Managing Growth of the Company – the PMO’s Perspective (Part 1)

The interview with Sarina Arcari, Staff Vice President of Implementation Management Office (PMO) at WellPoint Inc., conducted by Marta Bobińska.

How did the process of aligning your company’s methodology to PMBOK® look like? There is little guidance on how to align the processes in the PMBOK® Guide and Polish companies seem to struggle with it.

You’re absolutely right, it is complicated. What I realized is that in order to have an effective PMO you have to be able to blend with the culture and the politics of the organization. So the first thing I did was meet with every single leader in the organization to see what was being done currently, when I arrived. Obviously, the company had been successful up to that point so why not to hear from the people who were leading it what was going well and windows of opportunity for improvement. I ended up after that sort of tour around the company with the list of processes that were in place and opinions from the leadership team about whether they were good or not so good. 

The next thing I did was get the PMBOK® out. The 5 phases of project management are a very nice foundation to assess whether you are doing something that makes sense or something that is outside of the project management lifecycle. We had the whole list of things that were being done around the company to execute on projects and strategic priorities. We tried to map them and say is this an initiation process, is it a planning process, is it an execution process etc. And if anything did not have a home, we went back and asked why are we doing this if it is not a part of project management methodology? What is the purpose of this? And if we could not come up with a good reason, we just decided to stop. Hopefully, without dropping any balls. But this happens in companies: “Oh, my predecessor told me that we had to fill out this form and make three copies, and send it over here”. Sometimes it becomes no longer useful but nobody knows why are we doing it. So we got rid of all those kinds of things.

So you prepared your company’s PM methodology based on PMBOK® processes but also on the processes that were already being performed in your organization?

We basically made a manual that said that are the tasks that we do at the initiation phase in our company. We just wrote down. And if there was a form or a template, we cleaned it up, we made it have a nice look so it all looked consistent. But we basically kept the stuff that was working. So people did not feel like I had come in and ripped everything out and put in a bunch of new stuff. That got people’s attention and it made it easier for us to go from that place to pointing out things that were not working or could work better. People did not feel so threatened by me and by the process. 

How did you develop or improve the PM framework over time? Were there any external or internal circumstances that influenced that?

Yes. We were a growth company. That was our position to the marketplace. We intended to grow in double digits year over year. When I arrived at the company we were not in Fortune 500 and during my time there we got into that place. So that was a unified cultural mission that we were going to continue to grow the company. 

After my first tour around the company, we had a nice list of all the things that we do in project management. It took a year to get that far. So the next year I went for another tour and said “Ok, this is what we did last year, thank you so much for your help. I want to check in again and ask are these things still working.” Sometimes the answer was “Yes”, sometimes the answer was “No, we grew, we need something better now”. Another question that I asked at that time was “What if we had twice as much business? Would it still work?” Sometimes the answer was “Oh yes, absolutely” and sometimes the answer was “Oh, no, I have this little database on my desktop and it would blow up if you put in twice as much work”. People at first were surprised when I came around and asked “What would happen to this process of yours, if we double the number of x, y, z by next year?” So I got people thinking about it. And then we went after those things that were not scalable, that could not handle growth. 

What were the other challenges that you faced as a PMO of such as a rapidly growing company?

I would say the most emphasis was spent with the talent. I started with 6 PMPs. They were all great project managers but one person can only handle so much. I started thinking if I got two more people would I get two more PMPs. Or should I have maybe a project coordinator or a project administrator so that my top talent is doing what they are really best at. And I relieve them of some administration duties so that they can do two projects instead of one or four projects instead of two. As long as someone is managing their logs, and their forms, and their schedules and all that kind of things. 

That is when we really turned to PMI and asked for job descriptions. Turns out that PMI had all of these job descriptions and it is a nice career ladder where you can go from lower levels to medium levels, to higher levels. And they have the salary survey so it told me how I should pay these people. I basically took all that information from PMI and went to my HR department. They were very receptive and very supportive and because I had all the work pretty much already done, they said “Wow! You’ve done all the work for us. You made it so easy for us, let’s do it!” Having that career ladder and all the written down policies and procedures helped me bring in temporary people, so I was not adding to the overhead of the company.

And that was the key to our scalability because if we suddenly got a new contract and all of my project managers were busy already, I could hire a contractor. I could hire a PMP or somebody that was more administrative depending on what my need was. And I could use my full time top talent to do strategic planning of the projects at the initiation and planning phase. Once a project has requirements and a decent schedule any good project manager, certainly any PMP, should be able to step in, read the schedule, get some indoctrination and do a pretty good job in managing the execution.

I read that large part of your PMO success was due to the contact with your Subject Matter Experts in various departments in your company. How did you select your SMEs and what was exactly their role?

When I came to the company and I was shown the growth intentions of the company I realized that I had six project managers and there was no way that these six project managers can do all this by themselves. And if this truly is the company’s number one strategic priority to grow then I need other people from all these different areas to support this priority. 

I got permission from the executive team to negotiate with the highest level business leaders in the company and I showed them the projections for the number of project that we believed we were going to bid on and win and how much work I thought it would take in terms of people and man hours etc. I told them: “You really don’t want one of my project managers coming into your department and your functional area, where that is not their expertise, and telling you here is what you have to do in your department to run the project successfully. What we need is somebody from your department who is the expert on what your department is capable of, what systems you use, etc. who can come to the table and sit with the project team whenever we win a new contract.”

Were they all in favor of this idea?

It was a little bit of a debate but it did not take a lot of convincing. Other than nobody had people: “Well, I like the idea but I don’t have any extra people.” And it was true, they were not lying to me. It was a small company at that time. 

So how did you convince them that Subject Matter Experts were essential? 

We decided that there were 74 distinct functional areas that were impacted whenever we won a new contract. And we picked the top twelve. I went to the executive leadership team and I said that I needed twelve positions that I could give out to these twelve departments. The deal that I would make with the heads of the departments was the following: “You need to take your smartest person and put them in the Subject Matter Expert position for your department. Then you can take the extra position and fill it in to replace them. But the first priority of the SME is to work on company’s projects. They have to say yes to me when I call. If I don’t have enough work to keep them busy you may use them to do whatever you want in your department but you should only put them on things that can go to the back burner in case I call. Because I can never get the answer ‘Oh, I’d really like to work on your project but my boss has me working on something else’. In order for this to work we all have to agree that growth is the number one priority of the company and for these 12 people their first job has to be growth.” So everybody agreed to that and that is how we sourced these positions. 

Upcoming in the next part of the interview: implementation of project management tools, application process for the PMO of the Year Award candidates.

The interview was conducted in January 2015.

Sarina Arcari

Drawing upon more than two decades of managed healthcare and project management experience, Sarina assures delivery of a $4+billion dollar enterprise-wide new business implementation portfolio for WellPoint’s Government Business Division. Sarina is a member of PMI, a PMP® credential holder since 2008, founding
leader of one of the 2014 PMI PMO of the Year Award Finalists, member of the 2015 PMI LIMC, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the PMI Hampton Roads Chapter.

Marta Bobińska

Kierownik projektów wdrożeniowych, wiodący konsultant TenStep Polska w zakresie wdrożeń zarządzania projektami, portfelami i budowy PMO. Zajmuje się również optymalizacją procesów, harmonogramowaniem hybrydowym i zarządzaniem zmianą. Prowadziła warsztaty i konsultacje dla Klientów takich jak KGHM Polska Miedź SA, GAZ-SYSTEM SA, Bonduelle, AFIB Vistula, Ministerstwo Skarbu Państwa, Ministerstwo Spraw Wewnętrznych. Absolwentka Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego oraz studiów podyplomowych z zakresu zarządzania projektami. Doktorant w anglojęzycznym programie Kolegium Gospodarki Światowej w Szkole Głównej Handlowej, Doctoral Programme in Management and Economics. W wolnych chwilach dzieli się przemyśleniami na temat stanu zarządzania projektami w Polsce i na świecie na blogu (martabobinska.pmblog.pl).

Podobne artykuły

Strefa Wywiadu

Visible by Design

Alexander Sheludenkov

Strefa Recenzji

A Practical Guide to Mastering Change in Life and Business

Kamila Czerniak

Strefa PMI PC

PMP Study Group 2025 – w grupie siła!

Alicja Szwak

Strefa Wiedzy

Dancing with Change: Embodying Transformation in the AI Era

Agnieszka Maria Gasperini