Interview conducted by Szymon Pawłowski with Jane Holden and Rose Ann Radosevic, 2013 PMO of the Year Award Winner, Canada Health Infoway during PMO Symposium 2013, November 13-15th, San Diego
Could you tell us a couple of words about Canada Health Infoway, the way the business is done and the beginnings of the PMO in Infoway.
Canada Health Infoway is an independent, not-for-profit corporation that is funded by the national government of Canada, but we work in partnership with all of the thirteen provinces and territories, so we really are almost like a cooperative in that sense. Because our core business is investing in projects and most of our executives come from project backgrounds, they already were quite convinced that there would be the need for a PMO. So we were lucky we did not need to do the usual convincing that a lot of PMO Directors have to do to get authorization to establish a PMO. It was accepted as a fact of life at Infoway that we needed a PMO, in the same way that we needed a financial system and a telephone system. It was that basic.
Did you implement the PMO on your own, or did you have some consultancy, benchmarks or other external know-how?
We did it ourselves, because of our own professional backgrounds. I came from a long background in project management and consulting myself. I worked at a number of other organizations including PricewaterhouseCoopers, so I was pretty experienced already. Similarly I hired Rose Ann about six months after I joined Infoway and she also had experience in establishing a PMO in a much larger company, a major national Canadian retailer. So, yes, we did it ourselves.
How would you describe the main value your PMO provides to the organization?
I think (Jane) we bring value to several areas of the organization but especially to the senior management. By having a process framework in place, we increase the likelihood that our investments will be successful. Our framework has built in enough structure and due diligence at the beginning of the project lifecycle that we only let really qualified projects get through that filter. So we’ve had very few project cancellations. Even on a project that was qualified, if the risk profile is not looking good and we need to take some corrective action, our reports and our processes flag that very early to senior management and allow them time to take action.
Szymon Pawłowski
During your presentation I’ve seen that you show us some data comparing your project results to the results in the health care industry and in IT generally, and it seems that your performance is pretty good. What do you think is the main factor for this success?
I think there are a lot of factors. One is our due diligence process which has very clear requirements about what constitutes an acceptable project for investment. We are careful to make sure that we only invest in projects that have really solid foundations. We also have detailed investment program strategies which have to be approved by our Board of Directors, so we’ve done a lot of research ahead of time to understand what are the right investments for us. So we are not approving one-off projects – all our projects are part of a unified program approach. Another factor in our success is our responsibility to be very transparent. Because we are publicly funded, we have to be transparent and accountable, and we are subject to many audits. We also receive something called access to information requests. I don’t know if you have this in Poland, but we certainly do in Canada, where any member of the public can file a request to ask for information about us. So we know that we have a lot of eyes looking at us, so we make sure that we are very careful about what we decide to invest in.
So, could you tell us some best practices in implementing your PMO for Polish project managers and PMO staff.
The top one is senior management support. You must have at least one and preferably all of the senior management team who are strong believers in the PMO and are willing to put some of their personal credibility on the line to visibly and vocally support the PMO. If you don’t have the support of at least one influential person in the senior management team, you need to stop until you get that. And the way you get that is to figure out, as a PMO director, how can the PMO help that individual be more successful. And if you are able to achieve that, what will happen is that individual’s peers at the senior management table will want to leverage the PMO’s help as well. Of course, as I said earlier, we were lucky that we didn’t have that challenge at Infoway, because all the senior management team had already accepted the need for a PMO.
Second, I think, is to have an advisory group of your stakeholders. You don’t want to be the group that sits in the corner somewhere, magically inventing all of these tools and processes and then just imposing them on the project managers. That will never work. You want to create an environment, where the project managers and the other affected stakeholders, such as people in your Finance department, your IT department, and others in your organization, are part of the definition of the solution as well.
The third is the technology. Have the right technology but don’t get too much, don’t get too little, but most of all don’t implement it until you have got your processes figured out. A lot of organizations make a mistake. They think „I do not have good project management so I’m just going to buy a tool and that will solve my problem”. It does not work. You have to have the processes first. Rose Ann talked about how we were able to do the first phase of our project portfolio management solution implementation very quickly – just three months from solution acquisition to going live. She and her team worked extremely hard to make that happen, but a big factor was that they were able to incorporate the processes that the teams were already using, were already comfortable with and we incorporated them in the new system. So we minimized the extent of the change for them. It was very successful.
Now you are the PMO of the Year, congratulations once again. So how did you happen to take part in the contest? Who came up with an idea?
A few years ago we were really at the point in our PMO maturity where we wanted to be more of a partner within the organization. We had reached a number of expectations in terms of the processes and the technology and wanted to see what more we could contribute to the organization. We thought it would be good to get external visibility for Infoway for the work we were doing, so we looked at the idea of the PMO of The Year and also the Project of The Year. We considered a couple of those award processes through PMI. As I mentioned during our presentation, we are a PMI Registered Education Provider and our team includes a number of PMP-certified people, so we do follow the PMI framework quite extensively. We basically decided that we were pretty proud of our PMO, we think it is terrific and we were getting a lot of positive feedback both internally and externally so we thought why not give it a try? So, as a team, we pulled together the application leveraging our people, processes and technologies as enablers, and here we are today.
You’ve shown us your way to become the best in PMO. What do you think was the biggest obstacle in your way to become the PMO of The Year?
I would say the biggest challenge we probably had was related to the fact that we do have very senior project managers at Infoway and in general it is very mature organization in terms of the people so, even though we had senior management support, we absolutely had to prove our value. This is typical for any organization and it is not just the initial implementation but sustaining it throughout. So, it’s a matter of coming up with ideas to evolve to stay current with the business’s needs. Our processes need to adjust, the technology needs to adjust. I think it is not a case of sitting down and saying „OK, we finished, we did it”, but rather looking forward and saying „OK, what we can do in the next year to that would make a difference”. That is probably the biggest area that we looked at.
Executive Director, Investment Programs Management at Canada Health Infoway. Jane is a chartered accountant with over 20 years experience leading multi-disciplinary teams in complex project, program and portfolio management. She is a specialist in the design and implementation of project/program/portfolio management oces. Jane leads a department comprising the Portfolio Management Oce (winner of PMI’s 2013 “PMO of the Year” Award), the enterprise-wide Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution, the Metrics & Reporting group and the Investment Programs team. These business units govern, monitor and report on an investment portfolio totalling nearly 400 projects with a value of $2.1 billion.
Group Director, Investment Portfolio Management at Canada Health Infoway. She has held several progressive management positions in private and publicly funded organizations and in the health care and retail sectors. She has a track record of establishing high performing teams including developing the team, processes and tools for the PMO that won the prestigious 2013 PMO of the Year award from the Project Management Institute. Ms. Radosevic holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts and a Masters Certificate in Project Management. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) who is committed to professional and personal excellence, for herself and her team members.
[PL] Były redaktor naczelny Strefy PMI. Konsultant, trener, mentor i kierownik projektów z wieloletnim doświadczeniem we wdrażaniu rozwiązań z zakresu zarządzania projektami, portfelami, PMO i ryzykiem. Obecnie pracuje jako PPM Architect w PeopleCert, rozwijając standardy zarządzania spod znaku AXELOS (PRINCE2, MSP, MoP, MoR itd.) Pasjonat zarządzania projektami, ciągłego doskonalenia i dzielenia się wiedzą. Prywatnie – miłośnik górskich i leśnych wędrówek, żeglowania, książek, czarnej kawy i czerwonego wina.
[ENG] Former editor-in-chief of Strefa PMI. Consultant, trainer, mentor, and project manager with many years of experience in implementing solutions in the field of project management, portfolios, PMO and risk. Currently works as a PPM Architect in PeopleCert, developing AXELOS’ PPM suite of standards (PRINCE2, MSP, MoP, MoR etc.). Passionate about project management, continuous improvement and knowledge sharing. Privately – a lover of mountain and forest hiking, sailing, books, black coffee and red wine.