Digital PMO Platform
Published on 13 Feb 2017

How to Benchmark and identify hidden costs prior to committing to a new Project and Portfolio solution without major unnecessary capital investment?
The objective of this research is to build clients awareness and avoid the traditional outcome at the end of the implementation journey, which usually cleverly results with endless variations in running projects, cost inflation and triple the project duration with disappointing outcomes for business and PMO.
Platform Solution Mandatory Pre-Requisite:
- Out of the box Platform Solution (off-the-shelf) to meet all the function scope requirements from point 1-15. Must be ready to use now, not to customise and tailored (bespoke).
- The purpose of (Off-the-shelf) platform is to reduce the development risk, and ensure we leverage a ready built integrated solution, which has already been adopted by other corporations and will fulfil project methodology function needs.
- Platform Solution with full functionality identified from point 1-15 can be implemented & adopted within 6-8 weeks for production.
- Limited infrastructure requirements with no impact on platform license cost. Meaning not every increase of the server or CPU will automatically lead to more license cost.
- Limited to non IT involvement post platform implementation and enables full flexibility and control to PMO, otherwise they will become hostage to IT availability and vendors ongoing variations and customisation.
The Digital Platform Solution Mandatory Functions Scope requirements:
- Fully aligned to PMBOK methodology, framework, process and comply with PMBOK 5th edition and or Prince 2.
- The capability to be fully running as a web interface and have mobile capability to both platform iOS & Android.
- A built-in financial management module including budget management invoice tracking and all related earn value analysis.
- A built-in schedule tool and the capability to import and run various types of schedules from Primavera & MPP (Microsoft Scheduler) via web interface.
- A built-in scope, deliverables and change management tracking including defect tracking with auto-analysis for change impact.
- A built-in documents management, integrated with the PMBOK methodology process embedded.
- A built-in Resource Management to handle project resource requests, demand based on skills and availability and span across project and operation for true visibility of the resource demand for the organisation.
- The flexibility to be fully customised and managed 100% by PMO with no IT additional customisation or involvement. This is including all process customisation and project phases tailoring as per the project size, complexity and business needs.
- The ability to manage all the projects stage gate approvals and other pre-requisite requirement via front-end configuration module by PMO.
- A built-in integration capability & API connector to other systems like Oracle / SAP ERP or other.
- A built-in Business Intelligence capability for data analysis and reporting pre-built, and fully aligned to point (1) in relation to the PMBOCK methodology.
- A pre-built security module to enable multiple role access based on the project governance and charter in relation to various stakeholder’s responsibility.
- To be hosted on a minimum infrastructure to reduce ongoing cost for support and reduce level of complexity for management.
- A built-in capability to support digital strategy management including pre-defined process aligned to S.M.A.R.T
- Finally, it needs the ability to manage program and portfolio built in management and integration based on various classification like department, type of projects, project size, sector and others which can be defined by the PMO.
If any vendor has a platform to handle the above pre-requisite and scope, the next challenge will be can they come and present it live with the above capabilities to ensure what’s included is a native and part of the final solution not an additional add-on with many additional licenses cost.
Digital PMO platform is a business Platform Solution not IT Platform Solution.