PMO Creation - Week 6

We held the first steering committee meeting. This was designed to come to agreement about the rules of our committee, set up monthly meetings, a prioritization session and an executive training.

The CEO finally got the point about other projects affecting his IT projects and was very pleased I had been pushing in this direction. The team agreed to all the proposed rules listed below and we will be holding regular meetings.

The CEO also sent out this e-mail intended to gather projects for the prioritization session:

Good afternoon everyone.

We had an awesome Project Steering Committee meeting on Friday led by our own PM Guru, Bruce Fieggen. During the meeting we agreed to have the PMO manage all projects within QPharma. What does that mean for each of us? I’m not sure exactly, but a few examples are:

•  It won’t impact Professional Services
• Change control will be managed through the PMO
•  Not just Python, all systems and desired systems.

This is your opportunity to tell us what you want done, your absolute wish list.

Bruce will be the point person, but I want to see a list by Tuesday noon. Regardless of how long you’ve been waiting, now is the time to tell us. Send the lists and a brief explanation to Emily and she’ll compile and send to the committee.

Here were the rules we came up with:

Project:  Defined as a temporary endeavor to provide a unique product service or result.  All projects need a defined scope and an end date.  For QPharma, this encompasses ALL projects, not just projects related to the Python system.

Goals:

•  Cross functional input into projects and priorities.
• Run projects within budget (# of hours or $)
• New projects and priorities do not randomly derail existing priorities.  
• The Steering Committee will prioritize and re-prioritize projects.
• The committee should communicate vision and strategy

Rules and Norms:

• The Steering Committee should authorize all projects.
• The committee should prioritize and re-prioritize all projects and will be published to the company.  Re-prioritization of projects will be done on a monthly basis during PM Steering Committee meetings.  In the cases of emergency changes/issues, an Emergency PM Steering Committee will be scheduled to discuss and decision-making on the issue.
• Approve all changes to the projects.  All project related change requests will need to be reviewed and approved by the PM Steering Committee
• Review all project status and project dashboard
• Fully resource all active projects.
• Approval of all deliverables.  Business owners will need to approve all project milestone deliverables.  Approval will be reflected in the Project Dashboard.
• The PM Steering Committee will meet on a monthly basis.  The quorum requirement for the Steering Committee is 5 members.

·         Projects will have the following categorization:

o   New Product Development

o   Customer Order

o   Process Improvement

o   Facility

o   Regulatory Mandate

Action Items:

• B. Fieggen will conduct an executive PMO training to the Steering Committee members.
• B. Fieggen will schedule the monthly PM Steering Committee Meeting.
• A list of all QPharma projects will need to be compiled 2 days prior to the PM Steering Committee Meeting for prioritization.