Podcast episode 031: PMOs and portfolio management [19:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1767)

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Recently I interviewed Nayan Patel, PMP, who works as a Corporate Manager of Portfolio Management for a major Healthcare Network.  I talked to Nayan about his role in creating and supporting project management, project management reporting tools, and project governance within his organization.

Nayan Patel, a 16-year veteran of Information Technology, currently serves as the Corporate Manager of Portfolio Management for Baylor Health Care System, Information Services.  In this role he is responsible the project management and reporting tools, time reporting, and project governance.  Among his project management roles, Mr. Patel also serves as a consultant for strategic business processes solutions for the healthcare system, which includes value model realization for the electronic health record, the executive portfolio management, and has developed departmental logical-physical work flows of all system interfaces for the Baylor clinical infrastructure.

Prior to joining Baylor, Mr. Patel delivered leadership and management experience for various technology and strategic solutions, led large development teams for mission-critical IT projects, and established project and quality management methodologies.  Previous senior management roles include experience at Verizon, 3dfx Interactive, and Texas Instruments. 

Nayan received an MBA from Southern Methodist University in Dallas Texas, and a BSEE and MSEE from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee.   He is currently a member of the American College of Healthcare Executives (ACHE), Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS), and the Project Management Institute (PMI).  He currently serves on the Board of Directors for DFW-HIMSS.

Nayan describes Portfolio management as a means to allow an organization to look across a number of projects and determine how to prioritize, staff, and fund the projects.  Portfolio management also includes the tracking of progress of projects against their metrics.

Frequently a governance board will review the portfolio and determine which projects to approve and which projects to reject.

The PMO framework that Nayan works in helps to provide methodology, guidance, reporting, and templates.  In addition, there are some projects that Nayan’s group specifically manages.

The biggest challenges in setting up a PMO is user adoption of formalized project tracking and reporting as well as providing project governance.  The key is to make the PMO and its tools useable for the long term.  Changes promoted from within the PMO needs to be first examined for long term impact and sustainability within the organization.  To do this, Nayan often looks at any change in methodology from the point of view of a project manager and sees if it will in fact add value to everyday activities.  At the end of the day, if the change isn’t adopted by users, then it is useless to the organization.  In creating a PMO, you need to start with something simple that will work, and then iterate and improve upon it over time.

Within Nayan’s organization, they use basic PMI principles with a 4 phase gate waterfall methodology of Initiation, Planning, Execution, and Closing.  The templates that they use then are further tailored to fit their project needs.  Their templates and methodology are also customizable to the size and scope of the particular projects.

In Nayan’s organization, the governance board reviews all project charters and requests on a weekly basis prior to any work starting on the project.  The board uses an internal weighing and scoring model with eight key metrics to help prioritize the projects.  Nayan recommends that metrics should based on quantitative data that allows for easy comparison across projects.  This also helps to get away from people pushing for a particular pet project without data to back up its importance to the organization.

One of the key lessons that Nayan has learned in setting up a PMO is that once the methodology is adopted, frequently stakeholders, such as management, request having further data reporting at their fingertips.  Providing a means of allowing users and stakeholders to provide feedback and allowing the easy implementation of suggestions is also important to the improvement of the PMO over time.  Another suggestion is to get involved in the local PMI chapter to allow networking and benchmarking with other organizations.  Although every company is unique and there is not a single method of creating a PMO, by networking with others you can learn what worked and what didn’t when they instituted a PMO in their organization.

In Nayan’s case, it took about six months before their PMO started to really add value to the organization and they often make improvements to their PMO every three to six months.

My thanks to Nayan Patel, PMP for talking to us about PMOs and Portfolio Management.  If you would like to get in touch with Nayan, please send me an email at show@pm411.org and I will put you in touch with him.

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