Project Angels - News

July 2008 - What's new?

Best Practice Showcase – 24th June 2008

This was the 6th annual event, taking place at the QE II Centre, Westminster. Sue Vowler spoke in her role as Lead Author for OGC’s new guidance on portfolio, programme and project offices (P3O – for more details see below). She also took part in a new session “Ask the Author” – where delegates were able to pose their questions to a panel of OGC Authors including PRINCE2, M_O_R, MSP, P3M3 and P3O.

You can download Sue’s Best Practice 2008 P3O slides (this is a Powerpoint file and may take a little while to download).

Alternatively, if you would like to find out more, go to the website www.bestpracticeshowcase.com.

Coming soon - Portfolio, Programme and Project Office Guidance (P3OTM) – Lead Author

There is currently no single place that either organisations or individuals can go to find advice on setting up and running effective delivery “support” offices in alignment with OGC best practice in PPM. OGC have decided to fill this gap in both the market and its current portfolio of products by developing a set of guidance covering Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices (P3OTM).

The proposed P3OTM guidance will fulfil a number of key objectives:

To enhance and pull together in one place the existing published OGC guidance on roles and responsibilities of support offices
To provide the basis for training and qualifications at a number of different levels
To produce a set of publications that clearly aligns with PRINCE2, MSP and M_O_R, and where appropriate with ITIL

Sue Vowler was invited to act as Lead Author for the new publication and the project is currently on target to meet the publication date of September 2008, to be followed by new qualifications in P3O. The publication is currently undergoing extensive review by the P3O practitioner community.

The project has been challenging for a number of reasons:

The overall OGC best practice portfolio is also undergoing a major revamp and P3O has to align with both current and emerging standards. MSP, M_O_R and Gateway were all refreshed in 2007; PRINCE2 and P3M3 are both undergoing a major rewrite in 2008. Portfolio Guidance and Sponsor Briefings material are being developed for release in 2008 alongside P3O. This has meant the authoring team playing a key review role on all other OGC refreshes to ensure emerging best practice is captured and documented.
Everyone has a different view of what a portfolio, programme and project office model should look like, where it should report and the services it should offer – we are in effect setting a standard for others to follow so it was essential to consult widely.

The P3O publication was recently presented at the Best Practice User Group Congress and Project Challenge and on both occasions there was standing room only, showing the level of interest this publication has excited. The slides from these presentations are attached for information.

There’s still time to contribute to this initiative as we continue to seek good practice examples of P3O documents, templates, tools etc, so if you would like to contribute or you’d just like to find out more, please call us or submit them by

Also if you want to get ahead of the game, then call us to review, re-energise or develop your P3O provision.

Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3)

OGC and APMG jointly hosted a review workshop of the P3M3 model in January 2007 and the overall conclusion was that P3M3 should be restructured and rewritten to make it easier to understand and apply. The model has now been revised and is currently undergoing review with a proposed publication date in June / July 2008.

A Maturity Model First for a Local Authority and Project Angels

Project Angels recently carried out the first formal Maturity Model assessment on a local authority to be carried out in the UK. The local authority were successful in gaining a level 3 maturity in both project management and their implementation of PRINCE2 as their tailored project method. The assessment was the culmination of 18 months hard work by the whole department(with coaching from Project Angels) and the adoption of a revised project culture.

Do you want your Sponsors / SROs to be world class?

We are passionate about equipping Sponsors and SROs to deliver their roles and over the last 2 years Sue Vowler has been working with the Home Office Centre of Excellence to develop a set of 4 linked executive briefings to ensure Sponsors deliver their role more effectively. The pilots have proved highly effective and APM Group have now adopted the approach and materials to roll out a generic Sponsor level qualification. This initiative will be formally launched in the next couple of months.

Sponsors, Senior Responsible Owners (SRO), Project Executives and key Project Board members all make important contributions to the successful delivery of programmes and projects. However, the development of these roles is often ignored in setting up change programmes and it is assumed that these usually quite senior managers do not need help with their roles. Focused training is part of the answer, but some Sponsors may benefit from a more personalised tailored approach.

How can Project Angels help?

Our people are used to engaging with senior managers and appreciate the challenges they face. We are practising programme and project professionals and we aim to improve performance not by doing it ourselves for an organisation but by a tailored approach to knowledge transfer through training, mentoring and coaching. A full time Sponsor / SRO is a luxury few organisations can afford, so a pragmatic balance between the Sponsor / SRO role and the day job is essential. We can work with you to help you shape your role to fit the time you are able to commit, whether it be 5% or 50%.

If you are a Sponsor or SRO and have been given a challenging project or programme to deliver, looking at that blank piece of paper at the beginning can be daunting. We work with you through a scoping meeting and workshops to turn your ideas into practice, developing objectives and outcomes / benefits, defining scope, understanding and engaging stakeholders, bringing clarity to organisation and governance, supported by a realistic high level plan and start-up documentation.

Critical Friend – Programme or Project Conscience role

Many of our clients come to us because they have been asked to run a large change programme which is more complex or risky than they have run before, it may be mission critical or entail a large degree of business or cultural change. We work with you in a critical friend or programme conscience role, helping you to be successful. We provide a tailored service of practical hands on support through facilitated workshops, team building events and provision of tailored templates to mobilise your programme, followed by ongoing mentoring and coaching.

Once the programme is mobilised we build on the trust and relationships we have developed, providing ongoing support to the whole team through advice and guidance, chairing of (or attendance at) progress meetings, facilitated workshops, resolution of critical issues, healthchecks and support for external audits / Gateway Reviews. A notable success has been the provision of regular independent “stock takes” whereby a helicopter view of the programme’s progress is undertaken with a drill down into key issues of the day.

We have been there, done it and got a whole wardrobe of T-shirts so we understand the pitfalls of embarking on a complex change programme. We put in place a set of pragmatic controls, ensure the right team is assembled and that stakeholders are engaged and communicated with. In short – setting you up to be a success.

If your team or programme would benefit from the above approach please contact us for an initial discussion of how we could help.

We can provide recent references where this service has been highly effective.

Graduates and Project and Programme Management

Are you a new graduate trying to get into Project or Programme Management? If you are, Project Angels will be happy to mentor and coach you in your first Project or Programme Management role for free. We can do this via email, telephone or we would be happy to meet up with you periodically and review what you are doing and offer some best practice advice and guidance.

Why are we happy to do this? We believe that there is a dearth of really good project and programme managers in the UK and we also remember what it was like ourselves when trying to break into this area of work. The recommended entry route is usually via a project or programme support role, leading to a more senior role as project or programme manager.

Despite probably millions of pounds expended on training each year by small and large corporate bodies in the UK, we believe that there is not enough project management training in the UK that adds real value to the careers of project or programme support staff and project and programme managers trying to make their way in this tough and often demanding area of work.

If you would like free mentoring and coaching, contact Stephen Edwards on 01189 890507 or by