Learning Leader

New P3O Practitioner Qualification

The mysteriously-named P3O (which stands for 'Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Offices') is the most recent new branch of best management practice guidance to emerge from the UK Government's Office of Government Commerce (OGC). OGC is also responsible for commissioning PRINCE2, MSP and M_o_R. 

The point is that P3O has been generating quite a number of growing enthusiasts since its launch about 12 months ago. We have already helped several organisations use this management framework to improve their delivery of programmes and projects.

Over the last year we have welcomed quite a broad church of delegates: some were senior managers directly involved in shaping and implementing strategy, others were logistical support people in project offices. This led to a few interesting challenges in designing and delivering a learning experience that engaged everyone, but without exception every P3O Foundation course we have run has stimulated and stretched everyone involved.

We launched our P3O training to the only syllabus and qualification available at the time - Foundation level. The Foundation paper is a set of multiple-choice questions testing one's knowledge of the P3O guide. Our experience has been that nearly all of our delegates really appreciate what P3O has to offer, but the Foundation exam? Well, they find it slightly 'under-whelming'. People want to go deeper and apply it.

On Friday I and few other training leaders were invited by APM Group to be briefed on the new P3O Practitioner qualification. If you have taken a PRINCE2 or MSP Practitioner exam recently you will be familiar with the format: a realistic scenario against which questions explore the application the framework, as well as testing one's evaluation against P3O work done by people within the scenario.

We sat two papers, the first as a 'warm up', and we sat the second knowing that we had score 66% or more to qualify. (No pressure, then!) The exam paper has 7 question categories, with 10 questions within each. We found the questions varied in difficulty and covered all the syllabus areas, as well as testing us on application at the portfolio level, as well as at the programme and project levels. We were given two hours (2 1/4 hours normally) and I found this more than adequate - I had half an hour left to spare.

On the basis of this, we will be designing and launching a combined P3O Foundation and Practitioner course shortly - probably a public course for December or January. My initial thoughts are that this combined course will be about 4 days duration - but don't hold me to that!

If you would like to be kept notified of course for this Practitioner level exam, please register your interest here.

Missing Link, Gold Mine or Glue?

Now we have run some early P3O courses, how is the Guide and the course being received?

From the courses I've personally delivered, I've found this a very positive experience. P3O seems to generate some stimulating discussions on our 2-day course and is emerging in the minds of these early delegates as the 'Missing Link' in Best Management Practice Guidance from OGC about change through programmes and projects.

Last week, I trained a group of consultants in the Netherlands, and their consensus was that the Guide was a Gold Mine of nuggets that they could immediately use with their own clients. For example, the Value Matrix was a keen topic of conversation.

Whilst in the UK, a senior manager from the public sector said to me:

"The P3O model is the 'glue' [between portfolio, programme and project management]."

Here is an example of an early discussion in the Guide on 'Balancing the Portfolio' as we've represented it graphically in this Mind Map:

As an executive director myself, I found this helpful and clarifying in how we in pearcemayfield engage with our own change agenda.

So how has P3O been received so far? I would say it is creating a growing 'buzz' and a growing community of enthusiasts.

P3O, Portfolio Management

P3O? or how APM Group tried to spoil my weekend

Recently my colleagues in pearcemayfield ganged up on me and made me join the APM Group early adopter programme for the delivery of a new training course in 'P3O' (I'll explain that in a moment!).

This involved studying a new Best Practice Guide on the subject - about to be published next month by TSO - and an advanced draft arrived in our office on the Friday afternoon. The trouble was, as one of the pilot lead trainers, I was due to be examined by APM Group on the next Monday afternoon, and I was told - as a prospective approved trainer - I would have to pass by 80%!!

So I could see my weekend being ruined. Grumbling to myself, I began to read and highlight the Guide. Before very long I found myself admiring this piece of work.

It is very good indeed.

‘P3O’ stands for ‘Portfolio, Programme and Project Office’. It is a Best Management Practice that has emerged strongly in recent years, particularly as the concepts and then practice of Programme Management and Portfolio Management have become embedded within organisations across the world.

In order to understand P3O, we first need to make sure we understand the distinctions between the portfolio, programmes and projects and why these matter to management.

The Portfolio

Within any organisation, or major division of it, there will be all kinds of change going on. Some of this change will be managed as projects; some as informal initiatives or campaigns; some as the coordinated grouping of projects and changes to achieve major outcomes; these we know as 'programmes'.

Often a senior manager responsible for all of this will have no real idea of what the sum of all the changes are that are happening at any one time, how much this all costs, whether all the changes are aligned to current strategy, and whether the use of resources is the best it can be. Answering these questions can be a large task that holds the tension between offering the ‘big picture’ for investment decisions in changes, and the detail, for example of knowing what resources are being used - and therefore being denied to other changes. This is ‘portfolio management’.

Programmes

Programme management is used to orchestrate otherwise separate projects and changes towards a particular step-change in capability and performance. Very unlike projects (IT and buildings, HR and process modeling) can be made to fit together to ensure there is joined up delivery of a new way of working for the organization. Benefits that should ensue from these changes are consciously realized as part of the programme.

However, the coordination of all this usually requires the support of a Programme Office, that often supports down to the constituent projects.

Projects

The idea and practice of projects and their management has been around the longest. One of the prevailing lines of evidence emerging from research, though, is that projects are more likely to be successful, compared with similar projects, if they are shorter and simpler. In the past projects have floundered because they have attempted to do the rather more complex and divergent work of programmes. Projects are at their best when they can focus on delivery, and when what is to be delivered is both clear and changes little during the life of the project.

A project manager is often empowered by the support of a Project Office, whether or not that project is part of a programme.

P3O

Enter P3O. As long as a P3O is tailored to the need of the organisation, and from the start demonstrates that it adds value and continues to add value, then it has a chance of becoming a powerful enabler at all levels of change. It is less likely to revert to a stale centre for administration and resources provided purely reactively to the project community.

The Guidance from OGC will show that there is a hierarchy of value propositions – a menu of benefits – that an organization can choose from in deciding what kind of P3O it needs. When it comes to P3O, one size does not fit all.

Anyway, I can't reveal details of the Guide, but it will be published next month. We will offer a two-day accredited workshop in the course from early December. It will give professionals working in this area a good grounding in this critical emergent concept.

Oh, and I got 88% in my exam - much to my relief and surprise.

Portfolio Management, programme management, project management