Better Together
Excellence in Programme and
Project Management for
London:
PMO Case Studies
London EPPM Programme Example Case Studies:
London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham – The Evolution of a
Successful Corporate PMO
Hammersmith and Fulham (h&f) Council initially created a Programme
Management Office (PMO) simply to serve and deliver their Customer First
programme. This has since successfully evolved into a Corporate PMO at the
centre of a programme and project governance framework that works well
within a local government setting. However this is not the end of h&f’s journey.
Much remains to be tackled; this is a big change programme in itself,
especially within the setting of a serious shortage of people with real proven
programme and project management experience in local government.
The challenge A number of challenges were faced at the start of the process. First and
foremost the fledgling Customer First PMO found itself facing an overly
complex governance structure that had several boards in place, with
decisions either taking too long or not being made at all. The roles,
responsibilities and most importantly the question of who was ultimately
accountable was far from clear. Coupled with this was a lack of clarity over
what constituted a workstream, a project or a programme (e.g. with projects
calling themselves programmes to “inflate” their own importance), no common
definition of what constituted Red, Amber and Green risks / status and many
projects being led by someone who was project managing for the first time
after attending a two-day training course. At the very beginning project
managers even lacked a common set of tools and templates for them to use
and one of the early tasks of the PMO was to put a good Project Management
Toolkit (PM Toolkit) in place.
As a consequence of the above issues, the PMO found itself exerting huge
effort to “feed” the various board meetings with reports that mainly showed a
“sea of green”. The boards themselves had no real teeth, were adding little
value to the process and were reacting to situations rather than managing or
governing. Overall this also meant poor management of the benefits cycle –
from definition through to delivery and realisation.
Given the size and scale of the changes that the Council wanted to pursue to
better serve its residents this was an uneasy start point but thankfully there
was growing recognition that things needed to change.
Shifting the centre of gravity towards a stronger programme framework was
and still remains a big change programme in its own right with its own issues,
not least of which is having enough “bandwidth” to manage an operational
PMO and manage the change and the shaping of new programmes.
The Solution –
Despite the above challenges, the Customer First PMO managed to gain
credibility for both itself and for a programme centred approach for delivering
change. This led to the creation of the Corporate Programme Management
Office in April 2007 and the agreement at CMT level of the h&f Programme
Governance Framework.
This moved the focus from a high number of projects (180+) to a small
number of strategic programmes, all with experienced managers and with
Directors as their Senior Responsible Owners. A total of six strategic
programmes are currently in place, two of which are truly corporate-wide
programmes – the Corporate Efficiency Programme and the Smart Working
Programme.
Standard programme dashboards were created and implemented. These are
presented monthly to the central Strategic Programme Management Group
(SPMG) and the Corporate Management Team (CMT).
In further support of these changes a second release of the PM Toolkit was
put in place. This incorporates some very fundamental changes including
clear categorisation of projects based on their size and duration and a
differentiation between projects that are part of programmes and those that
are stand-alone. As a consequence it is now far easier to identify between
small localised departmental projects and those of much greater significance
requiring the ongoing attention of the PMO and the h&f Governance
framework. The scope of the PM toolkit was also expanded to include the
templates and tools needed for construction projects.
Currently under development and nearing completion is a range of specific
tools and techniques for developing and managing programmes - from the
initial business case / ROI through to the delivery of the programme itself and
its business benefits.
H&f Programme Management Framework - Homepage
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The Benefits –
It remains early days and the key benefits are still difficult to quantify in
financial terms but are evident in a number of other ways, primarily in enabling
a more efficient and effective prioritisation and management of investments
through much better consistency in business cases and ROI calculations,
more predictable programme delivery and in allowing the organisation to be
made aware of issues and risks at a much earlier stage.
The introduction of a consistent set of new and updated tools and related
business processes to manage the benefits cycle will directly assist the
delivery of Mid Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) commitments and
substantially reduce risks through early accurate visibility on all aspects of
status. Ultimately this will lead to a much more consistent delivery of
programmes and projects, thus reducing costs to h&f.
Early indications are very positive with behaviours at all levels up to and
including CMT reflecting the much clearer ownership and visibility of key
programmes and projects and the time and attention now being given to major
issues and risks as they arise.
Conclusion –
For h&f this has so far been a 3 year journey towards creating a PMO with
real power, rather than a central admin shop, with several lessons learned
along the way.
In taking the first steps don’t try to solve everything at once, but concentrate
on one large programme. Get some experienced people into your PMO and
onto the big strategic programmes and projects. There is a definite shortage
of people with proven programme management experience and skills in local
government, so place your best people where they will have the most impact.
Tools are important, especially if you don’t really have any, but tackle the
people, skills and process issues before you spend much time or money in
developing tools. Get CMT level sponsorship as early as possible and make
sure that they are intrinsically involved in a clear, well-defined governance
framework.
It is considerably simpler to define, manage and deliver business benefits
through a small number of strategic programmes than through a large number
of projects, so focus your approach on delivery via programmes.
Finally don’t underestimate the scale of change needed to implement a
programme governance, delivery and tracking framework and remember to
constantly evangelise about the crucial role of trained, experienced,
professional programme and project managers – after all, you will never get
very far without them.
Manchester City Council – Design, Development and Implementation of
a Portfolio Programme and Project Management Solution
Manchester has some of the most exciting development opportunities and
programmes in the UK but some of the biggest project delivery challenges
with a capital programme of 800 projects worth £250M pa.
The challenge –
A system was procured to enable the third “automation” stage of Manchester
City Council’s 4 stage transformation strategy to bring surety to their Capital
Programme and improve Programme and Project management capability
across the Council. The major challenges faced related to the need to provide
user-friendly support and information to a broad spectrum of staff from senior
executives to novice project managers.
The Solution –
A Project Management Portal was designed and implemented that provided a
single point of access for on-line practical support for project managers,
visibility of programmes and plans and business critical information for
decision-making. The system enables delivery of a diverse range of projects
from the largest, high value capital construction to product and service
delivery in Children, Families and Social Care. The solution has been
deployed successfully to 270 users and it is planned to continue to roll-out to
1,000 users across all service departments and delivery partners.
In practice a number of different methods were utilised to implement the
system. A hierarchical work structure was set up by Portfolio, Programme and
Project as per OGC best practice. There was embedded project management
process and Gateway support for project scrutiny and approval. This was
facilitated by comprehensive web-based reporting including dashboards and
GIS interface, cost forecasting and tracking, as well as fund allocation with
management and reporting. The management of risks and issues as well as
milestones was also important in the successful outcome of the programme.
Consulting services were procured in order to complete the deployment. This
included Project Scoping and definition with requirements capture and
solution design at the outset of the work. Advice regarding the structuring of
the Portfolio Programme and Project Management (PPPM) solution was also
provided to the Council. In addition technical infrastructure assessment and
hardware selection advice was supplied, as was change management and
implementation guidance. Training materials were also provided in order to
further assist the Council.
The Benefits –
The solution was developed rapidly to meet the client’s specified requirements
and flexibility in the partnership has proved invaluable in developing the
functionality to assist with take-up and embedment in the Council’s
organisation. Manchester City Council recently reviewed the business case
and estimated that a pay-back over the period 2005-10 reveal cashable
savings of £950k (£480k weighted) mostly software licence costs, and noncashable savings of £13.7m (£12.6m weighted) mostly time savings released
through data sharing and collaborative working.
Conclusion –
Effective delivery of projects critically depends on the sharing of a common
set of data across all members of project teams to provide visibility and
control, help the team apply consistent best practice and enable collaboration
to achieve a common goal.
London Borough of Haringey – Introducing Programme and Project
Management Discipline
The London Borough of Haringey was running a large number of
uncoordinated and differently-run projects and needed to move towards a
single disciplined approach under a Programme Management Office (PMO).
This piece of work was undertaken to improve transparency and project
success.
The Challenge –
The primary concern for the London Borough of Haringey was the visibility
that the senior management had of these projects. The borough was running
a large number of complex transformational projects, and elected members of
the Council and senior managers had no knowledge of overall project
progress at any given point in the lifecycle of the project. This was allowing
projects to overrun and in one particular case a project came in at almost
double the planned original cost. In addition to this, there was a high turnover
of project managers with no coordinated approach to record-keeping and
knowledge transfer. This caused the projects to either stall or grow very
expensive due to duplication of work. The LBH also suffered from little to no
knowledge of or control over projects being delivered by contractors.
The Solution –
A slim user-friendly Haringey-specific ‘Project Management Framework’
(PMF) was introduced which consisted of project management protocols and
guidance on how to run projects, with mandatory templates for project
managers.
The problem of governance was addressed through the creation of a single,
authority-wide, unified pyramid structure for all projects of a certain size and
complexity. It is a four-tier governance structure with information funnelled
from project boards, through programme boards, to the Chief Executive’s
Management Board, and then on to elected members. This addressed the
problem of visibility and ensured that members and senior managers could
check project success at any one point.
Once the Programme Management Framework (PMF) and governance were
embedded a Programme Management Office was set up to ensure
compliance with the new systems and to support the project managers. The
PMO quality assure project documentation and have become holders of best
practice for programme and project management across the council.
It was also crucial to gain the council-wide support of elected members and
the senior management team from the outset. Discipline and governance
suffered if project managers did not believe they had the full support from the
top of the organisation.
The Benefits –
There has been a significant improvement in risk management across the
programmes and projects. On a project level there is now full and timely
information on progress on a monthly basis, allowing the authority to focus on
‘prevention rather than cure.’ The Programme Management Office has
created and manages the Corporate-level programmes and projects risk and
issue log. The greater visibility of project activity has also allowed better
understanding of success and knowledge of budgetary spend. This has also
helped with the workload and preparation for audits as the material is already
available.
A recent IT Scrutiny Review carried out by SOCITM Consulting found, ‘in
general, project management / governance was considered to be very good
and certainly in the top 10% of local authorities of which SOCITM have
experienced.’ No project failure has been experienced since the new system
has been in place - at mid-year point for 2007/08 on a total programme
budget of £284m there is a predicted under spend of £84k i.e. les than 1%.
Conclusion –
The introduction of a new discipline and the necessary culture change may
not be popular, but following a process of normalisation project managers
come to appreciate the feeling of security they get from knowing that they are
using an approved and tested process with input and oversight from senior
decision-makers. It is also important to strike a balance between ensuring
people are kept informed and not overloading the project managers with
onerous bureaucracy. Simplicity in relation to the templates and the
processes only helps the users and thus the functioning of the projects and in
turn the programmes.
London Borough of Greenwich – Modernisation Programme Office
During the 1980s and 1990s Greenwich, like many Councils, had experienced
minimal expansion and investment in infrastructure and services. This had
resulted in:
 housing estates requiring major renovation
 school buildings that were in poor condition
 face-to-face service centres that were poorly presented and
uncoordinated
 unreliable ICT that was difficult to support
 old-fashioned and inefficient Council offices
 under-occupied Council buildings that were in poor condition

a major backlog of maintenance and a legacy of under-investment.
By the beginning of 2000 there was a number of drivers for change, including
the Gershon Report; the E-Government agenda; the increased value of the
Council’s property assets; the need to modernise school buildings and the
need to achieve the Decent Homes standard for social housing directly
managed by the Council.
These drivers led to the Council establishing a Modernisation Programme in
2005 under the leadership of a corporate full-time Programme Office.
The Challenge –
One of the initial challenges centred on the funding for the programme as it
could not be made available from Council Tax. There was a need to assemble
the financial package for the overall Programme from a range of sources in
line with the individual programme needs. It was also important to ensure
these projects and programmes stayed within their financial envelopes once
the programme entered the implementation stage.
A robust governance system had to be devised and established to ensure that
the programme was effectively led, managed and monitored. The Programme
Office also needed support from suitably skilled and experienced programme
and project personnel.
Given the scale of change that would result from the Modernisation
Programme there was a need to create clear and consistent messages which
could be communicated across the Council, to our residents and to other
stakeholders. A communications strategy had to be developed in order to
deliver core messages to all audiences and specific messages to target
groups. These communications had to align with key milestones in the overall
Modernisation Programme and individual programmes and projects.
The Solution –
Greenwich Council embarked on an ambitious Modernisation Programme in
2005. It centred on three inter-related themes of service delivery, property and
technology. The overall value of the Programme was in excess of £750m. A
Programme Office was established under the direction of the Deputy to the
Chief Executive, with a full-time team of senior managers, to oversee the
Programme and ensure effective leadership, planning, execution and control
of the Programme.
The Programme consisted of 10 key strands:
 Woolwich Civic Office – new Council offices
 Eltham Centre – major new leisure centre, college and library
 Greenwich Centre – major new leisure centre, health centre and
library
 Service Delivery & E-Government – investment in ICT
 Building Schools for the Future – 5 secondary schools in first wave
 Children’s Centres – 21 new centres
 Schools’ Capital
 Housing Renewal – Decent Homes, major estate demolition and
renewal
 Organisational Change – the development of initiatives for shared
services and behavioural change that would maximise the Council’s
effectiveness
 Neighbourhood Property Strategy – rationalisation of Council
property
A well defined and robust governance structure was established and put in
place to ensure that the right decisions were taken quickly yet with a focus on
accountability. A number of bodies and tools were set up to facilitate this new
structure. This included the Modernisation Implementation Board and the
Greenwich Management Team Blue. Project and Programme Boards with
Project/Programme Owners (external to the Programme Office) and Project
Managers were also utilised. There was also strong financial management led
by a dedicated Assistant Director seconded from the Finance Department.
The Benefits –
The key benefit delivered by the Modernisation Programme was the delivery
of projects and programmes within budget and time constraints.
Conclusion –
The Modernisation Programme has highlighted a number of important areas
key to the successful delivery of a programme of this character. Strong, clear
management and the need to focus on change were fundamental tenets of
the programme. Placing a concentration of expertise in the programme and a
strong management team was vital. The use of the correct Project and
Programme management systems and processes coupled with providing a
greater transparency in regards to projects and programmes all proved to help
the Modernisation Programme succeed in its goals.