Personal background

Background in developing a PMO

An overview of my experience working at a senior leadership level within the business.

I was Technology Manager for BT Financial Group (NZ) and ASB Group Investment from 2000 to 2006 and in both these roles I was a member of the Executive Management team accountable to the CEO for ensuring cost effective technology was delivered to meet business needs. Over the past 2 years I have led a number of special projects involving the presentation of research papers and compliance reports to the ASB executive and board.

Communications skills

In the senior roles referred to above, I have been required to work with all levels of the organisation – giving presentations, participating in and facilitating workshops and maintaining a personal network throughout the organisation to ensure open and transparent communication. I joined Toastmasters soon after being appointed to the Technology Manager role at BT and used that medium to develop formal public speaking skills.

Experience in the development, management and implementation of project management and methodologies

At ASB prior to 2005, although there was a large project management community and many projects were being delivered successfully, there was a lack of consistency and visibility across the organisation. An expensive project failure triggered the decision to set up a central PMO accountable for governance of all projects. I joined the PMO team as a senior manager in 2006 and since then we have defined the processes and governance for the PM community. This was achieved by winning the commitment of the experts in the community, leveraging their knowledge and experience and adapting the standard frameworks of Prince2 and PMBOK.

Managing change from a people perspective

I have been involved in two major corporate change programs – one when Bankers Trust was bought and BT Funds Management was carved off and eventually sold to Westpac and the other when ASB GI was formed out of the Investment businesses of ASB and Sovereign. In both these situations, I was leading the technology teams and successfully kept focus and motivation so that IT services were delivered consistently and reliably throughout the change process. Although the businesses were radically changed, my teams boasted zero turnover throughout. I attribute this success to the culture of open communication we developed. By explaining up front why the change was necessary, I was able to win the support and cooperation of my team. I followed this through with tailored career development plans and training for each team member, giving them the confidence to operate in the new environment and a sense of ownership of the new processes.

Experience in planning, process improvement, measurement and reporting

The business planning process at ASB is defined by the Strategy and Planning team. I have been involved in ASB’s annual business planning for the past 4 years and prior to that had a similar role at BT Financial Group.

Process Improvement at ASB is achieved using a formal process based on Lean Six Sigma. We used the services of the Process Improvement team to define the project delivery process for the PMO at ASB. Prior to that, at ASBGI I was able to engage the same team to review the business processes surrounding the registry systems which formed the back bone of the technology service I was accountable for.

Measurement and reporting was the focus of a special project I led establishing a Balanced Scorecard for the monitoring of the performance of the IT organisation at ASB. This included operational performance and project delivery.

Experience setting up governance and steering groups

My first task after appointment to the Technology Manager role at ASBGI was to set up a governance framework for delivering technology services to the business. By gathering requirements and defining roles using the CobiT framework I was able to suggest a suitable governance structure which was implemented and went on to operate successfully, delivering both operational efficiency and strategic change programmes.

Over the past two years in the ASB PMO. We have defined the governance framework for the delivery of projects using best practice principles from Prince2 and PMBOK.

Approach, methodology or framework used to overcome the resistance to the discipline of a PMO from senior management where an organisation has been exposure to a strict project methodology?

We have used the agile project management methodology defined by Rob Thomsett who is an internationally recognised thought leader in agile techniques. The single most important thing that we did at ASB to establish the PMO was to engage with the senior executive team and demonstrate to them the benefits of having a suitably empowered PMO with well defined processes. Following this, involving the executive sponsor in the project process ensured a sense of ownership and delivery of benefits.

The gateway process

The OGC’s Gateway Review Process is a formal framework used to peer review projects at various progress stages. At ASB we have defined a project delivery process with Decision Gates based loosely on the OGC’s framework. The main adaptation we have made is that, because the organisation is relatively small and resource limited, the review is done by an executive committee rather than a team of peers. Also, there is more direct access to the shareholders in a private sector organisation so there is less need for independent review of projects than in a government organisation where the shareholder role is ultimately the taxpayer.