization. On demand, a drill-down to the details has to be made possible (Daniel, Ward, and Franken, 2014). This will ensure that the report information can be consolidated for easy comprehension and inquires. The information delivered to the various levels of the organizations has to meet the various report requirements.
Figure 1: Sketch of the reporting levels at the company with possible reports
The top management demands reports with consolidated information on a regular basis to manage and control the project. The top management has the reputation of being the adherence to the strategic concentration and the investment risks. A PMO always has the duty of preparing the reports and the information resources for the top management at the portfolio level (Turner, R., 2016). A project list with the status is required to enable the project managers to do checking whenever it is necessary. The escalations that may be identified in the checking are then reported to the top decision-making level of the company so as to make the appropriate decisions.
The project manager uses various reports for the individual report in the deliberation of their duties. The project manager uses reports such as the status report, the Milestone Trend Analysis report, the work breakdown structure and the milestone overview as well to ensure the project is going on as expected. The project team members also have to be issued reports such as their work packages. The project team members have to know who else is participating in the project and the time details of the various activities (Kerzner, 2017). What the project team members require is more about the available information rather than classic reports.
Reports are the basis for coordination of meeting and the various level of a company to have an understanding of whatever is currently going on at the company. The reports are also important in identifying the areas where decisions are necessary at any given time of the project cycle. The higher up in the hierarchy, the less frequent the reporting and the more condensed the information is. The figure below clarifies how the reporting decreases and at the same time it increases becoming condensed relative to the hierarchical level.
Figure 2: Reporting Periods in Project and Portfolio Management
Reporting Periods in Project and Portfolio Management
Ensuring the relevant information on the project is available in form of meaningful reports is the basis of ensuring what decisions must or may be made and where. One has to make a decision of what element of is more useful for what type of report about the project. This process should not be detrimental to the intelligibility or the clarity overview of the report. The intelligibility and the clarity of information in any report should not be compromised irrespective of what element is considered to be most useful in a report.
A very individual answer is always required to answer the question of which reports are useful. The figure below is just but trying to give an overview of what reports are useful in an organization. It highlights the reports that make sense across the company’s hierarchies. However, the usefulness of the reports mainly varies depending on various factors such as the size, process and industry of the company.
Figure 2: An example of useful reports in the hierarchy of the company
It is very unfortunate that there is no single report that is right for all the different levels of the hierarchy of the company. The reports may have a tendency of appearing to be similar but they have to be adapted and modified to meet the needs and respective processes of the specific company. The intended use and the target audience of the reports and information usually determine what type of report is useful. There are five types of reports that are very important and they would be needed in a Program Management Office (PMO). These reports include the portfolio dashboard, the project status report, the resource utilization across the team, the project pipeline and the resource situation and roadmap.
The portfolio dashboard functions as the controlling and the monitoring instrument of the project portfolio for the steering board and the top management of the company. The important KPIs enable the status of the portfolio to be presented in a format that is easy to read. The essential elements of the portfolio dashboard include the overall status of the portfolio, the quality, resource utilization, adherence to budget and schedule, share of projects by status and many more essential project aspects. The comparison with earlier states is made possible by the historization aspect of the data and this makes development to become apparent.
Figure 3: A sketch of a Sample Portfolio Dashboard
What Reports Make Sense?
The project pipeline report is an important document that outlines all the projects in their life cycle across their phases. This makes the task of determining the progress of the projects to be very simple. The project pipeline helps people to identify when it is necessary to make appropriate actions during certain situations. When there are critical accumulations in certain phases and the number of projects is too high or too low then it becomes apparent that actions have to be taken to handle these situations.
Figure 4: A Sketch of a Sample Project Pipeline Report
The project status report as its name suggests it mainly shows the status of the concerned project. The project status report is made up of several elements including the head data, the project status, the timeline, work and costs, the description of the project situation, the overview of the project milestones, change request and requests. The header data includes the name of the project, manager, number, type, sponsor and many other essential information about the project. The project status also outlines the project health, indices for costs and dates as well as the status traffic lights of the concerned project. A comment describing the current situation of the project in a free text field is also included in this report.
Figure 5: A Sketch of a Sample Project Status Report
The project manager in the matrix cannot work alone; he or she requires the line management to provide them with support. The project managers need to be provided with the complete overview of their team members’ workload. This will enable them to see how the resources are utilized across the team in the different phases of the project (Tonchia, S., 2018). This overview also enables the project managers to determine how much time is available for the project after making the necessary deduction in terms of operations and absences. This makes the project managers make informed decisions on how to allocate certain resources appropriately on the project. If the static evaluation is of resource planning is based on sufficient report then clarity can be obtained by standard applications and a modified report. Some of the standard applications used in this report include the TPG TeamManager App for SharePoint that allows the project manager to plan all activities outside of projects and approve project requests. This enables them to gain a compline synopsis of the resource situation in their project team members.
The Portfolio Dashboard
Figure 6: A sample Static Report on the Resource Utilization (from Microsoft Project Online)
The resource situation is often the limiting factor when new projects are supposed to be introduced into a project portfolio of a given company. An aggregated upwards resource histogram can be used to show the resource utilization based on the project situation and this can help in making important project management decisions. The histogram is used to clarify if an overload is imminent and when. It can also identify in which team the overload is likely to occur. This analysis is very crucial in determining the earliest time new projects can possibly be commissioned. There are tools that are specially developed for this purpose and they always indicate the current situations of the running projects and the resources that the new projects request for them to be commissioned.
These special tools help the project management team to immediately identify imminent overload. This will enable them to move the projects along the timeline. They can also deactivate individual projects. The tools also allow the modification of the resource capacity in various scenarios by simulating in advance. A complete and comprehensive overview of the resources required for new projects as well as the current projects is very helpful. It allows the immediate identification of imminent overloads and allow for the prior modification of your roadmap. Therefore, the project management has to determine the number of running projects that the company can properly handle in parallel without a strain in the available resources. The ideal starting time for new projects is also identified by considering this report. The TPG Portfolio Planner is a special tool developed for this purpose.
The collection of data for reports at many companies takes more time compared to the actual preparation and analysis of the reports. This situation can be remedied effectively by ensuring that various excel files do not have to be collected and consolidated. Working with databases from the start is the most appropriate way to do the data collection for the various reports (Too and Weaver, 2014). The used database enable the integration of other systems as well as with as central data evaluation system for reports. If this is considered then there will be more time left for the analysis of the various reports produced (Archibald and Archibald, 2016). The comprehensive analysis of these reports is very crucial in project management as it allows for fast and evidence-based decisions from the up to date data collected.
The PMO is responsible for ensuring the data in the various reports is of the best quality so as to guide the target audiences make the correct decisions (Guimaraes et al, 2018). However, it requires skills and experience to determine whether the project report data is correct, complete and up to date. Determining which projects have a variation from the plan is a challenge but with the help of plausibility checks this can be done. Plausibility checks can be performed by various activities such as determining if the stage of completion indicated in the project report is actually correct.
The PMO has the role of identifying and determine the critical projects and perform a detailed scrutiny of these projects in the portfolio meeting. There are several aspects that can be looked into to determine whether the collected data is correct, complete and up to date.
In order to determine if the data collected is complete, one has to check if the information includes all the projects and operations, all the deliverable per project are outlined and also all the relevant resources with their respective activities such as project availability have been outlined.
In ensuring the correctness of the collected data the PMO has to check for planning plausibility, the stage of actual completion as well as check for the complete coverage of all the efforts and types of costs (Tsaturyan and Müller, 2015). Checking the up-to-date quality of the collected data the PMO has to consider when the data were entered into the database, the time the reports were formulated as well as the time that the transfer of the data from the external systems occurred. In order for a PMO to ensure data quality, they have to pick out few projects green status as well as those with yellow and red status indicators since project managers tend to make their reports appear particularly inconspicuous. This will ensure that the project managers do not have the certainty that they will be kept “off the radar” by the green trafficking light. The PMO can improve the data quality by using several samples.
The reports prepared in Project Program & Portfolio Management are used to give information on new projects, running projects and give a guideline on making decisions concerning the terminations of projects that are not performing (Kaiser, El Arbi, and Ahlemann, 2015). The reports have relevant information on the deliveries, results and the status of their at the various life stages (Schwalbe, K., 2015). The reports may have the following information about the projects; achievement of milestones, list of open issues, completion of phases, completion of work packages, earned value analysis, acceptance of deliveries, percentage completion and completion of tasks.
The following information is important in determining the plan-actual variance for running projects. The deliveries include the actual quality of the plan, the cost, efforts and scheduling. The work outstanding shows the clarity budget, schedule and proof of concept (Kerzner, 2018). The resources information can be used in making decisions to shift, assign and even withdraw resources from a project that is performing poorly.
Conclusion
There various requirements that the PMO reports must meet in project program and portfolio management. There are also reports that are needed in a program management office and the PMO should consider certain critical factors in the process of formulating these reports. The reports formulated are used to make crucial decisions about new and running projects and therefore the quality of information collected is important. Different frequencies of coordination and the depths of information are required for the various stakeholders in a company. When preparing for the next portfolio meeting the PMO has to identify the important criteria to look into. There is certain information that should always be found in the formulated reports.
The basis of the reliable and fast reporting system is an efficient data collection mechanism in a given company. We also learn that there are various factors that we can check if the collected data is correct, complete and up to date. This will ensure that the collected data has met the quality requirements for the formulation of the various reports. The formulated reports are analyzed and this provides a guideline for making various important decisions on new and continuing projects.
Archibald, R.D. and Archibald, S., 2016. Leading and Managing Innovation: What Every Executive Team Must Know about Project, Program, and Portfolio Management. CRC Press.
Aubry, M. and Lavoie-Tremblay, M., 2018. Rethinking organizational design for managing multiple projects. International Journal of Project Management, 36(1), pp.12-26.
Bolles, D.L., PMP, P. and Hubbard, D.G., 2015. PMO Framework and PMO Models For Project Business Management.
Daniel, E.M., Ward, J.M. and Franken, A., 2014. A dynamic capabilities perspective of IS project portfolio management. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 23(2), pp.95-111.
Guimaraes, A., McGowan, L., VanNevel, M. and Wang, Z., 2018. The Value of Full-Time Project Management Positions: PMO Nuts and Bolts at Hesburgh Libraries. In Project Management in the Library Workplace (pp. 199-228). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Heldman, K., 2018. PMP: project management professional exam study guide. John Wiley & Sons.
Hubbard, D.G., Bolles, D.L. and PMP, P., 2015. PMO Framework and PMO Models for Project Business Management. PM World Journal PMO Framework and PMO Models, IV (I), pp.1-22.
Kaiser, M.G., El Arbi, F. and Ahlemann, F., 2015. Successful project portfolio management beyond project selection techniques: Understanding the role of structural alignment. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), pp.126-139.
Kerzner, H., 2017. Project management metrics, KPIs, and dashboards: a guide to measuring and monitoring project performance. John Wiley & Sons.
Kerzner, H., 2018. Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.
Kutsch, E., Ward, J., Hall, M. and Algar, J., 2015. The contribution of the project management office: A balanced scorecard perspective. Information Systems Management, 32(2), pp.105-118.
Schwalbe, K., 2015. Information technology project management. Cengage Learning.
Stettina, C.J. and Hörz, J., 2015. Agile portfolio management: An empirical perspective on the practice in use. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), pp.140-152.
Tonchia, S., 2018. Portfolio Management. In Industrial Project Management (pp. 173-178). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Too, E.G. and Weaver, P., 2014. The management of project management: A conceptual framework for project governance. International Journal of Project Management, 32(8), pp.1382-1394.
Tsaturyan, T. and Müller, R., 2015. Integration and governance of multiple project management offices (PMOs) at large organizations. International Journal of Project Management, 33(5), pp.1098-1110.
Turner, R., 2016. Gower handbook of project management. Routledge.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
