Programme & project support

PMO design: planning, a decision log and steering-group reporting that holds up

The engagement has outgrown what one person can hold in their head. Several strands are running, two or three suppliers are involved, and the steering group asks much the same questions every six weeks. The report is assembled by hand the Friday before, and is out of date by the time it lands.

A PMO is nothing more than the administrative spine of a project or programme: the place where planning, decisions, risks and progress live, so that steering happens on facts. In a smaller organisation that spine has to be light. A PMO that creates more work than it saves is not a PMO, it is overhead with an abbreviation.

When this comes up

Not every project needs a PMO. These situations do.

The work has grown from one project into several strands, and the overview has so far lived in one project manager's head.
A steering group was set up because that is what you do, but nowhere is it written down what that group may decide.
Several suppliers each submit their own plan, in their own format, with their own definition of 'done'.
A decision taken six months ago is back on the table and nobody can retrieve what was agreed, or why.
A programme is about to start and you want the records in place from the outset, rather than retrofitted halfway through.

What setting it up covers

I start at the minimum that works and extend only where something demonstrably breaks without it. Where a PMO already exists, I start with what can come out.

Right-sizing: how much administration this engagement can carry, measured against its size, the number of parties and the pace at which decisions have to be taken.
One plan with one definition of 'done'. Supplier plans are hung inside it, not kept alongside it.
A decision log: what was decided, by whom, when, on what basis, and which alternatives fell away.
A risk log that moves: owner, likelihood, impact, mitigation and the date someone looks at it again. Without that last column it becomes an archive.
The steering-group report: one pack, a fixed structure, decisions to be taken at the front and the supporting detail at the back.
Making the report follow from the source. Progress is read where the work is tracked, not re-typed into a separate deck.
Roles and cadence: who supplies what, on which day, and what happens when they do not.

What you are left with

Not a methodology and not a manual, but a working set of project records your own people carry on without me.

Project records that are up and running: plan, decision log, risk and issue log, action list. In the environment your organisation already works in, not in a new system nobody opens.
A steering-group pack with a fixed structure, demonstrated once and then handed over. The aim: that the steering group decides in the first fifteen minutes instead of listening.
The reporting route written down: which figure comes from which source, who updates it and on which day.
A working instruction of a few pages, written for whoever takes it over from me.
Two or three steering-group cycles that I sit in on, so the rhythm holds before I step away.

What it is not

Not a methodology roll-out. You get registers that work, not a model you have to conform to.
Not a tooling exercise. The question is which data you need in order to steer, not which system gets bought to hold it.
Not a permanent PMO function. I set it up and hand it over; staffing a standing project office is a different question.
Not a reporting factory. If a figure in the pack moves nobody to a decision or to different behaviour, it does not belong there.
Not a second set of records running alongside the project managers' own. One source, or it does not work.

Common questions

When is an organisation too small for a PMO?

Too small for a staffed project office: that point comes quickly. Too small for one current plan and a decision log: that is a different question. The confusion sits in the word. PMO sounds like a department, whereas it comes down to a handful of registers and an agreement about who keeps them. As long as keeping them stays a task rather than becoming a job, the size of the organisation is not the obstacle.

How much time does maintaining it take?

Every register has to save at least as much discussion as it costs to maintain. That is the test I apply while setting it up. A risk log nobody reads costs upkeep and returns nothing; the same time is well spent the moment it stops one steering-group discussion from being had twice. Whatever fails the test comes out.

What belongs in a steering-group report?

At the front, the decisions this meeting has to take, each with the options, a recommendation and the consequence of deferring. Behind that, what has moved since last time, and only the risks the steering group can act on. Plans, hours and status tables belong in the appendix. A pack that opens with dozens of status slides and asks for a decision on the last one is asking for that decision in the few minutes still left.

Why so much emphasis on a decision log?

Because it is the only register that keeps its value after the project closes. A plan goes stale, a risk log gets shut, but the question 'why did we decide it this way at the time' comes back: at the next change, in a discussion with the supplier, with the colleague who picks it up a year later. Without it, a settled decision quietly becomes an argument again, and that argument is won by whoever remembers their version most firmly.

What shape does the work take, and how long does it run?

Setting it up is short: a few days to build the registers, connect the sources and produce the first report. Getting the rhythm to hold takes two or three completed cycles. So: a short engagement with a tail of a few steering groups, rather than a single block. That can run on a time-and-materials basis with an agreed ceiling, or at a fixed price for a defined result where the scope is clear.

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