Hello Everyone, welcome to the Superstar, PMO podcast, the official podcast of PMOGA India Community Hub, to all the PMO superstars out there. And this is the first episode of " PMO Maturity Series".
A quick introduction about myself, I'm Sri Sudharshan , also known as Sri, an active volunteer with PMOGA India Community Hub. Let's jump into the guest introduction for the day.
Today we have our first, Pioneer guest Mr. Harikuttan!
Hi Hari. How are you doing?
Hi Sri, I'm good. Hope you're doing good
Awesome. Hari, I'm doing great as well. I really thank you so much and I appreciate you with my heartfelt, gratitude for accepting this invite.
As a PMO thought leader in project management and project management office will certainly help all the PMO's who are listening to us. So with that, you know, I know about you! can you give a brief intro about yourself to the audience?
Oh,sure, Sri, thank you. So, first of all, I would like to thank PMOGA India Community hub for this wonderful opportunity and this is going to be, you know, one of the novel initiative, and all the activities that PMOGA doing globally to support the PMO communities across the globe is really commendable and thank you. You know, everyone behind this really wonderful community. So I am Harikuttan and I have over 17 years of experience in project and program management office. Basically I'm a Mathematician by graduation and a Masters in Business Administration, and I started from the financial sector, as a Finance Management person. And from there, I moved into the IT industry. And for the last 12 plus years, or maybe more than that, I'm working in the IT industry in different roles in the program management side . So currently, Iam working with one ofthe big4 as a strategic Initiative, Program, PMO lead. And
most of my experience is into the, youknow, program management project management office setup and, youknow, bringing in some kind of innovation everything that we do. So, yeah, that's all about, Sri . Probably will go and explore more about on the go, Sri .
Sure, Thank you so much. You have uncovered a couple of things, you are a mathematician and statistician. You are also an entrepreneur, someone who has been wearing, you know, multiple hats.
Yeah. So I think the enterpreneur part is something that I missed in the earlier part. I was fortunate to start two organizations, one was NIIT and one was Since Consulting and Then co-founder of one of the, you know, infrastructure project delivery . So, in that sense, founder of three organization, which eventually I, you know, gave it to better hands those whoare really experienced and, you know, expertised in managing those kind of organisms still, I am, you know, part of their Advisory Board. And continuing to support them on on Guiding things. Yeah. Sri.
Amazing work, Hari. You know, this sets a wonderful stage with the kind of your experience, you bring it to the table and yeah let us actually jump into the theme of this podcast today. And since you come with such a load of a background, where setting up pmo, entrepreneurship, mathematician. And alot more you did than what you explained right now. The theme is around the buzzword, and the buzzword in the PMO industry right now is the "The PMO Maturity". So what is your view on the maturity of a PMO?
That's a wonderful question,Sri . So, before actually going into the real topic, I mean the PMO maturity. So I think To set some context. Right Sri. So I would like to probably take this from what exactly is a PMO.
And then, you know, what are the roles of you know, PMO leaders as PMO leader is what we are supposed to deliver and how we can bring in, you know, maturity of PMO in the organization. So we will just quickly, probably discuss about that if you are fine with it Sri.
Ofcourse, yes! It is your stage, please carry on.
Thank you. So for all the leaders, I think out here are familiar with the PMO definition, right? So it's a very broad definition. If you ask me directly what a PMO leaders can support, right? So, pmo leaders actually should support or help the middle management to overcome pit falls of being command control to a self-organizing and rather encouraging collaboration, and encourage Enterprise approach to monitor health of projects and programs across portfolio and then it works to respond to changes instead of tracking in silos and probably a culture to drive Innovation and experimentation or maybe a fail fast culture.
So traditionally, the pmo was supposed to be like a supporting function. But I think in this era PMO is considered as vital organization, in every organization not only in IT people are often taming PMO as an IT function but it's not like that in every industry, you know, pmo is really critical function and pmo leader effectiveness is not just a matter of functional or team leadership so it's really. We should be the PMO leader should be really innovative to see you down our services or to offer our services to the organization and successful pmo's are constantly being challenged to find the best way to ensure their practices continuously fit organization need. That's another big challenges. So, before even we discuss about maturity, we need to actually set these things, right!
We need to actually understand what PMO leader effectiveness is we need to actually understand what successful pmo's are and how effectively, you know, they can manage their practices in a continuously Innovative manner to fit for the organization need and and if you look at it like there could be like one or two or three, I think three mutually exclusive possibilities. One probably like a project program kind of PMO which covers just one of the organization projects or programs or the departmental PMO which covers like an area or a department ora business, you want a nd finally the Enterprise PMO which covers the entire organization.
So if you look at it, in fact the main driver of the approach of a, pmo must be its Mission.
Let's just quickly discuss what exactly is maturity of a pmo? So as I mentioned, like, pmo's are always, you know, misunderstood as a department just confined to governance and compliance right, Sir?
Yes, Absolutely Hari.
But yeah. So the truth is actually, they are moving beyond the Tactical execution of project and performing a wide range of activities than drive value. So it's like a value driven is the responsibility should be something like a value driven organization. So how can that be happen? I think it can definitely happen only with the kind of innovation and continuous review of, you know, your services.
So if you look at the latest PMI research, Sri, the measurement provides project visibility and delivers the data to strengthen the future business case, for a program or project management office.
So however, if you know, the project success is just limited to the Iron Triangle, right? The Matrix of scope schedule and cost. It often contains project. It and probably pmo's are overseeing them. Also to being like red-flagged, right as a poor, return of investment for organization. But what if pmo change the way project are perceived by probably emphasizing something like an outcome-based benefit? Such as operational efficiencies or customer satisfaction. Alright, so this is the kind of thought process that pmo's should think when they are In to defy or how mature, my pmo practices are.
So pmo maturity is not just about the years of experience or existence or maybe something like the total years of the experience of all pmo leaders in the team. But I would say it is the Innovation and innovation in measurement, is the key feature of PMO of maturity for any type of organization. So maturity is not like a single point or a state, Sri. It's not like, oh okay we are mature now, it's not like that. You should be a journey, right? It should be a journey and organization must, so how we can assess that. So we need to actually contact be in the sensor organization, must conduct an internal review, to establish a strategy to achieve its decide maturity. So if you wanted to To a certain level of maturity. First of all, you should know how mature, my PMO organization is or how mature my processors are right?
So why we need to do that? Because for me, Sri, I am always, you know Whenever whenever Iam taking an opportunity to interact with pmo's or when I am and Iam giving session to project managers. I'm telling like the every organization is different, right?
So Organizational, maturity also is different for organization because the kind of organizational behavior the organizational culture, the project delivery method, they are adopting the people, the skill right, everything is unique for every organization. So we can have broad framework for maturity. But when we Define about maturity organizational, maturity varies from organization to organization, and based on the type of Industry, right? We cannot have single you know, one type of maturity framework or standard which can actually give an exact model to replicate.
If someone is telling like you know, in our all stories, right? Someone is having a very good memory and someone got some, you know, some is like a story around a marriage of, you know, a marriage of a Hindu couple, right. One day, the elders decide like, okay, if the bride is so beautiful and the groom is like a very intellectual and if you marry them and they will be getting a baby, you know with very much beauty and youknow kind of intellectual capability kind of old story as if what if the outcome is and they other way around. Right? So similarly if we try to replicate any of the organizational maturity process, assuming that this is the best Available and we can just replicate these. It could be fatal to organization. So what is the key?
This is where the Innovation plays a critical role. So, Sri PMO should be Innovative enough to establish a matrix and measurements. After the self-assessment, to plan maturity level and maturity is not about the, you know, number of people in your organization. It is not about the experience of leaders p.m. or leaders in the organization, but it is about how effectively you are supporting the Enterprise vision and how you are able to deliver value delivery while you know, value delivery type of organization and how effectively you can measure the outcome of it.
So that the organization led, a very successful organization So Innovation is the key and then how to how to reach to the maturity, for that, you need to do a self-assessment, and you need to set some measurements right now. Some measurement is really critical getting measurement and providing project visibility evidence about the impact and value of project and data to strengthen the future, business case, for PMO, so it is time to get creative about measurement to. So that is how the, the maturity should be defined for any pmo Organization, Sri.!
Yeah, so
time to get Innovative about creative about the measurement. It is not about one size has for, all right?
Yeah, Gone are those days! Yes, yeah. Gone are those days where one size fits for all now, each organization, the culture, the way their process are set up completely different. So the way how we PMOs and the organization should look at p.m. or maturity is based on how the particular organization, you know, functions that, that is a valid point. And very interesting though,
So far, we have set the stage and the context. In the first episode of the PMO maturity series, it is all about mindset and Innovation is the key!
On our next episode. Let's learn more from Hari, until then take a good care of yourself and your family.