Already facing a constrained resource environment prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the outlook for healthcare organizations seeking to do more with less has become even more daunting in light of further uncertainty and downward budget forecasts in the short and medium term. The need for effective prioritization of key initiatives while managing a finite resource pool has now become a stark requirement for healthcare organizations.
Strong program and project management capabilities are of critical importance for healthcare organizations looking to weather a set of increasingly complex demands that must be triaged through a structured but nimble approach. Existing project management office (PMO) structures may need to be restructured in a way that can address a “new normal” created by drastic changes to available resource capacity across the enterprise in such a short period of time.
Organizations should seek to maximize existing assets and investments in their current PMO environment while also adapting to address a rapidly transforming set of project portfolio initiatives. This must involve an examination of people, processes and technology in a way that aligns all three dimensions most effectively.
Key Elements:
Executive and Operational Leadership
PMO Governance and Decision-Making Structure
While a strong and well-resourced pool of versatile project management resources is critical to success, thoughtful resourcing must also be applied towards how best to enlist the support of organizational leadership. Busy executive and operational leaders are often juggling a myriad of pressing issues, but are also sorely needed to adequately evaluate and prioritize initiatives and identify those that could be postponed or de-commissioned. This underscores the importance of establishing a robust PMO governance structure.
Executive leadership must be sufficiently engaged to provide visibility into new initiatives while also being able to prioritize and articulate strategic value for potential projects. This also requires a level of operational leadership support offering insight to executives on the resource requirements for these initiatives. Practically speaking, this often requires a two-tiered structure consisting of executive and operational leadership charged with different responsibilities, but working closely together on a recurring basis to evaluate and drive decision-making.
Key Elements:
Initiatives Pipeline and Project Prioritization
Resource Demand and Capacity Management
Having a foundational PMO governance structure and adequate project management capacity is critical from a people perspective, but not sufficient without a well-defined set of processes through which PMO decision-making and project execution are guided. Standardized and explicit processes to drive project prioritization and resource management will help bring order to a dynamic, sometimes chaotic environment of competing demands and limited organizational capacity. Some key process considerations include the following:
Portfolio and Pipeline Management – Getting a full view into the overall project landscape not only includes existing initiatives in-flight, but also includes all of the potential new initiatives being considered or evaluated. Projects have an inherent overall lifecycle, with each stage requiring a different set of tasks and resources that are often overlooked.
Project Prioritization & Scoring - Organizations often have difficulty in being able to assign the appropriate level of strategic value to projects, which prevents effective prioritization and commonly results in trying to do everything. Establishing a clear set of objective criteria for decision-making will enable a process for driving towards consensus on which projects to focus resources on.
Resource Management - Ultimately, the highest level of efficiency cannot be achieved without understanding what level of resource demand exists for existing and potential projects. Just as important is determining the resource capacity, in order to allocate staff towards meeting the needs of these projects. While a seemingly daunting task for organizational PMOs, it is critical to quantify demand and capacity at some level.
Key Elements:
Portfolio Management Software
Project Management Tool
The ability to enable critical PMO processes will be effectively realized only through the use of digital platforms that will support a complex set of workflows and data required to guide decision-making and project execution activities. While integration across technology platforms would be ideal, the IT support for a PMO largely falls into two major categories:
Portfolio Management - IT enablement to support management of the enterprise portfolio of projects, various stages of the project lifecycle, and overall organizational resources is critical at a macro level. PMO portfolio technology enables an organization to capture project and resource data for both new and existing opportunities/projects, then powerfully transform it for intelligent decision-making on what to prioritize. The best tools will also enable organizations to not only record, but also predict and preempt potential resource constraints.
Project Management - While Microsoft Project is generally the default tool of choice for project management, there is a burgeoning set of alternative options that build upon the capabilities of traditional project management software. A new breed of cloud-based project management solutions is offering better portability and enhanced accountability for task assignment and follow-up for resources, all while being accessible across devices and computer desktops. These new tools offer significant promise for true ongoing collaboration and user adoption, both by project managers as well as other team resources who contribute to project activities and desire a robust and efficient workspace environment.
While it does not always require massive amounts of planning and resources, when it comes to developing a robust PMO organization, one should be thoughtful about not oversimplifying key components of a holistic foundation that incorporates people, process and technology elements. When combined with smart thinking and effective-yet-efficient design principles, a strong PMO organization with the right methodologies and processes - enabled by properly configured tools - can have a profound impact across the entire enterprise.