Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Turn planning into action with a realistic PMO timeline.

EXECUTIVE BRIEF

Analyst Perspective

Prepare an actionable roadmap for your PMO.

We all have junk drawers somewhere in our homes, and we probably try not to think about what’s going on in there. We’re just happy that they close and that the contents are concealed from anyone living in or passing through the house.

What goes in these junk drawers? Things that don’t have a home, things you don’t know what to do with, and things you don’t have the time or desire to deal with. Eventually, the drawer gets full, and it doesn’t serve you anymore because you can’t add anything else to it. Instead of cleaning the drawer and keeping the things you need, you throw everything away in one sweep. One day you will start the process again.

The junk drawer is like your project management office (PMO). The PMO is given projects that are barely scoped, projects that don’t have clear sponsors, and ad hoc administrative tasks you don’t have the time or desire to deal with. Inevitably, your PMO is out of capacity. This happens rather quickly, since it’s understaffed. You question its purpose because you made it a junk drawer. You even think about closing it. One day you will start the process again.

Use this blueprint to stop the madness. Learn how to properly define, staff, and plan a roadmap of a PMO that will actually serve your organization.

Ugbad Farah, PMP
Senior Research Analyst, PPM
Info-Tech Research Group

Your challenge

This research is designed to help organizations that are facing these challenges:

• No visibility into projects
• The organization views the PMO as unnecessary overhead
• The PMO is not properly staffed to support the organization’s needs
• Project managers/staff aren’t providing information or following processes
• Leadership and sponsors are disengaged

IT is responsible for many different business services. The data from Info-Tech’s IT Staffing diagnostic shows that 11.5% of staff time is spent on projects and project portfolio management. (Source: Info-Tech IT Staffing Benchmark Report)

PMOs can’t do everything and be all things to all people. Define limits with a strong mandate and effective staffing. Make sure you have the skills and capacity to support required PMO functions.

Project management chaos

PMOs get pulled into the day-to-day project and resourcing issues, making it difficult to focus on running a portfolio:

1. Teammates seem unphased by overdue tasks and missed milestones.
2. Fire drills may happen more often than planned projects.
3. Resources are allocated and then redirected to something more urgent.
4. Communication that’s stuck in silos, leading to confusion about priorities.
5. Due dates mysteriously shift without explanation.
6. Project teams are more focused on the due date than adoption and outcomes.

Common obstacles

IT and PMO leaders face several challenges.

• Many people see the PMO as nothing more than the “project document police,” i.e. a source of red tape rather than a helpful support system. This impacts staffing and hiring.
• The PMO is often misunderstood as a center for project management governance, when it also needs to facilitate the communication of project data from project teams to decision makers to ensure that appropriate decisions get made around resourcing, approval of new projects, etc.
• Accountability is something that is not clearly defined for many activities that flow through the PMO. Business leaders, project workers, and project managers are rarely as aligned as they need to be.

The Reality

68% — Sixty-eight percent of stakeholders see their PMOs as sources of unnecessary bureaucratic red tape. (Source: KeyedIn, 2014)

50% — Fifty percent of PMOs close within the first three years due to such things as poorly defined mandates and poor leadership. (Source: KeyedIn, 2014)

Info-Tech’s approach

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Get a departmental job description first. Defining your PMO may not be as simple as it seems. Explore the boundaries of portfolio, project, resource, and organizational change management before jumping ahead with processes and tools.
2. The staffing plan should come before your long-term plan. Get buy-in around your definition of the roles needed to run your PMO before articulating a long-term plan. Too often, plans have been accepted without the commensurate level of staffing. Our approach gives you a chance to put hiring on the roadmap as a predecessor to accountability.
3. Keep your eye on the ball. Build your PMO around the operational imperative to recognize completed projects as an early milestone in broader changes. In other words, projects exist to create change.

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for your PMO

Turn planning into action with a realistic PMO timeline.

50% of PMOs close within the first 3 years.

01 Define DEFINE THE RIGHT KIND OF PMO Establish the purpose of your PMO. Identify organizational needs to fill in gaps instead of duplicating efforts. LOGICAL FALLACY “If we approve more work, we'll get more done.” A properly run portfolio reconciles demand (project requests) to supply (available people) and drives throughput by approving the amount of projects that can get done.	02 Staff STAFF THE PMO FOR RESILIENCE Analyze the staffing requirements for your PMOs mandate. Create purpose-built role descriptions. FALSE ASSUMPTION “Our best project manager should run the PMO.” Your best project manager should be running projects and, no, they shouldn't do both.	03 Plan PREPARE AN ACTIONABLE ROADMAP The difference in a winning PMO is determined by a roadmap or plan created at the beginning. Leaders should understand the full scope of the plan before committing their teams to the project. COMMON MISTAKE “We'll get great at project management now and worry about portfolio management later.” Too often, PMOs focus on project management rigor and plan to do portfolio management after that's done. But few successfully maintain the process long enough to get there. If you start with portfolio management, leadership might soften their demands for project management rigor.	04 Execute ALIGN TO STRATEGIC PLAN Use the power of organizational change management to ensure success and adoption. Iterate through the finer points of planning and execution to deploy the kind of PMO defined in step 1, with the people described in step 2, and the strategic roadmap articulated in step 3. PROJECT MYOPIA “Let's focus on delivering the project on time so we can move on to our next project.” Don't forget why the idea got approved in the first place. The goal is to sustain beneficial business outcomes well beyond the completion of your project.

Info-Tech’s methodology for Preparing an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Insight summary

Overarching insight

There is a gap in the perception of the actual role of the PMO in many organizations by different stakeholder groups. Many people see the PMO police that produce red tape rather than a helpful support system. Those that need to present a coherent plan to leadership championing the need for a PMO often have an uphill battle.

Phase 1 insight

Determine the PMO’s role and needs and then determine your staff needs based on that PMO.

PMO leaders are all too often set up to fail, left to make successes out of PMOs that:

1. have poorly defined mandates;
2. lack the proper resourcing to support the services the organization requires; or
3. lack executive leadership, vision, and backing.

Phase 2 insight

Staff the PMO according to its actual role and needs. Don’t rush to the assumption that PMO staff starts with accomplished project managers.

Many organizations have PMOs of one person, and it is simply not a long-term recipe for success. People in this situation have a lot of weight on their shoulders and feel like they are being set up to fail. It is very challenging for anyone to run a PMO alone without support or administrative help.

Phase 3 insight

The difference in a winning PMO is determined by a roadmap or plan created at the beginning.

When you are determining what your PMO will provide in the future, it is important to align the ambition of the PMO with the maturity of the business. Too often, a lot of effort is spent trying to convince businesses of the value of a PMO.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

PMO Role Definition Tool				PMO Project Charter Template
Blank Job Description Template		Sample Job Descriptions		PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

PMO Strategic Plan

PMO MS Project Plan Sample

Organizational Change Impact Analysis Tool

Benefits

IT Benefits

• Determine how you can fill gaps and not duplicate efforts to bring value to your organization.
• Ensure that key PMO capabilities like portfolio management, project management, and organizational change management are in balance.
• Staffing is purpose-driven. Avoid putting good people in the wrong role.

Business Benefits

• Intake and governance have a primary focus and are not merely afterthoughts of someone primarily focused on project management methodology.
• Avoid unrealistic commitments by ensuring better upfront analysis of ability to execute.
• Ensure appropriately mandated sponsor management.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Phase 1

• Call #1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
• Call #2: Assess current state and determine PMO role/type.
• Call #3: Complete job description survey.

Phase 2

• Call #4: Analyze survey results and complete FTE analysis.
• Call #5: Discuss necessary roles and create job descriptions.

Phase 3

• Call #6: Discuss business goals and priorities.
• Call #7: Identify and prioritize initiatives on roadmap.
• Call #8: Discuss governance and organizational change.
• Call #9: Summarize results in strategic plan and discuss next steps.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com1-888-670-8889

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Phase 1

Define the Right Kind of PMO

A PMO may not simply be an office of project managers

Project management offices are evolving and taking on activities that differ from company to company.

Organizations are confused about what a PMO is, whether they should have one, and what it should do

PMBOK

The responsibilities of a PMO can range from providing project management support functions to the direct management of one or more projects. The PMO is an organizational body assigned with various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of those projects under its domain.

The PMO may play a role in supporting strategic alignment and delivering organizational value, integrating data and information for organizational strategic projects, and evaluating how higher-level strategic objectives are being fulfilled.

COBIT

The PMO can be responsible for portfolio maintenance, setting a standard approach for project and program and portfolio management.

OPM

The PMO is an organizational body assigned with various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of those projects under its domain.

In an effort to set a standard, the governance frameworks have over complicated it for most of us.

Use Info-Tech’s framework to create the PMO that works for your organization

Determine the Services Your PMO Will Provide Manage your PMO services in alignment with your mandate and your organization’s needs. Establish Your PMO’s Mandate Figure out the purpose of your PMO and write it down so it’s clear to your leadership. Align your mandate to the organization’s needs. Ensure Organizational Needs Are Being Met Before you can decide on what your PMO will do, find out who’s doing what in your organization so you can fill gaps instead of duplicating efforts.

Hierarchy of PMO Needs

Info-Tech Insight

Consider the principles of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which view the lower tiers of the hierarchy as fundamentally required to validate the pursuit of the higher tiers.

Step 1.1

Get a Common Understanding of Your PMO Options

Activities

• 1.1.1 Review PMO Types
• 1.1.2 SWOT Analysis

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Review Info-Tech’s PMO Types
• Complete a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats Analysis

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO director and/or portfolio manager
• PMO staff/stakeholders
• Project managers

Outcomes of this step

• Current state analysis

People mistake the PMO as only an office with project managers

It sounded simple enough, but no one could really explain what it meant.

PMOs are often born out of necessity or desperation. A traumatic event happens, and leadership decides that it wouldn’t have happened had there been a “Project Management Office.” The phrase itself is often quite reassuring and offers the hope of some sort of sanity and order.

People may not really be able to explain what a PMO is, but they do have a common understanding that it should solve all project management issues. But simply prescribing the “PMO” as a remedy for every organizational alignment is not going to be sufficient. There are different types of PMOs and more importantly there are different types of organizations.

Google and the Google logo are trademarks of Google LLC.

The PMI has described what a PMO could be

The PMI does not have a standard for PMOs like it does for things like project, program, and portfolio management. Its PMO definitions should be used as more of a reference point than a best practice.

But what should it do?

• Supportive: Provides a consultative role to projects by supplying templates, best practices, training, access to information, and lessons learned from previous projects.
• Controlling: Provides support and requires compliance through various means.
• Directive: Takes control of the projects by directly executing them.

The PMI described three types of PMOs. These three types are well known in the industry, but they are essentially characteristics and do little to help people understand the functions and services of a PMO. There continue to be questions about the role a PMO should play in an organization and how it’s supposed to add value.

Thousands of practitioners came together at the 2012 PMI Symposium and expanded upon PMBOK’s PMO types

1. Managing
   Manages the work in projects and programs.
2. Consulting
   Serves as an experience-based consultative body to project managers.
3. Project Repository
   Repository of previous project documentation, lessons learned, etc.
4. Enterprise PMO
   Provides PMO services to the organization.
5. Center of Excellence
   Creates the standard and methodologies and provides tools.
6. Managerial
   Manages the project and program managers, and eventually, other project resources.
7. Delivery
   Manages the project and programs.

1.1.1 Leverage Info-Tech’s PMO types to anchor yourself

We have narrowed it down to five types of PMOs.

ePMO	IT PMO	PMO	CMO	CoE
Enterprise Highest level PMO, typically responsible to align project and program work to strategy-significant projects or programs for the entire organization. Could include both IT and business units.	IT IT PMOs provide project-related support for IT project portfolios. For many organizations PMOs originate in IT departments because of the structure required for technology-related projects.	Project/Program Provides project-related tactical service as an entity to support a specific project or program. Can be dismantled when program is done.	Change Change management offices (CMO) help build change management capabilities and enable change readiness in organizations.	Excellence These centers differ in size and mode of organization, depending on their subject and scope. They support project work by providing the organizations with standard methodologies and tools.

What is your definition of a PMO?

Use this model to clearly show what is in and out of scope.

Use Info-Tech’s PMO function matrix to help provide role definitions for your PMO

Info-Tech’s potential PMO capabilities are in the header of the table below. These are the services a PMO may (or may not) provide depending on the needs of the organization.

The rest of this blueprint will help you choose the right capabilities and accompanying job functions for your PMO.

Various options for specific PMO job functions are listed below each capability. PMO leaders need to decide which of these functions are required for their organization.

1.1.2 SWOT analysis

Input: Current PMO governance documents and SOPs

Output: An assessment of current strengths, opportunities, threats, and weaknesses of capabilities in previous slide

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Sticky notes

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff/stakeholders, Project managers

Perform a SWOT analysis to assess the current state of PMO capabilities covered on the previous slide.

The purpose of the SWOT is to begin to define the goals of this implementation by assessing your project management, portfolio management, resource management, organizational change management, and governance capabilities and cultivating alignment around the most critical opportunities and challenges.

Follow these steps to complete the SWOT analysis:

1. Have participants discuss and identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
2. Spend roughly 60 minutes on this. Use a whiteboard, flip chart, or PowerPoint slide to document results of the discussion as points are made.
3. Make sure results are recorded and saved either using the template provided in the next slide or by taking a picture of the whiteboard or flip chart.

1.1.2 Sample SWOT analysis

Step 1.2

Determine Where You Are and Engage Your Leadership

Activities

• 1.2.1 Assess Current State
• 1.2.2 Gap Analysis
• 1.2.3 Vision Exercise
• 1.2.4 PMO Charter
• 1.2.5 Strategic Planning

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Assess the current state of your PPM/PM services using the PMO Role Definition Tool
• Determine current gaps in your services and processes using the PMO Role Definition Tool
• Discuss the vison for your PMO
• Start creating your PMO charter

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO director and/or portfolio manager
• PMO staff/stakeholders
• Project managers

Outcomes of this step

• Results of PMO Role Definition Tool
• PMO vision
• PMO charter

Define the Right Kind of PMO

Why do organizations need a PMO?

“If a company is not a project-oriented organization, there’s less of a need for a PMO. If they are project-focused though, they should have one. Otherwise, who’s driving the delivery of their projects? Who’s establishing their methodology? How are they managing resources efficiently?” (Mary Hubbard, PMP, director of the PMO at Siemens Government Technologies Inc., A PMI Global Executive Council Member)

Signs you might need a PMO:

• A lack of project transparency.
• Significant discrepancies in project results.
• Poor customer satisfaction rates.
• An inability to cost projects accurately.
• A high percentage of delayed or cancelled projects.
• High project failure rates.
• Poor alignment of project activity and business strategy investments.
• Inconsistent project management processes and methodologies.
• A lack of collaboration and knowledge sharing.
• Little to no resource training to meet IT and business needs.
• A lack of resource management for utilization and capacity.
• Little to no visibility into project, program, and portfolio-level status.

Why does your organization need a PMO?

Observe the needs of your organization before deciding on services to support it. Observe what is and what is not in place. Look for existing processes, tools, and systems and evidence that they are being followed. You might already have some pieces in place; the question becomes what to keep and what not to keep. What does your organization look like? Name Population Current Project Lifecycle IT Services Team # of Unique Applications Annual Budget Gather a list of potential areas for improvement where a PMO can add value. Once a list is established, convert it to a prioritized queue of initiatives. A key item on your list should be how projects go from beginning to end so you can understand the potential issues and opportunities with your current project delivery.

Ideally, we wouldn’t invest in project, portfolio, or OCM because they’re overhead processes without any direct value…

…but you need to spend just enough to demonstrate you are a diligent steward of the assets under your administration.

Define your PMO’s role in the organization

Use Info-Tech’s PMO Role Definition Tool to help establish your PMO’s future state.

• Use Info-Tech’s PMO Role Definition Tool to figure out the functions your PMO should provide.
• The current-state analysis uses specific questions to assess how you are doing things now and provide you with some situational awareness.
• The gap analysis uses another set of specific questions to uncover the holes in your organization and the services that are not being provided.
• Based on the answers you gave to the questions, the tool will populate the functions that your PMO should provide to your organization: the services your organization needs.
• Use the outputs to start looking into missing functions and ultimately start building or re-establishing the responsibilities of your PMO.
• Consider having multiple team members answer all the questions to establish alignment and get realistic data.

Download the PMO Role Definition Tool

Hey, you don’t to have to spend anything on portfolio, project, and organizational change management! Assuming of course…

Use the tool on the next slide to see where you may need to spend.

1.2.1 Assess the current state of your project environment

20-30 minutes

Input: Understanding of current project portfolio environment

Output: Completed current state survey

Materials: Tab 1 of Info-Tech’s PMO Role Definition Tool

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff/stakeholders, Project managers

Screenshot from tab 1 of Info-Tech’s PMO Role Definition Tool.

There are 20 current-state questions in column C. Together, the questions address the five capabilities in Info-Tech’s PMO function matrix (slide 28).

Use the drop-down menu in column D to answer Agree, Somewhat Agree, Neutral, Somewhat Disagree, or Disagree to each question in column C.

The questions are broad by design. Answer them honestly and select “neutral” if anything is not applicable.

1.2.2 Set your target state needs to identify gaps

15-30 minutes

Input: Reflection on the question, “If I/We do nothing, someone in the organization is…”

Output: Completed target state survey

Materials: Tab 2 of Info-Tech’s PMO Role Definition Tool

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff/stakeholders, Project managers

Screenshot from tab 2 of Info-Tech’s PMO Role Definition Tool.

Each question in column C of tab 2 should be answered in the context of, “If I do nothing, someone in the organization is…”

Answer each question by using the drop-down menu in column D to select “Yes,” “No,” “I don’t know,” or “N/A.”

If “Yes” include the department or area that is responsible.

Review the preliminary list of your potential PMO functions

Tab 3 of the PMO Role Definition Tool contains a customized version of Info-Tech’s PMO definition matrix, based upon your inputs in the previous two tabs.

The name of the box is the group the function belongs to.

These outputs are based on the answers to the questions on the previous 2 tabs.

In each group’s box are high-level recommendations.

Consider your stakeholders

Who benefits from the new or updated PMO structure?

In a matrix environment, understanding the challenges other teams are facing is a core requirement of an effective PMO. The best way to understand this is through direct engagement like conducting interviews and taking surveys with management and members of other teams.

Ask yourself these questions about your PMO:

• Are we doing the right things?
• Do we know the current status of projects?
• Are we managing, escalating, and resolving project issues?
• Do PMs have the right training?
• What is our overall utilization?

A PMO should be structured to provide service to the organization. View it as a business, serving the stakeholders.

1.2.3 Complete this vision exercise to produce an initial mandate for a new/improved PMO

45-60 minutes

Input: Outputs from SWOT analysis

Output: An initial PMO mandate

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Sticky notes

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff/stakeholders, Project managers

Now that you have an idea of the services your organization needs from steps 1.1 and 1.2 of this blueprint, you can discuss the target state of your PMO.

Follow these steps to complete the SWOT analysis:

1. Each person writes one aspect of a future state that would solve the issues described in the SWOT analysis (activity 1.1.1). Use sticky notes and post them on the whiteboard.
2. As a group, identify which of these aspects would be good candidates for embodying the “core element” of your PMO’s new mandate.
3. From the aspects gathered, have everyone individually come up with a statement of one to two sentences they think captures the overall theme and vision of this PMO.
4. Collectively choose the best statement to use as the working mandate for your new project management office. This mandate can be modified as needed in the time leading up the creation and launch of your PMO.

1.2.4 Use Info-Tech’s PMO Project Charter template to help capture your mandate and obtain approval

3-4 hours

Input: Activity 1.2.3, Logical considerations for PMO deployment (see bulleted list on this slide)

Output: An assessment of current strengths, opportunities, threats, and weaknesses of capabilities in previous slide

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Sticky notes

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff/stakeholders, Project managers

A successful PMO will offer a range of services which business units can rely on. The aim of the PMO charter is to outline what is in scope for the PMO and what services it will initially offer.

A project charter serves several important functions. It organizes the project so you can make efficient and effective resource allocation decisions. It also communicates important details about the project purpose, scope definition, and project parameters.

To use this template, simply modify or delete all information in grey text and convert the remaining text to black before printing or sending. Sections within the Template include:

1. PMO Mandate
2. Goals & Benefits
3. Scope Definition
4. Key PMO Stakeholders
5. Projected Timeline for Implementation
6. Project Roles and Responsibilities
7. High-Level Budget
8. High-Level Risk Assessment

Download the PMO Project Charter Template

Engage leadership to refine target-state expectations

? Will project managers be included in the PMO? Which projects and programs will be in the PMO’s mandate?

? Will the PMO have decision-making authority? If so, how much and on what issues?

? Where in the organizational structure will the PMO report?

“Changing the perception of project management from ‘busy work’ to ‘valued efforts’ is easier when the PMO is properly aligned.” (Project Management Institute, October 2009)

Don’t assume your PMO is merely tactical

It can help drive strategy instead of just being a technical arm.

Strategic		Tactical
Strategic Alignment Leadership assumes that your presence will optimize the alignment of projects to corporate strategy.		Process Adherence Leadership assumes you’re all about process.
Portfolio Thinking Leadership assumes that you’re thinking about the overall throughput of projects through the portfolio.		Project Thinking Leadership assumes you’re not thinking beyond the boundaries of a single project at any given time.
Outcomes Focused Leadership assumes that you’re focused on the outcomes forecast by sponsors.		Timeline Focused Leadership assumes you’re focused on delivering projects on time.

Info-Tech Insight

A key success factor for a PMO is to take part of strategic conversations; when they are left out, it creates a barrier. The PMO is the connective tissue between strategy and tactics. Don’t risk your benefits by not having the PMO Director at the table before you make decisions.

Avoid the disconnect

Create a strategic plan with project professionals at the table.

• Strategic plans should guide organizations to future states, yet many don’t ever get used. This is because there is a disconnect between the people creating the strategic plan and the people being asked to implement it. Strategic planners don’t often develop their plans with the help of project managers who can ensure the plan is transferred into a working operational plan.
• Strategic planners are broad thinkers with high-level plans whereas project professionals often work in the trenches. The disconnect between the two can often result in cost overruns, delays in implementation, low worker morale, and an overall chaotic work environment.
• By putting strategic planners and project managers together to work on the strategic planning process, they can see what the other sees and plan accordingly.
• Twenty-seven percent more projects are executed successfully when a company’s structure and resources align with their strategy (KPMG, 2017).

“The failure to build a bridge between the strategic planning process and project management’s planning process is a major reason strategic plans don’t work.” (Bruce McGraw, Project/Programme Manager)

1.2.5 Strategic planning

To create a strategic plan that provides value, recognize that the strategic plan for the PMO is not the PMO charter.

• The PMO charter is the organizational mandate for the PMO. It defines the role, purpose and functions of the PMO. It articulates who the PMO's sponsors and customers are, the services that it offers, and the staffing and support structures required to deliver those services. And, it assumes that a decision to have a PMO has already been made.
• A strategic plan enables the PMO to play an essential role in achieving a company’s business goals, setting out clear objectives and then providing a roadmap on how to achieve them. A strategic plan maps the tools and resources necessary to achieve successful project outcomes.

To create a results-driven strategic plan for your PMO, it is helpful to follow a top-down format:

• Start by going through the list on the right and update the strategic plan.
• What are the top project-related issues and opportunities you want your PMO to address and what’s the value to the business of trusting them?

Vision: this needs to be a vivid and common image
Mission: this is the special assignment that is given to a group
Goals: these are broad statements of future conditions
Objectives: these are operational statements that indicate how much and by when (e.g. deliverables or intangible objectives like productivity)
Strategies: these are the set of actions that need to take place
Needs: these are the things required to carry out the strategy
Critical Success Factors: these are the key areas of activity in which favorable results are necessary to reach the goal

Download the PMO Strategic Plan

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Phase 2

Staff Your PMO for Resilience

Info-Tech’s approach

Follow our two-step approach to successfully staff your PMO.

1. Determine your PMO staffing needs.
   Our approach to building a PMO starts by analyzing the staffing requirements of your PMO mandate.
2. Create purpose-built role descriptions.
   Once you have an understanding of the staff and skills you’ll need to succeed, we have job description aids you’ll need to fill the roles.

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Save time developing a purpose-built approach. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to PMO staffing. The advice and tools in this research will help you quickly determine your unique staffing needs and guide your next steps to get the staffing you need.
2. Leverage insider research. We’ve worked with thousands of PMOs and have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of PMO staffing. The approach in this research is informed by client successes and will help you avoid the common mistakes that drive PMO failure.

IT staff allocation for project work

Projects and Project Portfolio Management

58.3% — 58% of respondents feel they have the appropriate staffing level to execute project management effectively. (Source: Info-Tech IT Staffing Benchmark Report)

59.8% — 59% feel they have the appropriate staffing level to execute requirements gathering effectively. (Source: Info-Tech IT Staffing Benchmark Report)

The GDP contributions from project-oriented industries are forecasted to reach $20.2 trillion over the next 20 years. (Source: “Project Management: Job Growth and Talent Gap” Project Management Institute, 2017)

Info-Tech Insight

Project work is only going to increase, and in general, people are dissatisfied with their current staffing levels.

Step 2.1

Identify Organizational Design

Activities

• 2.1.1 Right, Wrong, Missing, Confusing
• 2.1.2 Map Your Current Structure
• 2.1.3 Inventory Assessment
• 2.1.4 Job Description Survey

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Complete a Right, Wrong, Missing, Confusing analysis
• Determine your current organizational/PMO structure
• Assess your current inventory
• Complete the job description survey

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO director and/or portfolio manager
• PMO staff/stakeholders
• Project managers

Outcomes of this step

• Current-state analysis
• Job description survey results

Staff Your PMO for Resilience

2.1.1 Right, wrong, missing, confusing

30-45 minutes

Input: Current PMO process, Current PMO org. chart

Output: An assessment of current things that are being done right and wrong and what is currently missing and confusing

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Sticky notes

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

Perform a right, wrong, missing, confusing analysis to assess the current state of your PMO and its staff.

The purpose of this exercise is to begin to define the goals of this implementation by assessing your staffing capabilities and cultivating alignment around the most critical opportunities and challenges.

Follow these steps to complete the analysis:

1. Have participants discuss what is wrong, right, missing, and confusing.
2. Spend roughly 45 minutes on this. Use a whiteboard, flip chart, or PowerPoint slide to document results of the discussion as points are made.
3. Make sure results are recorded and saved by taking a picture of the whiteboard or flip chart.

Organizational types

1. Functional
   Functional organizations are structured around the functions the organization needs to be performed.
2. Projectized
   Projectized organizations are organized around projects for maximal project management effectiveness.
3. Matrix
   Matrix organizations have structures that blend the characteristics of functional and projectized organizations.

Functional organization

The traditional hierarchical organizational structure. Adapted from ProjectEngineer, 2019

Employees are organized by specialties like human resources, information technology, sales, marketing, administration, etc. The project management role will be performed by a team member of a functional area under the management of a functional manager. Resources for the project will need to be negotiated for with the functional managers, and the accessibility of those resources will be based on business conditions. Any escalations of issues would need to be taken to the functional manager. The project management role would act more like a project coordinator who does not usually carry the title of project manager. Project management is considered a part-time responsibility. Of all the organizational types, this one tends to be the most difficult for the project manager. The project manager lacks the authority to assign resources and must acquire people and other resources from multiple functional managers. Because the project manager has little to no authority, the project can take longer to complete than in other organizational structures, and there is generally no recognized project management methodology or best practices.

Projectized organization

The majority of project resources are involved in project work. Adapted from ProjectEngineer, 2019

The project manager has increased independence and authority and is a full-time member of a project organization. They have project resources available to them, such as project coordinators, project schedulers, business analysts, and plan administrators. The project manager is responsible to the sponsor and/or senior management. The project manager has authority and control of the budget, and any escalation of issues would be taken to the sponsor. Given that the project resources report to the project manager versus the functional area, there may be a decrease in the subject matter expertise of the team members. Team members are usually co-located within the same office or virtually co-located to maximize communication effectiveness. There can be some functional units within the organization; however, those units play a supportive role, without authority over the project manager. There is no defined hierarchy. Resources are brought together specifically for the purpose of a project. At the end of each project, resources are either reassigned to another project or returned to a resource pool.

Matrix organization

A combination of functional and projectized. Adapted from ProjectEngineer, 2019

A matrix organization is a blended organizational structure. Although a functional hierarchy is still in place, the project manager is recognized as a valuable position and is given more authority to manage the project and assign resources. Matrix organizations can be classified as weak, balanced, or strong based on the relative authority of the functional manager and project manager. If the project manager is given more of a project coordinator role, then the organization is considered a weak matrix. If the project manager is given much more authority on resources and budget spending, the organization is considered a strong matrix. Matrix structures evolve in response to the rise of large-scale projects in contemporary organizations. These projects require efficient processing of large amounts of information. Working in a matrix organization is challenging and structurally complex. Employees have dual reporting relationships – generally to both a functional manager and a project and/or product manager. However, if done well, it offers the best of both worlds. The matrix organization structure usually exists in large and multi-project organizations. Here they can move employees whenever and wherever their services are needed. The matrix structure has the flexibility to transfer the organization’s talent by considering employees to be shared resources.

The project management office

The vast majority of PMOs are understaffed and underequipped.

• They are often born out of necessity or desperation.
• They have no long-terms goals; they tend to go from year to year trying to meet the organization’s needs.
• They don’t have clear mandates, so it is difficult to determine how they are providing value.
• Over time (and sometimes even from day one), project management offices find that other tasks fall into their area of responsibility. This often happens when the work has nowhere else to go.
• Resource management is the challenge, both in terms of being able to allocate skilled resources to projects and within the PMO itself. Staffing gaps within the PMO are often met by individuals wearing more than one hat.

2.1.2 Map your current structure

Input: Current org. charts and PMO structures, Info-Tech’s PMO Function Matrix

Output: Structure chart

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

1. As a group, review your current organizational and PMO structure.
2. Map out both, or if your PMO is small, map out how it fits into the overall structure.
   • Make sure to think about your process, reporting structures, and escalation hierarchies.
   • Consider the capabilities on slide 59 as you work.
   • Use the sample structure on the next page as a guide.

Sample PMO structure

Info-Tech’s PMO Function Matrix

Info-Tech’s potential PMO capabilities are in the header of the table below.

2.1.3 Inventory assessment

30-45 minutes

Input: Understanding of your current situation regarding project intake and process

Output: Survey results

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

When staffing your PMO, it is important to understand your current situation regarding project intake and process.

Answer the following questions, and be as detailed as possible:

• What is your project intake process?
• How many projects do you currently have?
• How many people lead projects?
• Are those who lead projects distributed (federated) or centralized?
• What tools do you use to manage your portfolio, projects, and resources?

2.1.4 Job description survey

45 minutes to 1 hour

Input: Tab 1 of the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

Output: List of current projects, processes, and tools

Materials: PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

On tab 1 of the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook, use the survey to help determine potential role requirements across various project portfolio management, project management, business analysis, and organizational change management activities.

Follow these steps to complete the survey:

1. Consider the role that you are trying to fill.
2. Read each question carefully and use the drop-down menu to answer whether the activity in column C is a core, ancillary, or out-of-scope job duty.

Download the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

2.1.4 Job description survey continued

Step 2.2

Build Job Descriptions

Activities

• 2.2.1 Analyze Survey Results
• 2.2.2 FTE Analysis
• 2.2.3 Create Your Job Descriptions

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Complete the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook
• Create job descriptions

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO director and/or portfolio manager
• PMO staff/stakeholders
• Project managers

Outcomes of this step

• PMO org. chart
• Completed job descriptions

Staff Your PMO for Resilience

2.2.1 Analyze survey results

Tab 2 of the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook shows the survey results from tab 1.

The job activities are ranked in a prioritized list. The analysis will help you determine if you require a portfolio manager, program manager, project manager, business analyst, organizational change manager, or a combination.

Follow these steps to analyze your results:

• Digest the prioritized ranking. The job activities are ranked in a prioritized list (from most essential to the role to least essential) in column D. The core process or capability that corresponds to each activity is listed in column C.
• Use the drop-down menu in column F to decide if the core job duties and ancillary job duties will or will not be included in the role description. Out-of-scope activities will automatically be removed.

Download the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

2.2.2 FTE analysis

30 minutes

Input: Tab 3 of the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

Output: Total estimated monthly time commitments, Preliminary FTE analysis

Materials: PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

Tab 3 of the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook is used to complete the FTE analysis.

Download the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

2.2.2 FTE analysis continued

On tab 3, use column E to estimate the monthly time commitments required for each activity in the role.

Tip: Base estimates on the number of projects and project teams as well as the number of internal and external stakeholders across the portfolio(s) of projects and programs.

Cell J5 will provide a preliminary recommended FTE count for the role.

Job description content

This is an output tab based on your analysis in tabs 1 and 2. Copy and paste the content and add it under the relevant heading in Info-Tech's Blank Job Description Template later in this blueprint.

For each capability you are including in your job description, there is a list of common certifications. These can also be copied and pasted into the Blank Job Description Template.

Download the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

How to determine the roles in your PMO

It’s not black and white.

While your PMO should have someone to lead the team, aside from that it’s hard to be specific about the exact roles your PMO needs without understanding the needs of your organization.

This is why it’s important to define your PMO first. Your team members should best support the function and capabilities of your PMO.

For example:

• If you want to provide a training program to project managers, you’ll need your PMO to have people with experience delivering training and with experience having done the job before.
• If your PMO provides management information and deep portfolio analysis, you’ll need someone on the team who knows their way around data analysis tools.

You should have a mix of skills in the PMO team, each complementing the others. You may have administrators and coordinators, data analysts and software experts, trainers, coaches, and senior managers.

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” (African proverb)

Managing projects and building PMOs are not the same thing

Your best project manager should be running projects, and, no, they can’t do both.

• Your new PMO needs a leader to get it off the ground, but don’t assume that the best project manager is best suited to build the PMO. The goal-oriented passion of a successful project manager may prove to be antithetical to the forward-looking finesse and political acumen needed to develop and staff the PMO as an organizational unit. Avoid the common mistake of promoting effective people into positions where they become ineffective, a concept often referred to as “The Peter Principle.”
• You can’t determine if your best project manager fits the PMO leadership role if the PMO’s role isn’t clearly defined. Carefully define and clearly articulate the PMO’s role to understand the skill set needed to develop and lead your PMO.
• Project managers often propose to create a PMO without considering the fit with project portfolio management and organizational change management. If the leadership doesn’t understand the magnitude of what is being requested, they may well think a project manager is best suited to run the PMO. The prestige and/or compensation is attractive, but project managers will often spin their wheels and naturally focus on what they know how to do: manage projects. Start with a PMO design to align with business expectations.

The Peter Principle

The Peter Principle was first introduced by Canadian sociologist Laurence Johnston Peter describing the pitfalls of bureaucratic organizations. The original principle states that "in a hierarchically structured administration, people tend to be promoted up to their level of incompetence.” The principle is based on the observation that whenever someone succeeds at their job, the organizational response is to promote them, thus people will continue to be promoted until they reach a point where they’re no longer excelling at their job. At that point, they would no longer be promoted. Followed to its logical conclusion, organizations will continue to take successful people and rotate them to new positions until they are no longer effective.

PMO Director/Lead

Job overviews for different kinds of PMO directors.

The job descriptions on the next few pages are associated with the descriptive headings, but it is important to recognize that these diverse roles can all fall under the job title of PMO director.

Portfolio Management

As PMO director, you will oversee the throughput of IT projects using portfolio management, project management, and organizational change management disciplines.

You and your team will directly manage the intake of new project requests, the preparation of evaluation-ready project proposals, and the handoff of approved project initiation documents to project managers in other departments. You will forecast and track the availability of people to do the project work throughout the project life cycle. You will publish monthly and annual portfolio reporting based on information collected from the project teams, and you will oversee the closure of projects with follow-up reporting to those who approved them.

From time to time, the PMO may be required to identify projects that should be frozen or canceled based on criteria set forth by the leadership and/or industry best practices.

While currently out of scope, successful candidates should be comfortable with the possibility that the PMO may required to develop full life cycle organizational change management in the future. As well, experienced project managers in the PMO may be required to manage high-risk, high-visibility projects from time to time.

PMO Director/Lead

Job overviews for different kinds of PMO directors.

Project Management

As PMO director, you will oversee a team of professional project managers who are responsible for the company’s high-risk, high-visibility, and strategic projects.

You and your team will receive initiation documents and assigned resourcing for approved projects from the company’s authorized decision makers. You will manage the fulfillment of the project requirements, providing regular status updates to project and portfolio stakeholders and escalating concerns when projects are struggling to meet their commitments for scope, cost, and timelines.

Over time, the PMO will take on an increasing role in organizational change management. The PMO will transition its focus from project delivery to business outcomes. Over time, the PMO will transition project sponsors from articulating requirements to delivering results.

Project Policy

As PMO director, you will oversee the establishment, support, and promotion of company-wide standards for project management.

You and your team will modernize and maintain the company policy manuals and processes for everything related to project management. You will adapt our legacy PMBOK-based standards to cover iterative project management approaches as well as the more formal approaches required for construction projects, outsourced projects, and a wide variety of non-IT projects.

PMO Director/Lead

Job overviews for different kinds of PMO directors.

Project Governance

As PMO director, you will oversee the governance of project spending, delivery, and impact.

You and your team will ensure that project proposals address the broad needs of the organization via strategic alignment, operational alignment, appropriateness of timing, identification and management of risk, and ability to execute. You will represent the needs and interests of the shareholder, ratepayer, or constituent by validating adherence to the organization’s published policies for project, portfolio, and organizational change management.

The PMO is independent from the broader information technology division and will retain a mandate to ensure transparency and disclosure relative to the consumption of the organization’s scarce resources in the pursuit of high-risk IT projects.

Info-Tech sample job descriptions

Use the sample job descriptions available with this blueprint as a guide when creating your descriptions.

2.2.3 Create your job descriptions

30 minutes

Input: PMO Job Description Builder Workbook

Output: Job descriptions

Materials: Blank Job Description Template

Participants: PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

When you’ve determined the roles you need, you can start creating your job descriptions. If none of our out-of-the-box, pre-populated job description templates suit your needs, use the results of Info-Tech’s PMO Job Description Builder Workbook and the Blank Job Description Template to create your purpose-built job description.

Follow these steps to create your job description:

1. Copy the content from tab 4 of the PMO Job Description Builder Workbook and paste it under the relevant headings in the “Responsibilities” section of the Blank Job Description Template. Delete any unused headings if they are not relevant to your role. Additionally, use the list of common certifications on tab 4 of the Workbook to inform that section of the Blank Job Description Template.
2. Use the sample job descriptions on the blueprint landing page as a guide for filling out the remaining sections of the document.

Download the Blank Job Description Template

2.2.3 Create your job descriptions continued

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Phase 3

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Having a strategy is essential but real value and benefits are delivered through projects

9.9% of every dollar is wasted due to poor project performance

52% of projects are delivered to stakeholder satisfaction

51% of projects are likely to meet original the goal and business intent
(Source: Project Management Institute, 2018)

You’re always going to have troubled projects

Have the organizational discipline to step away from the mess and develop a plan.

• The world of modern project management has been in place for over 50 years and yet business leaders still seem to put the pressure on troubled projects instead of broken processes.
• With higher portfolio maturity comes higher performance, warranting investment in the PMO.
• Instead of alternative cost-reduction measures, such as stopping an individual project, we find that PMO resources (or the entire PMO) are being cut. In most cases, this demonstrates a lack of understanding of the value of portfolio management processes and related impacts.
• Plan for a series of improvements over time so you’re not continually using your PMO resources on troubled projects. Instead, maintain an ongoing focus on improvement.

“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” (Anonymous woodsman)

All improvements cannot be done at once

The difference in a winning PMO is determined by a roadmap or plan created at the beginning. Leaders should understand the full scope of the plan before committing their teams to the project. All improvements cannot be done at once. The best PMOs create an approach of overall governance and strictly adhere to it. After the approach is defined, a roadmap can be plotted, executed, and delivered effectively. The exercise of creating a roadmap is less about the plan and more about raising the level of understanding for stakeholders. We often find that the PMO is ahead of the business's views of how the PMO can support and add value to the business. A lot of effort is spent trying to convince businesses of the value of a PMO, usually without complete success. The PMO needs to align to the strategic goals of the business, providing the business understands or accepts that alignment. By aligning your roadmap activities to business drivers, you are more likely to get ownership from the business for the initiatives.

A PMO can benefit your business and organization as a whole

Your PMO can:

1. Help to align the project or portfolio with a focus on the future strategy of the organization.
2. Be a mechanism to deliver projects successfully, keep them on track, and report when scheduling, budget, and other scope issues could derail the project.
3. Create a portfolio of projects and understand the links and dependencies between the projects. This provides you with a bird's-eye view to make better decisions based on changes as they arise.
4. Facilitate better communications with customers and stakeholders.
5. Enforce project management governance and ensure consistent standards throughout the organization.
6. Strategize on how to best use shared resources and best use them productively.

“If you run projects and the projects have a significant level of cost or have significant level of impact, then you can really benefit from a PMO. Certainly, the larger the projects, the bigger the budget, the more there are projects, then the more you can benefit from a PMO.” (Michael Fritsch, Vice President PMO, Confoe)

“PMOs are there to ensure project and program success and that’s critical because organizations deliver value through projects and programs.” (Brian Weiss, Vice President, Practitioner Career Development, Project Management Institute)

Step 3.1

Create Roadmap

Activities

• 3.1.1 Business Goals
• 3.1.2 Roadmap
• 3.1.3 Resources

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Determine business goals
• Create roadmap
• Establish resources

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO director and/or portfolio manager
• PMO staff/stakeholders
• Project managers

Outcomes of this step

• PMO roadmap aligned to business goals

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

3.1.1 Business goals and priorities

30 minutes

Input: Business strategies and goals, Current PMO org. chart

Output: An initial short, medium, long-term roadmap of initiatives

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Sticky notes, Slide 83

Participants: IT leaders/CIO, PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

When you are determining what your PMO will provide in the future, it is important to align the ambition of the PMO with the maturity of the business. Too often, a lot of effort is spent trying to convince businesses of the value of a PMO.

Before you develop your roadmap, try to seek out the key strategies that the business is currently driving to get the proper ownership for the proposed initiatives.

• What does leadership want to accomplish?
• What are the key strategies the business is currently driving?
• What are the current pain points?

Once you’ve established the business strategies, start mapping out your initiatives:

• For each initiative, consider the activities you think will work best to take you from your current to future state. It’s okay to keep this high level, we will break them down later in the blueprint.
• Don’t place activities on a roadmap with dates yet. Use the table on the next slide to record the activities against each initiative at a high level.

3.1.2 Create your roadmap

Services should be introduced gradually and your PMO roadmap should clearly highlight this and explain when key deliverables will be achieved.

Consider the below top-level tasks and add any others that pertain to your organization:

• Enable Transition
• Establish Governance
• Organizational Chart
• Technology and Infrastructure
• Develop Portfolio Management Capabilities and Guidelines
• Standardize Project Management Methodology
• Organizational Change Management
• Strategy Management

Download Info-Tech’s PMO MS Project Plan Sample to see a full list of top-level tasks and second-level tasks. Once done, you can visually plot the tasks on a roadmap. See the next few slides for roadmap visuals.

Download the PMO MS Project Plan Sample

Screenshot of PMO MS Project Plan Sample

Sample roadmap

Sample roadmap

Consider the resources you will need

Use these Info-Tech resources to make sure your roadmap will be successful.

Finances – Understand and be transparent about the real costs of your project.

• Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

People – Strategize according to skill sets and availability. Use the org. chart in phase 2 of this blueprint as a starting place (slide 58).

• Establish Realistic IT Resource Management Practices

Assets – Determine the tangible resources you may buy like software and licenses.

• Select and Implement an IT PPM Solution

3.1.3 Define resources

30 minutes

Input: Project documentation, Current resources

Output: List of resources for your PMO

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts

Participants: IT leaders/CIO, PMO director and/or portfolio manager, PMO staff, Project managers

Resources for your projects include staff, equipment, and materials. Resource management at the PMO level will help you manage those resources, get visibility into projects, and keep them moving forward. Be sure to consider the resources that will get your PMO off the ground.

Determine the resources you currently have and the resources your PMO will need and add them to your strategic plan:

1. Finances — It’s essential that you know, and are transparent about, the real cost of creating your PMO and new process. Don’t forget to consider post deployment costs as well.
2. People — Every project depends on the skill sets that individual team members bring to the table. Strategize according to these skill sets and their availability for the duration of a project. Some team members may have other work responsibilities and limited time for the project, so you need to accommodate this.
3. Assets — These include the tangible resources you may have to buy, lease, or arrange for, such as workspace, software and licenses, computer hardware, testing equipment, and so on.

Step 3.2

Governance and OCM

Activities

• 3.2.1 Governance
• 3.2.2 OCM
• 3.2.3 Perform a Change Impact Analysis
• 3.2.4 Determine Dimensions of Change
• 3.2.5 Determine Depth of Impact

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Assess/understand governance
• Conduct impact analysis

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO director and/or portfolio manager
• PMO staff/stakeholders
• Project managers

Outcomes of this step

• Governance Structures
• Organizational Change Management Impact Analysis Tool

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for Your PMO

Clearly define the authority your PMO will have

The following section includes slides from Info-Tech’s Make Governance Adaptable blueprint. Download the blueprint to dive deeper into IT governance.

Governance is an important part of building a strong PMO. A PMO governance framework defines the authority and the support it requires to maximize portfolio and project management capabilities throughout the business. It should sit within your overall governance framework and as the PMO matures, its roles and responsibilities will also change to adapt with business demands and additional capabilities.

Your framework can:

• Specify PMO authority
• Introduce and apply process standards, polices, and directives as it pertains to project and portfolio management
• Facilitate executive and leadership involvement
• Foster a collaborative environment between the PMO and the business

A PMO governance framework enables PMO leaders to establish the common guidelines and manage the distribution of authority given to the PMO.

Visit Make Your IT Governance Adaptable

Common causes of poor governance

IT PMO

Chair:
Updated:

Mandate

Ensure business value is achieved through information and technology (IT) investments by aligning strategic objectives and client needs with IT initiatives and their outcomes.

Committee Goals

• Maximize throughput of the most valuable projects
• Ensure visibility of current and pending projects
• Minimize resource waste and optimize of alignment of skills to assignments
• Clarify accountability for post-project benefits attainment and facilitate the tracking/reporting of those benefits
• Drive approval and prioritization of IT initiatives based on their alignment with business goals and strategy
• Establish a consistent process for handling intake/demand

Committee Metrics

• % of approved IT initiatives that measure benefit achievement upon completion
• % of IT initiatives with direct alignment to organizational strategic direction
• % of initiatives approved by exception

Decisions and responsibilities by purpose

IT Steering Committee

Chair:
Updated:

Mandate

Ensure business value is achieved through information and technology (IT) investments by aligning strategic objectives and client needs with IT initiatives and their outcomes.

Committee Goals

• Align IT initiatives with organizational goals
• Evaluate, approve, and prioritize IT initiatives
• Approve IT strategy
• Reinforce (if provided) or establish risk appetite and threshold
• Confirm value achievement of approved initiatives
• Set target investment mix and optimize IT resource utilization

Committee Metrics

• % of approved IT initiatives that meet or exceed value expectation
• % of IT initiatives with direct alignment to organizational strategic direction
• Level of satisfaction with IT decision making
• % of initiatives approved by exception

Committee Overview

Decisions and responsibilities by purpose

Sample Governance Model

3.2.1 Governance and authority

1-3 hours

Input: List of key tasks

Output: Initial Authority Map

Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts, Sticky notes, Strategic Plan

Participants: IT leadership, Portfolio Manager (PMO Director), PMO Admin Team, Project Managers

Now that you’ve determined the activities on your roadmap, it’s important to determine who is going to be responsible for the following:

• Intake Scoring
• Project Approvals
• Staffing and Resource Management
• Portfolio Reporting
• Communications and Organizational Change Management
• Benefits Attainment
• Formalized Project Closure

1. For each task have participants discuss who is ultimately accountable for the decision and who has the ultimate authority to make that decision.
2. Place the sticky notes on the swim lanes in the strategic plan to represent the area or person has authority over it.
3. Add all initiatives to your PMO governance framework.

Download the PMO Strategic Plan

Governance and Authority

PMO Governance Framework

Customize groupings as appropriate.

Document key achievements governance initiatives.

Completed projects aren’t necessarily successful projects

The constraints that drive project management (time, scope, and budget) are insufficient for driving the overall success of project efforts.

For instance, a project may come in on time, on budget, and in scope, but…

• …if users and stakeholders fail to adopt…
• …and the intended benefits are not achieved...

…then that “successful project” represents a massive waste of the organization’s time and resources.

Organizational change management (OCM) is a supplement to project management that is needed to ensure the intended value is realized. It is the practice through which the PMO or other body can improve user adoption rates and maximize project benefits. Without it, IT might finish the project but the business might fail to recognize the intended benefits.

Start with next step and refer to Info-Tech research on OCM for a deeper dive. Impact analysis is the cornerstone of any OCM strategy. By shining a light on considerations that might have otherwise escaped project planners and decision makers, an impact analysis is an essential component to change management and project success.

• Master Organizational Change Management Practices

Change Impact Analysis

1. It is important to establish a process for analyzing how the change of your PMO roadmap processes will impact different areas of the business and how to manage these impacts. Analyze change impacts across multiple dimensions to ensure nothing is overlooked.
2. A thorough analysis of change impacts will help the PMO processes:
   • Bypass avoidable problems.
   • Remove non-fixed barriers to success.
   • Acknowledge and minimize the impacts of unavoidable barriers.
   • Identify and leverage potential benefits.
   • Measure the success of the change.

3.2.2 Perform a change impact analysis to make your planning more complete

Use Info-Tech’s Organizational Change Impact Analysis Tool to weigh all the factors involved in the change.

Info-Tech’s Organizational Change Impact Analysis Tool helps to document the change impact across multiple dimensions, enabling you to review the analysis with others to ensure that the most important impacts are captured. The tool also helps to effectively monitor each impact throughout project execution.

• Change impact considerations can include products, services, states, provinces, cultures, time zones, legal jurisdictions, languages, colors, brands, subsidiaries, competitors, departments, jobs, stores, locations, etc.
• Each of these dimensions is an MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) list of considerations that could be impacted by the change. For example, a North American retail chain might consider “Time Zones” as a key dimension, which could break down as Newfoundland, Atlantic, Eastern, Central, Mountain, and Pacific.

Download the Organizational Change Impact Analysis Tool

3.2.3 Assess the current state of your project environment

The “2. Set Up” tab of the Impact Tool is where you enter project-specific data pertaining to the change initiative. The inputs on this tab are used to auto-populate fields and drop-down menus on subsequent tabs of the analysis. Document the stakeholders (by individual or group) associated with the project who will be subject to the impacts. You are allowed up to 15 entries. Try to make this list comprehensive. Missing any key stakeholders will threaten the value of this activity as a whole. If you find that you have more than 15 individual stakeholders, you can group individuals into stakeholder groups.

Keep in mind… An impact analysis is not a stakeholder management exercise. Impact assessments cover: How the change will affect the organization. How individual impacts might influence the likelihood of adoption. Stakeholder management covers: Resistance/objections handling. Engagement strategies to promote adoption. We will cover the latter in the next step.

3.2.4 Determine the relevant considerations for analyzing the change impacts

Use the survey on tab 3 of the Impact Analysis Tool to determine the dimensions of change that are relevant. The impact analysis is fueled by the 13-question survey on tab 3 of the tool. This survey addresses a comprehensive assortment of change dimensions, ranging from customer-facing considerations to employee concerns, to resourcing, logistical, and technological questions. Once you have determined the dimensions that are impacted by the change, you can go on to assess how individual stakeholders and stakeholder groups are affected by the change.

Screenshot of tab “3. Impact Survey,” showing the 13-question survey that drives the impact analysis. Ideally, the survey should be performed by a group of project stakeholders together. Use the drop-down menus in column K to record your responses.

Impacts will be felt differently by different stakeholders and stakeholder groups

As you assess change impacts, keep in mind that no impact will be felt the same across the organization. Depth of impact can vary depending on the frequency (will the impact be felt daily, weekly, monthly?), the actions necessitated by it (e.g. will it change the way the job is done or is it simply a minor process tweak?), and the anticipated response of the stakeholder (support, resistance, indifference?).

Use the Organizational Change Depth Scale below to help visualize various depths of impact. The deeper the impact, the tougher the job of managing change will be.

3.2.5 Determine the depth of each impact for each stakeholder group

Tab “4. Impact Analysis” of the Analysis Tool contains the meat of the impact analysis activity.

1. The “Impact Analysis” tab is made up of 13 change impact tables (see next slide for a screenshot of one of these tables).
   • You may not need to use all 13 tables. The number of tables you use coincides with the number of “yes” responses you gave in the previous tab.
   • If you do not need all 13 impact tables (i.e. if you do not answer “yes” to all thirteen questions in tab 2) the unused/unnecessary tables will not auto-populate.
2. Use one table per change impact. Each of your “yes” responses from tab 3 will auto-populate at the top of each change impact table. You should go through each of your “yes” responses in turn.
3. Analyze how each impact will affect each stakeholder or stakeholder group touched by the project.
   • Column B in each table will auto-populate with the stakeholder groups from the Set-Up tab.
4. Use the drop-down menus in columns C, D, and E to rate the frequency of each impact, the actions necessitated by each impact, and the anticipated response of each stakeholder group.
   • Each of the options in these drop-down menus is tied to a ranking table that informs the ratings on the two subsequent tabs.
5. If warranted, you can use the “Comments” cells in column F to note the specifics of each impact for each stakeholder/group.

See the next slide for an accompanying screenshot of a change impact table from tab 4 of the Analysis Tool.

Screenshot of “Impact Analysis” tab

The stakeholder groups entered on the Set Up tab will auto-populate in column B of each table.

Your “yes” responses from the survey tab will auto-populate in the cells to the right of the “Change Impact” cells.

Use the drop-down menus in this column to select how often the impact will be felt for each group (e.g. daily, weekly, periodically, one time, or never).

“Actions” include “change to core job duties,” “change to how time is spent,” “confirm awareness of change,” etc.

Use the drop-down menus to hypothesize what the stakeholder response might be. For the purpose of this impact analysis, a guess is fine. A more detailed communication plan can be created later.

Review your overall impact rating to help assess the likelihood of change adoption

Use the “Overall Impact Rating” on tab 5 to help right-size your OCM efforts.

Based upon your assessment of each individual impact, the Analysis Tool will provide you with an “Overall Impact Rating” in tab 5.

• This rating is an aggregate of each of the individual change impact tables used during the analysis and the rankings assigned to each stakeholder group across the frequency, required actions, and anticipated response columns.

Projects in the red zone should have maximum change governance, applying a full suite of OCM tools and templates as well as revisiting the impact analysis exercise regularly to help monitor progress. Increased communication and training efforts, as well as cross-functional partnerships, will also be key for success.

Projects in the yellow zone also require a high level of change governance.

To free up resources for those OCM initiatives that require more discipline, projects in the green zone can ease up in their OCM efforts somewhat. With a high likelihood of adoption as is, stakeholder engagement and communication efforts can be minimized somewhat for these projects, so long as the PMO is in regular contact with key stakeholders.

Use the other outputs on tab 5 to help structure your OCM efforts

In addition to the overall impact rating, tab 5 has other outputs that will help you assess specific impacts and how the overall change will be received by stakeholders.

This table displays the highest risk impacts based on frequency and action inputs on tab 4.

Here you’ll find the stakeholders, ranked again based on frequency and action, who will be most impacted by the proposed changes.

These are the five stakeholders most likely to support changes, based on the Anticipated Response column on tab 4.

The stakeholder groups entered on the Set Up tab will auto-populate in column B of each table.

In addition to these outputs, this tab also lists top five change resistors and has an impact register and list of potential impacts to watch out for (i.e. your “maybe” responses from tab 3).

Establish Baseline Metrics

Baseline metrics will be improved through:

• A strong PMO is one than can link performance to the overall goals of the organization.
• Use these examples of KPIs to measure success.

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

Knowledge Gained

• PMO Options and “Best Practices”
• PMO Types
• Key PMO Functions/Services

The PMO staffing model that you use will depend on many different factors. It is in your hands to create and define what your staffing needs are for your organization.

The success of your PMO is linked to the plan you create before executing on it.

Processes Optimized

• Establishing organizational need.
• Getting situational awareness to build a solid foundation for the PMO.
• Identifying organizational design and establishing PMO structure and staffing needs.
• Creating an actionable roadmap.

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

Deliverables Completed

• PMO Role Development Tool
• Initial PMO Mandate
• PMO Job Description Builder Workbook
• PMO job descriptions
• PMO Strategic Plan
• Organizational Change Impact Analysis Tool

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

Additional Support

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889

To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.

Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

Job Description Survey Use the survey to help determine potential role requirements across various project portfolio management, project management, business analysis, and organizational change management activities.

Create Your Job Descriptions Use the job descriptions as a guide when creating your own job descriptions based on the outputs from the tool.

Related Info-Tech Research

	Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy Time is money; spend it wisely.
	Establish Realistic IT Resource Management Practices Holistically balance IT supply and demand to avoid overallocation.
	Tailor Project Management Processes to Fit Your Projects Spend less time managing processes and more time delivering results.

Related Info-Tech Research

	Optimize IT Project Intake, Approval, and Prioritization Decide which IT projects to approve and when to start them.
	Master Organizational Change Management Practices PMOs, if you don’t know who is responsible for org change, it’s you.
	Set a Strategic Course of Action for the PMO in 100 Days Use your first 100 days as PMO leader to define a mandate for long-term success.

Bibliography

Alexander, Moira. “How to Develop a PMO Strategic Plan.” CIO, 11 July 2018. Web.

Barlow, Gina, Andrew Tubb, and Grant Riley. “Driving Business Performance. Project Management Survey 2017.” KPMG, 2017. Accessed 11 Jan. 2022.

Brennan, M. V., and G. Heerkens. “How we went from zero project management to PMO implementation—a real life story.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2009—North America, Orlando, FL. Project Management Institute, 13 October 2009. Web.

Casey, W., and W. Peck. “Choosing the right PMO setup.” PM Network, vol. 15, no. 2, 2001, pp. 40-47. Web.

“COBIT 2019 Framework Governance and Management Objectives.” ISACA, 2019. PDF.

Crawford, J. K. “Staffing your strategic project office: seven keys to success.” Paper presented at Project Management Institute Annual Seminars & Symposium, San Antonio, TX. Project Management Institute, 2002. Web.

Davis, Stanley M., and Paul R. Lawrence. “Problems of Matrix Organizations.” Harvard Business Review, May 1978. Web.

Dow, William D. “Chapter 6: The Tactical Guide for Building a PMO.” Dow Publishing, 2012. PDF.

Giraudo, L., and E. Monaldi. “PMO evolution: from the origin to the future.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2015—EMEA, London, England. Project Management Institute, 11 May 2015. Web.

Greengard, S. “No PMO? Know when you need one.” PM Network, vol. 27, no. 12, 2013, pp. 44-49. Web.

Hobbs, J. B., and M. Aubry. “What research is telling us about PMOs.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2009—EMEA, Amsterdam, North Holland, The Netherlands. Project Management Institute, May 2009. Web.

Jordan, Andy. “Staffing the Strategic PMO.” ProjectManagement.com, 24 October 2016. Web.

Lang, Greg. “5 Questions to Answer When Building a Roadmap.” LinkedIn, 2 October 2016. Accessed 15 Apr. 2021.

Manello, Carl. “Establish a PMO Roadmap.” LinkedIn, 10 February 2021. Accessed 29 Mar. 2021.

Martin, Ken. “5 Steps to Set Up a Successful Project Management Office.” BrightWork, 9 July 2018. Accessed 29 Mar. 2021.

Miller, Jen A. “What Is a Project Management Office (PMO) and Do You Need One?” CIO, 19 October 2017. Accessed 16 Apr. 2021.

Needs, Ian. “Why PMOs Fail: 5 Shocking PMO Statistics.” KeyedIn, 6 January 2014. Web.

Ovans, Andrea. “Overcoming the Peter Principle.” Harvard Business Review, 22 December 2014. Web.

PMI®. “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge.” 6th Ed. Project Management Institute, 2017.

PMI®. “Ahead of the Curve: Forging a Future-Focused Culture.” Pulse of the Profession. Project Management Institute, 11 February 2020. Accessed 21 April 2021.

PMI®. “Project Management: Job Growth and Talent Gap.” Project Management Institute, 2017. Web.

PMI®. “Pulse of the Profession: Success in Disruptive Times.” Project Management Institute, 2018. Web.

PMI®.“The Project Management Office: In Sync with Strategy.” Project Management Institute, March 2012. Web.

“Project Management Organizational Structures.” PM4Dev, 2016. Web.

Rincon, I. “Building a PMO from the ground up: Three stories, one result.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2014—North America, Phoenix, AZ. Project Management Institute, 26 October 2014. Web.

Roseke, Bernie. “The 4 Types of Project Organizational Structure.” ProjectEngineer, 16 August 2019. Web.

Sexton, Peter. “Project Delivery Performance: AIPM and KPMG Project Management Survey 2020 - KPMG Australia.” KPMG, 9 November 2020. Web.

The Change Management Office (CMO). Prosci, n.d. Accessed 7 July 2021.

“The New Face of Strategic Planning.” Project Smart, 27 March 2009. Accessed 29 Mar. 2021.

“The State of Project Management Annual Survey.” Wellington PPM Intelligence, 2018. Web.

“The State of the Project Management Office : Enabling Strategy Execution Excellence.” PM Solutions Research, 2016. Web.

Wagner, Rodd. “New Evidence The Peter Principle Is Real - And What To Do About It.” Forbes, 10 April 2018. Accessed 14 Apr. 2021.

Wright, David. “Developing Your PMO Roadmap.” Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2012—North America, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Project Management Institute, 2012. Accessed 29 March 2021.

Domino – Maintain, Commit to, or Vacate?

Lotus Domino still lives, and you have options for migrating away from or remaining with the platform.

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

“HCL announced that they have somewhere in the region of 15,000 Domino customers worldwide, and also claimed that that number is growing. They also said that 42% of their customers are already on v11 of Domino, and that in the year or so since that version was released, it’s been downloaded 78,000 times. All of which suggests that the Domino platform is, in fact, alive and well.”
– Nigel Cheshire in Team Studio

Your Challenge

You have a Domino/Notes footprint embedded within your business units and business processes. This is taxing your support organization; you are meeting resistance from the business, and you are now asked to help the organization migrate away from the Lotus Notes platform. The Lotus Notes platform was long used by technology and businesses as a multipurpose solution that, over the years, became embedded within core business applications and processes.

Common Obstacles

For organizations that are struggling to understand their options for the Domino platform, the depth of business process usage is typically the biggest operational obstacle. Migrating off the Domino platform is a difficult option for most organizations due to business process and application complexity. In addition, migrating clients have to resolve the challenges with more than one replaceable solution.

Info-Tech Approach

The most common tactic is for the organization to better understand their Domino migration options and adopt an application rationalization strategy for the Domino applications entrenched within the business. Options include retiring, replatforming, migrating, or staying with your Domino platform.

Review

Is “Lotus” Domino still alive?

Problem statement

The number of member engagements with customers regarding the Domino platform has, as you might imagine, dwindled in the past couple of years. While many members have exited the platform, there are still many members and organizations that have entered a long exit program, but with how embedded Domino is in business processes, the migration has slowed and been met with resistance. Some organizations had replatformed the applications but found that the replacement target state was inadequate and introduced friction because the new solution was not a low-code/business-user-driven environment. This resulted in returning the Domino platform to production and working through a strategy to maintain the environment.

This research is designed for:

• IT strategic direction decision-makers
• IT managers responsible for an existing Domino platform
• Organizations evaluating migration options for mission-critical applications running on Domino

This research will help you:

1. Evaluate migration options.
2. Assess the fit and purpose.
3. Consider strategies for overcoming potential challenges.
4. Determine the future of this platform for your organization.

The “everything may work” scenario

Adopt and expand

Believe it or not, Domino and Notes are still options to consider when determining a migration strategy. With HCL still committed to the platform, there are options organizations should seek to better understand rather than assuming SharePoint will solve all. In our research, we consider:

Importance to current business processes

• Importance of use
• Complexity in migrations
• Choosing a new platform

Available tools to facilitate

• Talent/access to skills
• Economies of scale/lower cost at scale
• Access to technology

Info-Tech Insight

With multiple options to consider, take the time to clearly understand the application rationalization process within your decision making.

• Archive/retire
• Application migration
• Application replatform
• Stay right where you are

Eliminate your bias – consider the advantages

“There is a lot of bias toward Domino; decisions are being made by individuals who know very little about Domino and more importantly, they do not know how it impacts business environment.”

– Rob Salerno, Founder & CTO, Rivet Technology Partners

Domino advantages include:

Modern Cloud & Application

• No-code/low-code technology

Business-Managed Application

• Business written and supported
• Embrace the business support model
• Enterprise class application

Leverage the Application Taxonomy & Build

• A rapid application development platform
• Develop skill with HCL training

HCL Domino is a supported and developed platform

Why consider HCL?

• Consider scheduling a Roadmap Session with HCL. This is an opportunity to leverage any value in the mission and brand of your organization to gain insights or support from HCL.
• Existing Domino customers are not the only entities seeking certainty with the platform. Software solution providers that support enterprise IT infrastructure ecosystems (backup, for example) will also be seeking clarity for the future of the platform. HCL will be managing these relationships through the channel/partner management programs, but our observations indicate that Domino integrations are scarce.
• HCL Domino should be well positioned feature-wise to support low-code/NoSQL demands for enterprises and citizen developers.

Visualize Your Application Roadmap

1. Focus on the application portfolio and crafting a roadmap for rationalization.
   • The process is intended to help you determine each application’s functional and technical adequacy for the business process that it supports.
2. Document your findings on respective application capability heatmaps.
   • This drives your organization to a determination of application dispositions and provides a tool to output various dispositions for you as a roadmap.
3. Sort the application portfolio into a disposition status (keep, replatform, retire, consolidate, etc.)
   • This information will be an input into any cloud migration or modernization as well as consolidation of the infrastructure, licenses, and support for them.

Our external support perspective

by Darin Stahl

Member Feedback

• Some members who have remaining Domino applications in production – while the retire, replatform, consolidate, or stay strategy is playing out – have concerns about the challenges with ongoing support and resources required for the platform. In those cases, some have engaged external services providers to augment staff or take over as managed services.
• While there could be existing support resources (in house or on retainer), the member might consider approaching an external provider who could help backstop the single resource or even provide some help with the exit strategies. At this point, the conversation would be helpful in any case. One of our members engaged an external provider in a Statement of Work for IBM Domino Administration focused on one-time events, Tier 1/Tier 2 support, and custom ad hoc requests.
• The augmentation with the managed services enabled the member to shift key internal resources to a focus on executing the exit strategies (replatform, retire, consolidate), since the business knowledge was key to that success.
• The member also very aggressively governed the Domino environment support needs to truly technical issues/maintenance of known and supported functionality rather than coding new features (and increasing risk and cost in a migration down the road) – in short, freezing new features and functionality unless required for legal compliance or health and safety.
• There obviously are other providers, but at this point Info-Tech no longer maintains a market view or scan of those related to Domino due to low member demand.

Domino database assessments

Consider the database.

• Domino database assessments should be informed through the lens of a multi-value database, like jBase, or an object system.
• The assessment of the databases, often led by relational database subject matter experts grounded in normalized databases, can be a struggle since Notes databases must be denormalized.

Key/Value		Column
Use case: Heavily accessed, rarely updated, large amounts of data Data Model: Values are stored in a hash table of keys. Fast access to small data values, but querying is slow Processor friendly Based on amazon's Dynamo paper Example: Project Voldemort used by LinkedIn		Use case: High availability, multiple data centers Data Model: Storage blocks of data are contained in columns Handles size well Based on Google's BigTable Example: Hadoop/Hbase used by Facebook and Yahoo
Document		Graph
Use case: Rapid development, Web and programmer friendly Data Model: Stores documents made up of tagged elements. Uses Key/Value collections Better query abilities than Key/Value databases. Inspired by Lotus Notes. Example: CouchDB used by BBC		Use case: Best at dealing with complexity and relationships/networks Data model: Nodes and relationships. Data is processed quickly Inspired by Euler and graph theory Can easily evolve schemas Example: Neo4j

Understand your options

Archive/Retire

Store the application data in a long-term repository with the means to locate and read it for regulatory and compliance purposes.

Migrate

Migrate to a new version of the application, facilitating the process of moving software applications from one computing environment to another.

Replatform

Replatforming is an option for transitioning an existing Domino application to a new modern platform (i.e. cloud) to leverage the benefits of a modern deployment model.

Stay

Review the current Domino platform roadmap and understand HCL’s support model. Keep the application within the Domino platform.

Archive/retire

Retire the application, storing the application data in a long-term repository.

Abstract

The most common approach is to build the required functionality in whatever new application/solution is selected, then archive the old data in PDFs and documents.

Typically this involves archiving the data and leveraging Microsoft SharePoint and the new collaborative solutions, likely in conjunction with other software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.

Advantages

• Reduce support cost.
• Consolidate applications.
• Reduce risk.
• Reduce compliance and security concerns.
• Improve business processes.

Considerations

• Application transformation
• eDiscovery costs
• Legal implications
• Compliance implications
• Business process dependencies

Info-Tech Insights

Be aware of the costs associated with archiving. The more you archive, the more it will cost you.

Application migration

Migrate to a new version of the application

Abstract

An application migration is the managed process of migrating or moving applications (software) from one infrastructure environment to another.

This can include migrating applications from one data center to another data center, from a data center to a cloud provider, or from a company’s on-premises system to a cloud provider’s infrastructure.

Advantages

• Reduce hardware costs.
• Leverage cloud technologies.
• Improve scalability.
• Improve disaster recovery.
• Improve application security.

Considerations

• Data extraction, starting from the document databases in NSF format and including security settings about users and groups granted to read and write single documents, which is a powerful feature of Lotus Domino documents.
• File extraction, starting from the document databases in NSF format, which can contain attachments and RTF documents and embedded files.
• Design of the final relational database structure; this activity should be carried out without taking into account the original structure of the data in Domino files or the data conversion and loading, from the extracted format to the final model.
• Design and development of the target-state custom applications based on the new data model and the new selected development platform.

Application replatform

Transition an existing Domino application to a new modern platform

Abstract

This type of arrangement is typically part of an application migration or transformation. In this model, client can “replatform” the application into an off-premises hosted provider platform. This would yield many benefits of cloud but in a different scaling capacity as experienced with commodity workloads (e.g. Windows, Linux) and the associated application.

Two challenges are particularly significant when migrating or replatforming Domino applications:

• The application functionality/value must be reproduced/replaced with not one but many applications, either through custom coding or a commercial-off-the-shelf/SaaS solution.
• Notes “databases” are not relational databases and will not migrate simply to an SQL database while retaining the same business value. Notes databases are essentially NoSQL repositories and are difficult to normalize.

Advantages

• Leverage cloud technologies.
• Improve scalability.
• Align to a SharePoint platform.
• Improve disaster recovery.
• Improve application security.

Considerations

• Application replatform resource effort
• Network bandwidth
• New platform terms and conditions
• Secure connectivity and communication
• New platform security and compliance
• Degree of complexity

Info-Tech Insights

There is a difference between a migration and a replatform application strategy. Determine which solution aligns to the application requirements.

Stay with HCL

Stay with HCL, understanding its future commitment to the platform.

Abstract

Following the announced acquisition of IBM Domino and up until around December 2019, HCL had published no future roadmap for the platform. The public-facing information/website at the time stated that HCL acquired “the product family and key lab services to deliver professional services.” Again, there was no mention or emphasis on upcoming new features for the platform. The product offering on their website at the time stated that HCL would leverage its services expertise to advise clients and push applications into four buckets:

1. Replatform
2. Retire
3. Move to cloud
4. Modernize

That public-facing messaging changed with release 11.0, which had references to IBM rebranded to HCL for the Notes and Domino product – along with fixes already inflight. More information can be found on HCL’s FAQ page.

Advantages

• Known environment
• Domino is a supported platform
• Domino is a developed platform
• No-code/low-code optimization
• Business developed applications
• Rapid application framework

Understand your tools

Many tools are available to help evaluate or migrate your Domino Platform. Here are a few common tools for you to consider.

• SWING Software
  • Lotus Notes application archiving with Seascape for Notes: Seascape for Notes and Lotus Notes migration
  • Lotus Notes to SharePoint Migration
• Rivit MigrateMe
• SkyBow Notes to SharePoint
• CIMtrek: CIMtrek SharePoint Migrator and Migrating Lotus Notes Applications to the Cloud Using the CIMtrek migration tools [PDF]
• 4WS.Platform

Notes Archiving & Notes to SharePoint

Summary of Vendor

“SWING Software delivers content transformation and archiving software to over 1,000 organizations worldwide. Our solutions uniquely combine key collaborative platforms and standard document formats, making document production, publishing, and archiving processes more efficient.”*

Tools

Lotus Notes Data Migration and Archiving: Preserve historical data outside of Notes and Domino

Lotus Note Migration: Replacing Lotus Notes. Boost your migration by detaching historical data from Lotus Notes and Domino.

Headquarters

Croatia

Best fit

• Application archive and retire
• Migration to SharePoint

* swingsoftware.com

Domino Migration to SharePoint

Summary of Vendor

“Providing leading solutions, resources, and expertise to help your organization transform its collaborative environment.”*

Tools

Notes Domino Migration Solutions: Rivit’s industry-leading solutions and hardened migration practice will help you eliminate Notes Domino once and for all.

Rivive Me: Migrate Notes Domino applications to an enterprise web application

Headquarters

Canada

Best fit

• Application Archive & Retire
• Migration to SharePoint

* rivit.ca

Lotus Notes to M365

Summary of Vendor

“More than 300 organizations across 40+ countries trust skybow to build no-code/no-compromise business applications & processes, and skybow’s community of customers, partners, and experts grows every day.”*

Tools

SkyBow Studio: The low-code platform fully integrated into Microsoft 365

Headquarters:

Switzerland

Best fit

• Application Archive & Retire
• Migration to SharePoint

* skybow.com | About skybow

Notes to SharePoint Migration

Summary of Vendor

“CIMtrek is a global software company headquartered in the UK. Our mission is to develop user-friendly, cost-effective technology solutions and services to help companies modernize their HCL Domino/Notes® application landscape and support their legacy COBOL applications.”*

Tools

CIMtrek SharePoint Migrator: Reduce the time and cost of migrating your IBM® Lotus Notes® applications to Office 365, SharePoint online, and SharePoint on premises.

Headquarters

United Kingdom

Best fit

• Application replatform
• Migration to SharePoint

* cimtrek.com | About CIMtrek

Domino replatform/Rapid application selection framework

Summary of Vendor

“4WS.Platform is a rapid application development tool used to quickly create multi-channel applications including web and mobile applications.”*

Tools

4WS.Platform is available in two editions: Community and Enterprise.
The Platform Enterprise Edition, allows access with an optional support pack.

4WS.Platform’s technical support provides support services to the users through support contracts and agreements.

The platform is a subscription support services for companies using the product which will allow customers to benefit from the knowledge of 4WS.Platform’s technical experts.

Headquarters

Italy

Best fit

• Application replatform

* 4wsplatform.org

Activity

Understand your Domino options

Application Rationalization Exercise

Info-Tech Insight

Application rationalization is the perfect exercise to fully understand your business-developed applications, their importance to business process, and the potential underlying financial impact.

This activity involves the following participants:

• IT strategic direction decision-makers.
• IT managers responsible for an existing Domino platform
• Organizations evaluating platforms for mission-critical applications.

Outcomes of this step:

• Completed Application Rationalization Tool

Application rationalization exercise

Use this Application Rationalization Tool to input the outcomes of your various application assessments

In the Application Entry tab:

• Input your application inventory or subset of apps you intend to rationalize, along with some basic information for your apps.

In the Business Value & TCO Comparison tab, determine rationalization priorities.

• Input your business value scores and total cost of ownership (TCO) of applications.
• Review the results of this analysis to determine which apps should require additional analysis and which dispositions should be prioritized.

In the Disposition Selection tab:

• Add to or adapt our list of dispositions as appropriate.

In the Rationalization Inputs tab:

• Add or adapt the disposition criteria of your application rationalization framework as appropriate.
• Input the results of your various assessments for each application.

In the Disposition Settings tab:

• Add or adapt settings that generate recommended dispositions based on your rationalization inputs.

In the Disposition Recommendations tab:

• Review and compare the rationalization results and confirm if dispositions are appropriate for your strategy.

In the Timeline Considerations tab:

• Enter the estimated timeline for when you execute your dispositions.

In the Portfolio Roadmap tab:

• Review and present your roadmap and rationalization results.

Follow the instructions to generate recommended dispositions and populate an application portfolio roadmap.

Info-Tech Insight

Watch out for misleading scores that result from poorly designed criteria weightings.

Related Info-Tech Research

Build an Application Rationalization Framework

Manage your application portfolio to minimize risk and maximize value.

Embrace Business-Managed Applications

Empower the business to implement their own applications with a trusted business-IT relationship.

Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code

Extend IT, automation, and digital capabilities to the business with the right tools, good governance, and trusted organizational relationships.

Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence

Optimize your organization’s enterprise application capabilities with a refined and scalable methodology.

Drive Successful Sourcing Outcomes With a Robust RFP Process

Leverage your vendor sourcing process to get better results.

Research Authors

Darin Stahl, Principal Research Advisor,
Info-Tech Research Group

Darin is a Principal Research Advisor within the Infrastructure practice, leveraging 38+ years of experience. His areas of focus include IT operations management, service desk, infrastructure outsourcing, managed services, cloud infrastructure, DRP/BCP, printer management, managed print services, application performance monitoring, managed FTP, and non-commodity servers (zSeries, mainframe, IBM i, AIX, Power PC).

Troy Cheeseman, Practice Lead,
Info-Tech Research Group

Troy has over 24 years of experience and has championed large enterprise-wide technology transformation programs, remote/home office collaboration and remote work strategies, BCP, IT DRP, IT operations and expense management programs, international right placement initiatives, and large technology transformation initiatives (M&A). Additionally, he has deep experience working with IT solution providers and technology (cloud) startups.

Research Contributors

Rob Salerno, Founder & CTO, Rivit Technology Partners

Rob is the Founder and Chief Technology Strategist for Rivit Technology Partners. Rivit is a system integrator that delivers unique IT solutions. Rivit is known for its REVIVE migration strategy which helps companies leave legacy platforms (such as Domino) or move between versions of software. Rivit is the developer of the DCOM Application Archiving solution.

Bibliography

Cheshire, Nigel. “Domino v12 Launch Keeps HCL Product Strategy On Track.” Team Studio, 19 July 2021. Web.

“Is LowCode/NoCode the best platform for you?” Rivit Technology Partners, 15 July 2021. Web.

McCracken, Harry. “Lotus: Farewell to a Once-Great Tech Brand.” TIME, 20 Nov. 2012. Web.

Sharwood, Simon. “Lotus Notes refuses to die, again, as HCL debuts Domino 12.” The Register, 8 June 2021. Web.

Woodie, Alex. “Domino 12 Comes to IBM i.” IT Jungle, 16 Aug. 2021. Web.

Drive Ongoing Adoption With an M365 Center of Excellence

Accelerate business processes change and get more value from your subscription by building and sharing thanks to an effective Centre of Excellence.

CLIENT ADVISORY DECK

Drive Ongoing Adoption With an M365 Centre of Excellence

Accelerate business processes change and get more value from your subscription by building and sharing thanks to an effective Centre of Excellence

Research Team:
John Donovan
John Annand
Principal Research Directors I&O Practice

41 builds released in 2021!
IT can no longer be expected to provide training to all users on all features

• Traditional classroom training (online and self-paced) is time consuming and overly generic
• Users tend to hold onto old familiar tools even as new ones roll out
• Citizen Programming comes with a lot of promise but also the spectre of reliving the era of Access ‘97 databases
• Seemingly small decisions around configuration have outsized impacts
• Every enterprises’ journey through adoption is unique

▲20% $ spent in 2021

148% more meetings
66% more users collaborating on documents
40.6B more emails

2021 vs. 2022 Source: Microsoft The Work Trend Index

• Who needs to be in a CoE? What daily tasks do they undertake?
• How do you turn artifacts like best practice documents into actual behavioral change?
• How does CoE differ from governance? And why is it going to be any more successful?
• How does the CoE evolve over time as enterprises become more mature?

CoE Competencies, Membership and Roles
Communication, Standards Templates
Adoption, and Business Success Metrics

Using these deliverables, Info-Tech will help you drive consistency in your enterprise collaboration, increase end-user satisfaction in the tools they are provided, optimize your license spending, fill the gaps between implementation of a technology and realization of business value, and empower end-users to innovate in ways that senior leadership had not imagined.

Executive Summary

Insight

User adoption is the primary focus of the efforts in the CoE

User adoption and setting up guardrails in governance are the focuses of the CoE in its early stages. Purging obsolete data from legacy share servers, and exchange, and rationalize legacy applications that are comparable to Microsoft offerings. The primary goal is M365 excellence, but that needs to be primed with a Roadmap, and laying down clear milestones to show progress, along with setting up quick wins to get buy in from the organization.

Breakdown your CoE into distinct areas for improvement

Due to the size and complexity of Microsoft 365, breaking it into clearly defined divisions makes sense. The parts that need to be fragmented into are, Collaboration, Power Apps, Office tools, Learning, Professional Training and Certifications, Governance and Support. Subject Matter experts needs to keep pace with the ever-changing M365 environment with enhancements continuously being rolled out. (There were 41 build releases in 2021 alone! )

Set up your M365 CoE in a decentralized design

Define how your CoE will be set up. It will either be centralized, distributed, or a combination of both. They all have their strengths and weaknesses; however a distributed CoE can ensure there is buy-in from the various departments across the CoE, as they participate in the decision making and therefore the direction the CoE goes. Additionally, it ensures that each segment of the CoE is accountable for the success of the M365 adoption, its usage, and delivering value to the organization.

Summary

Your Challenge

You have purchased Microsoft 365 for your business, and you have determined that you are not realizing the full value and potential of the product, neither adoption nor usage – for example, you have legacy applications that the user base is reluctant to move away from, whether it be Skype, Jabber, or other collaboration tools available to them. You have released Teams to the organization but may have not shown how useful it is and you have not communicated to the business that it is your new collaboration tool, along with SharePoint Online and OneDrive. How do you fix this problem?

Common Obstacles

There are roadblocks common to all CoEs: lack of in-house expertise, lack of resources (time, budget, etc.) and employee perception of just another burdensome administrative layer. These are exacerbated when building an M365 CoE.

• Constant vendor-initiated change in M365 means expertise always needs updating
• The self-service architecture of M365 is at odds with centralized limits and controls
• M365 is a multitude of services, adopted across a huge swath of the organization compared to the specific capabilities and limited audience of traditional CoEs

Info-Tech’s Approach

Having a clear vision of what business outcomes you want your Microsoft 365 CoE to accomplish is key. This vision helps select the core competencies and deliverables of the CoE.

1. Ongoing measurement and reporting of business value generated from M365 adoption
2. Servant leadership allows the CoE to work closely and deeply with end-users, which builds them up to share knowledge with others
3. Focus and clear lines of accountability ensure that everyone involved feels part of the compromise when decisions are to be made

Info-Tech Insight

The M365 CoE should be somewhat decentralized to avoid an “us versus them” mentality. Having clear KPIs at the center of the program makes it easier to demonstrate improvements and competencies. COMMUNICATE these early successes! They are vital in gaining widespread credibility and momentum.

Charter Mandate Authority to Operate

Mission : To accelerate the value that M365 brings to the organization by using the M365 CoE to increase adoption, build competency through training and best practices, and deliver on end user innovation throughout the business.

Vision Statement: To transform the organization’s efficiencies and performance through an optimized world-class M365 CoE by meeting all KPIs set out in the Charter.

Info-Tech Insights

A mission and vision for your M365 CoE are a necessary step to kick the program off. Not aving clear goals and a roadmap to get there will hinder your progress. It may even stall the whole objective if you cannot agree or measure what you are trying to accomplish

• The scope of the M365 CoE is to build the adoption rate that can meet milestone goals to advance user competency, as well as the maturation of the SMEs in each segment of the CoE leadership and contributors.
• Maturity will be measured through 100% adoption, specifically around collaboration tools and Office apps across the organization that use M365. Strategic value will be measured by core competencies within the CoE.
• SMEs are developed and educated with certifications and other training throughout the course of the CoE development to bring “bench strength” to the vision of optimizing a world-class M365 CoE.
• SMEs will all be certified Microsoft professionals. They will set the standard to be met within the CoE. The SMEs can either be internal candidates or external hires, depending on the current IT department competency.
• Additional resources required will be tech savvy department leads that understand and can help in the training of staff, who also are willing to spend a certain amount of their work time in coaching colleagues.
• They will be assisted by the training through the SMEs providing relevant material and various M365 courses both in class and self-paced online learning using M365 VIVA tools.

Charter Metrics

Areas in Scope:

• Ensure Mission is aligned to the business objectives.
• Form core team for M365 CoE, including steering committee.
• Create document for signoff from business sponsors.
• Build training plans for users, engineers, and admins.
• Document best practices and build standard templates for organizational uniformity.
• Build governance charter and priorities, setting up guardrails early to ensure compliance and security.
• Transition away and retire all legacy on-Prem apps to M365 Cloud apps.
• Build a RACI model for roles and responsibility.

Info-Tech Insights

If meaningful metrics are set up correctly, the CoE can produce results early in the one- or two-year process, demonstrating business value and increasing production amongst staff and demonstrating SME development.

CoE

What are the reason to build an M365 CoE, and what is it expected to deliver?

What It IS NOT

It does not design or build applications, migrate applications, or create migration plans. It does not deploy applications nor does it operate and monitor applications. While a steering committee is a key part of the M365 CoE, its real function is to set the standards to be achieved though metrics that can measure a successful, efficient, and best-in-class M365 operation. It does not set business goals but does align M365 goals to the business drivers. SMEs in the CoE give guidance on M365 best practices and assist in its adoption and users’ competency.

What It IS

M365 CoE means investing in and developing usage growth and adoption while maintaining governance and control. A CoE is designed to drive innovation and improvement, and as a business-wide functional unit, it can break down geographical and organizational silos that utilize their own tools and collaboration platforms. It builds a training and artifacts database of relevant and up-to-date materials.

Why Build It

Benefits that can be realized are:

• Building efficiencies, delivering quality training and knowledge transfer, and reducing risk from an organized and effective governance.
• Consistency in document and information management.
• Reusable templates and blueprints that standardize the business processes.
• Standardized and communicated business policies around security and best practices.
• Overcoming the challenges that comes with the titan of a platform that is M365.

Expected Goals and Benefits With Risk

Demonstrated impact for sustainability
Ensuring value is delivered
Ability to escalate to executive branch

The What?

What does the M365 CoE solve?

• M365 Adoption
• M365 tools templates
• SME in tools deployment and delivery
• Training and education – create artifacts and organize training sessions and certifications
• Empower users into super users
• Build analytics around usage, adoption, and ROI from license optimization

And the How?

How does the M365 CoE do it?

• By defining clear adoption goals and best practices
• By building a dedicated team with the confidence to improve the user experience
• By creating a collection of reusable artifacts.
• By establishing a stable, tested environment ensures users are not hindered in execution of the tools
• By continuously improving M365 processes

What are the Risks?

• All goals must be achievable
• Timeline phases are based on core SME competency of the IT department and the training quality of end users
• Current state of SMEs in house or hired to execute the mandate of the M365 CoE
• Business success – if business is struggling to make profits and grow, its usually the CoE that will get chopped – mainly due to layoffs
• Inability to find SMEs or train SMEs
• Turnover in CoE due to job function changes or attrition
• Overload of day-to-day responsibilities preventing SMEs from executing work for the CoE – Need to align SMEs and CoE steering chair to establish and enable shared responsibilities.

Who needs to be in a CoE for M365

Design the CoE – What model to be used?

What are their daily tasks? Is the CoE centralized, decentralized, or a combination?

Info-Tech Insights

Due to the size and complexity of Microsoft 365, a decentralized model works best. Each segment of the group could in themselves be a CoE, as in governance, training, or collaboration CoE. Maintaining SME in each group will drive the success of the M365 CoE.

Key Competencies for CoE

• Build a team of experts in M365 with sub teams in Products.
• Manage the business processes around M365.
• Train and optimize technical teams.
• Share best practices and create a knowledge base.
• Build processes that are repeatable and self-provisioned.

CoE for M365

What is the Structure? Is it centralized, decentralized, or combination? What are the pros and cons?

Thought Model

How does the CoE differ from governance?

Why is it going to be any more successful?

“These problems already exist and haven't been successfully addressed by governance – how is the CoE going to be any different?”

• Leadership
• Empower end users
• Automation of processes
• Retention policies
• Governance priorities
• Risk management
• Standard procedures
• Set metrics
• Self service
• Training
• SMEs
• Automation
• Innovation

CoE

While M365 governance is an integral part of the M365 CoE, the CoE is a more strategic program aimed at providing guidance, experienced leadership, and training.

The CoE is designed to drive innovation and improvements throughout the organization’s M365 deployment. It will build best practices, create artifacts, and mentor members to become SMEs.

Governance

CoE is a form of collaborative governance. Those responsible for making the rules are the same ones who are working through how the rules are implemented in practice.

The word most associated with CoE is "nurture." The word most associated with governance is "prevent."

The CoE is experimental and innovative and constantly revising its guidance compared to governance, which is opaque and static.

RACI chart for CoE define activities and ownership

The Work

Build artifacts

Templates

Scripts

Reference architecture

Policies definition

Blueprints

Version control

Measure usage and ROI

Quality assurance

Baseline creation and integrity

Steering Committee

Roles and Responsibilities

• Set the goals and metrics for the CoE charter
• Ensure the CoE is aligned to the business objectives
• Clear any roadblocks that may hinder progress for the team leads
• Provide guidance on best practices
• Set expectations for training and certifications
• Build SME strength through mentoring
• Promote and facilitate research into M365 developments and releases
• Ensure knowledge transfer is documented
• Create roadmap to ensure phase KPIs are met and drive toward excellence

Info-Tech Insight

Executive sponsorship is an element of the CoE that cannot be overlooked. If this occurs, the funding and longevity of the CoE will be limited. Additionally, ensure you determine if the CoE will have an end of life and what that looks like.

M365 Governance CoE Team

Governance and Management

After you’ve developed and implemented your data classification framework, ongoing governance and maintenance will be critical to your success. In addition to tracking how sensitivity labels are used in practice, you’ll need to update your control requirements based on changes in regulations, cybersecurity leading practices, and the nature of the content you manage. Governance and maintenance efforts can include:

• Establishing a governance body dedicated to data classification or adding a data classification responsibility to the charter of an existing information security body.
• Defining roles and responsibilities for those overseeing Data Classification
• Establishing KPIs to monitor and measure progress
• Tracking cybersecurity leading practices and regulatory changes
• Developing Standard Operating Procedures that support and enforce a data classification framework

Governance CoE

Tools Used in the Governance CoE Identity – MFA, SSO, Identity Manager, Conditional Access, AD , Microsoft Defender, Compliance Assessments Templates

Security and Compliance - Azure Purview, Microsoft Defender Threat Analytics, Rules-Based Classification (AIP Client & Scanner), Endpoint DLP, Insider Risk Management

Information Management – Audit Log Retention, Information Protection and Governance, Trainable Classifiers

Licenses – Entitlement Management, Risk-Based Conditional Access.

M365 Tools CoE Team

• Collaboration tools are at the center of the product portfolio for M365.
• Need to get users empowered to manage and operate Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint Online and promote uniform communications and collaborate with document building, sharing, and storing.

Collaboration SME – Teams admin, Exchange admin, SharePoint, One Drive admin, Viva Learning (Premium), and Viva Insights (Premium)

Application SME – Covers all updates and new features related to Office programs

Power BI SME – Covers Power Automate for Office 365, Power Apps for Office 365, and Power BI Pro

Voice and Video – Tools-Calling Plan, Audio Conference (Full), Teams Phone, Mobility

PMO – Manages all M365 products online and in production. Also coordinates enhancements, writes up documentation for updates, and releases them to the training CoE for publication.

Microsoft 365 tools used to support business

• Appointments – Booking
• Blog – Sway
• Browser – Edge
• Cloud Storage – OneDrive
• Collaboration – Teams
• Email and Calendar – Outlook
• Notebook – OneNote
• Planner – Planner
• Presentation – PowerPoint
• Spreadsheet - Excel
• Surveys/Quizzes/Polls - Forms
• Whiteboard - Whiteboard
• Word Processor – Word
• Voice – Teams Phone

M365 Training CoE Team

Training and certifications for both end users and technical staff managing the M365 platform. Ensure that you set goals and objectives with your training schedule.

Training for SMEs can be broken into two categories:

First line training is internal training for users, in the collaboration space. Teams, One Drive, SharePoint Online, Exchange, and specialty training on Office tools – Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Microsoft Forms.

Second line training is professional development for the SMEs including certifications in M365 admin, Global admin, Teams admin, and SharePoint administrator.

Additional training and certification can be obtained in governance, information management, and in the admin center for licencing optimization and compliance.

Tools used

• Viva topics – Integrated knowledge and expert discovery
• Viva Insight
• Viva Learning
• Viva Connections
• Dynamics 365
• Voice of the customer surveys

Support M365 CoE Team

Support CoE:

In charge of creating a knowledge base for M365. Manages incidents with access, usage, and administering apps to desktop. Manages change issues related to updates in patching.

Help Desk Admin:

Resets passwords when self service fails, force sign out, manages service requests.

Works with learning CoE to populate knowledge base with articles and templates.

Manages end user issues with changes and enhancements for M365.

Supporting Metrics

• Number of calls for M365 support
• Recurring M365 incidents
• Number of unresolved Platform issues
• First call resolution
• Knowledge sharing of M365
• Customer satisfaction
• Turnaround time of tickets created

Roadmap

How does the CoE evolve over time as enterprises become more mature?

• Depending on the complexity and regulatory requirements of the business, baseline governance and rules around external partners sharing internal documents will need to be set up.
• Identifying your SMEs in the organization is a perquisite at the beginning stages of setting up the M365 working group.

• Build a roadmap to get to maturity and competency that brings strategic business value.
• Meet milestone goals through a two-year, three-phase process. Begin with setting up governance guardrails.
• Set up foundational baselines against which metrics will be measured.
• Set up the M365 CoE, at first with target easy wins through group training and policy communications throughout the organization.

How do you turn artifacts like best practice documents into actual behavior change?

Info-Tech Insights

Building Blocks
The building blocks for a change in end user behavior are based on four criteria which must be clearly communicated. Knowledge transfer from SMEs to the training team is key. That in turn leads to effective knowledge transfer, allowing end users to develop skills quickly that can be shared with their teams. Sharing practices leads to best practices and maintaining these in a repository that can be quickly accessed will build on the efficiencies and effectiveness of the employees.

How Do You Empower End Users to Innovate?

Info-Tech Insights

Understand the Vision

Empowering End users starts with understanding the business vision that is embedded into the M365 CoE charter.

Ensure that the business innovation goals are aligned to the organizational strategies.

The innovative strategies need to be clearly communicated to the employees and the tools to achieve this needs to be mapped out and trained. Clearly lay out the goals, outcomes, and expectations.

End users need to understand how the M365 CoE will assist them in their day-to-day operations, whether in the collaboration space with their colleagues, or with power BI that assists them in their decision making though analytics.

The Right Resources

Arm your team with the resources they need to be successful. Building use cases as part of the training program will give the employees insight into how the M365 tools can be used in their daily work environment. It will also address the pervasive use of nonstandard tools as is seen throughout organizations that are operated in a vacuum.

Empowering your user base though the knowledge transfer borne through the building of artifacts that deal with real life examples that join the dots for employees.

By painting a picture of how the innovative use of the M365 platform can be achieved, users will feel empowered and use those use cases to build out their own innovative ideas.

Hybrid Work

Digital fabric

Collaboration – Communication – Creation

Cloud Services – Innovative Apps – Security

Productivity anywhere any place

Shared working documents in secure cloud

Mesh for Microsoft Teams/Viva

Power apps and dataverse for Teams

Self Service M365

My Apps

My Sign-Ins

My Groups

My Staff

My Access

My Account

Password reset

Sample Best Practices
Tools and Standards Templates

Then communicate them

Collaboration Best Practices

Sharing documents

Real time co-authoring

Comment

Meet

Mobile

Version History

Security Best Practices

Default Security Settings

Microsoft Security Score

Enable Alert Policies

Assign RBAC for Admins

Enable Continuous Access Evaluation

Admin Roles Best Practices in M365

• Two or three global admins in tenant/limit usage of secondary admin roles
• See Admin Portal
• •Screen shots: Best Practices Securing M365

Business Success Metrics for M365 CoE

What does success look like?

• Are you aligning the M365 metrics to business goals?
• Are your decisions data driven?
• Are you able to determine opportunities to improve with your metrics – continuous process improvement?
• Are you seeing productivity gains, and are they being measured?

Activity Output

Start building your M365 CoE and considering the steps for the Phase 1 checklist

BUILD A FOUNDATIONAL BASELINE

Step 1

1. Select Resources to create a CoE working group
2. Define your goals and objectives
3. Identify SMEs within the business and do a gap analysis
4. Build the M365 charter, mission, and vision
5. Build consensus and sponsorship from C suite
6. Create an organizational M365 framework that provides best coverage for all touch points to the platform, from support to training to controls.
7. Determine the type of CoE you want to create that fits your business (centralized, distributed, or a combination).

Step 2

1. Build training plans for SMEs and M365 teams
2. Populate company intranet with artifacts, knowledge articles, and user training portal with all things M365
3. Build out best practice workbooks, tools, and templates that encompass all departments
4. Create roles and responsibilities matrix
5. Identify “super users” in departments to assist with promoting learning and knowledge sharing.
6. Develop Metrics scorecards on success criteria ensuring they align to business goals

Step 3

1. Rational M365 licensing
2. Create communication plan promoting CoE and M365 advantages
3. Align your governance posture and building guardrails
4. Identify legacy apps that can be retired and replaced
5. Train support team and analysts with metrics supporting M365 CoE goals
6. Create baseline metrics with clear alignment to business KPIs

Related Blueprints

Modernize Your Microsoft Licensing for the Cloud Era

• Take control of your Microsoft licensing and optimize spend

Govern Office 365

• Office 365 is as difficult to wrangle as it is valuable. Leverage best practices to produce governance outcomes aligned with your goals

Migrate to Office 365 Now

• One small step to cloud, one big leap to Office 365. The key is to look before you leap

Build a Data Classification MVP for M365

• Kickstart your governance with data classification users will actually use!

Bibliography

“Five Guiding Principles of a successful Center of Excellence” Perficient, n.d. Web.

“Self Service in Microsoft 365.” Janbakker.tech, n.d. Web.

“My Apps portal overview.” Microsoft, June 2, 2022. Web.

“Collaboration Best Practices Microsoft365.” Microsoft, n.d. Web.

“Security Best Practices Microsoft 365” Microsoft, July 1, 2022. Web.

Define Your Virtual and Hybrid Event Requirements

Accelerate your event scoping and software selection process.

Analyst Perspective

When events go virtual, IT needs to cover its bases.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed a dramatic digital transformation on the events industry. Though event ticket and registration software, mobile event apps, and onsite audio/visual technology were already important pieces of live events, the total transformation of events into online experiences presented major challenges to organizations whose regular business operations involve at least one annual mid-sized to large event (association meetings, conferences, trade shows, and more).

Many organizations worked to shift to online, or virtual events, in order to maintain business continuity. As time went on, and public gatherings began to restart, a shift to “hybrid” events began to emerge—events that accommodate both in-person and virtual attendance. Regardless of event type, this pivot to using virtual event software, or digital event technology, brings events more closely into IT’s areas of responsibility. If you don't begin with strategy, you risk fitting your event to technology, instead of the other way around.

If virtual and hybrid events are becoming standard forms of delivering content in your organization, use Info-Tech’s material to help define the scope of the event and your requirements, and to support your software selection process.

Emily Sugerman
Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

If you don't begin with strategy, you will fit your event to technology, instead of the other way around.

Your challenge

The solution you have been using for online events does not meet your needs.

Though you do have some tools that support large meetings, it is not clear if you require a larger and more comprehensive virtual event solution. There is a need to determine what type of technology you might need to purchase versus leveraging what you already have.

It is difficult to quickly and practically identify core event requirements and how they translate into technical capabilities.

Maintaining or improving audience engagement is a perpetual challenge for virtual events.

Source: Virtual Event Tech Guide, 2022

Common obstacles

These barriers make this challenge difficult to address for many organizations.

Events with networking objectives are not always well served by webinars, which are traditionally more limited in their interactive elements.

Events that include the conducting of organizational/association business (like voting) may have bylaws that make selecting a virtual solution more challenging.

Maintaining attendee engagement is more challenging in a virtual environment.

Prior to the pandemic, your organization may not have been as experienced in putting on fully virtual events, putting more responsibility in your corner as IT. Navigating virtual events can also require technological competencies that your attendee userbase may not universally possess.

Technological limitations and barriers to access can exclude potential attendees just as much as bringing events online can open up attendance to new audiences.

Opportunity: Virtual events can significantly increase an event’s reach

Events held virtually during the pandemic noted significant increases in attendees.

“We had 19,000 registrations from all over the world, almost 50 times the number of people we had expected to host in Amsterdam. . . . Most of this year’s [2020] attendees would not have been able to participate in a physical GrafanaCon in Amsterdam. That was a huge win.” – Raj Dutt, Grafana Labs CEO[5]

[1] Kelly, 2020; [2] Price, 2020; [3] Stanford Digital Economy Lab, 2022; [4] Warren, 2022; [5] Fast Company, 2020

Info-Tech’s methodology for defining virtual/hybrid event requirements

Event planning phases

Apply project management principles to your virtual/hybrid event planning process.

Online event planning should follow the same established principles as in-person event planning.
Align the event’s concept and objectives with organizational goals.

Source: Adapted from Event Management Body of Knowledge, CC BY 4.0

Gather inputs to the planning processes

Acquire as much of this information as possible before you being the planning process.

Budget: Determine your organization’s budget for this event to help decide the scope of the event and the purchasing decisions you make as you plan.

Internal human resources: Identify who in your organization is usually involved in the organization of this event and if they are available to organize this one.

List of communication and collaboration tools: Acquire the list of the existing communication and collaboration tools you are currently licensed for. Ensure you know the following information about each tool:

• Type of license
• License limitations (maximum number of users)
• Internal or external-facing tool (or capable of both)
• Level of internal training and competency on the tool

Decision point: Relate event goals to organizational goals

What is driving the event?

Your organization may hold a variety of in-person events that you now wish, for various reasons, to hold fully or partially online. Each event likely has a slightly different set of goals.

Before getting into the details of how to transition your event online, return to the business/organizational goals the event is serving.

Ensure each event (and each component of each event) maps back to an organizational goal.

If a component of the event does not align to an organizational goal, assess whether it should remain as part of the event.

Common organizational goals

• Increase revenue
• Increase productivity
• Attract and retain talent
• Improve change management
• Carry out organizational mission
• Identify new markets
• Increase market share
• Improve customer service
• Launch new product/service

Common event goals

• Education/training
• Knowledge transfer
• Decision making
• Professional development
• Sales/lead generation
• Fundraising
• Entertainment
• Morale boosting
• Recognition of achievement

Decision point: Identify your organization’s digital event vision

What do you want the outcome of this event to be?

Attendee goals: Who are your attendees? Why do they attend this event? What attendee needs does your event serve? What is your event’s value proposition? Are they intrinsically or extrinsically motivated to attend?

Event goals: From the organizer perspective, why do you usually hold this event? Who are your stakeholders?

Organizational goals: How do the event goals map to your organizational goals? Is there a clear understanding of what the event’s larger strategic purpose is.

Common attendee goals

Education: our attendees need to learn something new that they cannot learn on their own.
Networking: our attendees need to meet people and make new professional connections.
Professional development: our attendees have certain obligations to keep credentials updated or to present their work publicly to advance their careers.
Entertainment: our attendees need to have fun.
Commerce: our attendees need to buy and sell things.

Decision point: Level of external event production

Will you be completely self-managed, reliant on external event production services, or somewhere in the middle?

You can review this after working through the other decision points and the scope becomes clearer.

Decision point: Assign event planning roles

Who will be involved in planning the event? Fill/combine these roles as needed.

Decision point: Assign event production roles

Who will be involved in running the event?

Decision point: Map attendee goals to event goals to organizational goals

Input: List of attendee benefits, List of event goals, List of organizational goals
Output: Ranked list of event goals as they relate to attendee needs and organizational goals
Materials: Whiteboard/flip charts
Participants: Planning team

1. Define attendee benefits:
   1. List the attendee benefits derived from your event (as many as possible).
   2. Rank attendee benefits from most to least important.
2. Define event goals:
   1. List your event goals (as many as possible).
   2. Draw a connecting line to your ranked list of attendee benefits.
   3. Identify if any event goals exist with no clear relationship to attendee benefits. Discuss whether this event goal needs to be re-envisioned. If it connects to no discernible attendee benefits, consider removing it. Otherwise, figure out what attendee benefits the event goal provides.
3. Define organizational goals:
   1. Acquire a list of your organization’s main strategic goals.
   2. Draw a connecting line from each event goal to the organizational goal it supports.
   3. If most of your event goals do not immediately seem to support an organizational goal, discuss why this is. Try to find the connection. If you cannot, discuss whether the event should proceed or be rethought.

Decision point: Break down your event into its constituent components

Identify your event archetype

Decompose the event into its component parts

Identify technical requirements that help meet event goals

Benefits:

• Clarify how formerly in-person events map to virtual archetypes.
• Ensure your virtual event planning is anchored to organizational goals from the outset.
• Streamline your virtual event tech stack planning later.

Decision point: Determine your event archetype

Analyze your event’s:

• Main goals.
• The components and activities that support those goals.
• How these components and activities fall into people- vs. content-centric activities, and real-time vs. asynchronous activities.

1. Conference
2. Trade show
3. Annual general meeting
4. Department meeting
5. Town hall
6. Workshop

Info-Tech Insight

Begin the digital event planning process by understanding how your event’s content is typically consumed. This will help you make decisions later about how best to deliver the content virtually.

Conference

Goals: Education/knowledge transfer; professional advancement; networking.

Major content

• Call for proposals/circulation of abstracts
• Keynotes or plenary address: key talk addressed to large audience
• Panel sessions: multiple panelists deliver address on common theme
• Poster sessions: staffed/unstaffed booths demonstrate visualization of major research on a poster
• Association meetings (see also AGM archetype): professional associations hold AGM as one part of a larger conference agenda

Community

• Formal networking (happy hours, social outings)
• Informal networking (hallway track, peer introductions)
• Business card exchange
• Pre- and post-event correspondence

Commercial Partners

• Booth reps: Publishing or industry representatives exhibit products/discuss collaboration

Trade show

Objectives: Information transfer; sales; lead generation.

Major content

• Live booth reps answer questions
• Product information displayed
• Promotional/information material distributed
• Product demonstrations at booths or onstage
• Product samples distributed to attendees

Community interactions

• Statements of intent to buy
• Lead generation (badge scanning) of booth visitors
• Business card exchange
• Pre- and post-event correspondence

Annual general meeting

Objectives: Transparently update members; establish governance and alignment.

Meeting events

• Updates provided to members on organization’s activities/finances
• Decisions made regarding organization’s direction
• Governance over organization established (elections)
• Speakers addressing large audience from stage
• In-camera sessions
• Translation of proceedings
• Real-time weighted voting
• Minutes taken during meeting

Administration

• Notice given of meeting within mandated time period
• Agenda circulated prior to meeting
• Distribution of proxy material
• Minutes distributed

Department meeting

Objectives: Information transfer of company agenda/initiatives; group decision making.

Major content

• Agenda circulated prior to meeting
• Updates provided from senior management/leadership to employees on organization’s initiatives and direction
• Employee questions and feedback addressed
• Group decision making
• Minutes taken during meeting
• Minutes or follow-up circulated

Town hall meeting

Objectives: Update public; answer questions; solicit feedback.

Major content

• Public notice of meeting announced
• Agenda circulated prior to meeting
• Speakers addressing large audience from stage
• Presentation of information pertinent to public interest
• Audience members line up to ask questions/provide feedback
• Translation of proceedings
• Recording of meeting archived

Workshop

Objectives: Make progress on objective; achieve consensus; knowledge transfer.

Major content

• Scheduling of workshop
• Agenda circulated prior to meeting
• Facilitator leads group activities
• Participants develop alignment on project
• Progress achieved on workshop project
• Feedback on workshop shared with facilitator

Decision point: Analyze your event’s purpose and value

Use the event archetypes to help you identify your event’s core components and value proposition.

1. Attendee types: Who typically attends your event? Exclusively internal participants? External participants? A mix of the two?
2. Communication: How do participants usually communicate with each other during this event? How do they communicate with the event organizers? Include both formal types of communication (listening to panel sessions) and informal (serendipitous conversations in the hallway).
3. Connection: What types of connections do your attendees need to experience? (networking with peers; interactions with booth reps; consensus building with colleagues).
4. Exchange of material: What kind of material is usually exchanged at this event and between whom? (Pamphlets, brochures, business cards, booth swag).
5. Engagement: How do you usually retain attendees' attention and make sure they remain engaged throughout the event?
6. Length: How long does the event typically last?
7. Location and setup: Where does the event usually take place and who is involved in its setup?
8. Success metrics: How do you usually measure your event's success?

Info-Tech Insight

Avoid trying to exactly reproduce the formerly in-person event online. Instead, identify the value proposition of each event component, then determine what its virtual expression could be.

Example: Trade show

Goals: Information transfer; sales; lead generation.

1. Identify event component(s)
2. Document its face-to-face expression(s)
3. Identify the expression’s value proposition
4. Translate the value proposition to a virtual component that facilitates overall event goal

Plan your metrics

Use the analytics and reporting features available in your event technology toolset to capture the data you want to measure. Decide how each metric will impact your planning process for the next event.

Examples of metrics:

• Number of overall participants/registrants: Did you have more or fewer registrants/attendees than previous iterations of the event? What is the difference between number of registrants and number of real attendees?
• Locations of participants: Where are people participating from? How many are attending for the first time? Are there new audiences you can pursue next time?
• Most/least popular sessions: How long did people stay in the sessions and the event overall?
• Most/least popular breakout rooms and discussion boards: Which topics should be repeated/skipped next time?
• Social media mentions: Which topics received the most engagement on social media?
• Surveys: What do participants report enjoying most? Least?
• Technical failures: Can your software report on failures? Identify what technical problems arose and prepare a plan to mitigate them next time.

Ensure the data you capture feeds into better planning for the next event

Determine compliance requirements

A greater event reach also means new data privacy considerations, depending on the location of your guests.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Concerns over the collection of personal electronic data may not have previously been a part of your event planning considerations. However, now that your event is online, it’s wise to explore which data protection regulations apply to you. Remember, even if your organization is not located in the EU, if any of your attendees are European data subjects you may still be required to comply with GDPR, which involves the notification of data collected, allowing for opt-out options and the right to have data purged. The data must be collected for a specific purpose; if that purpose is expired, it can no longer be retained. You also have an obligation to report any breaches.

Accessibility requirements

What kind of accessibility laws are you subject to (AODA, WCAG2)? Regardless of compliance requirements, it is a good idea to ensure the online event follows accessibility best practices.

Decision point: Set event policies

What event policies need to be documented?
How will you communicate them to attendees?

Code of conduct

One trend in the large event and conference space in recent years has been the development of codes of conduct that attendees are required to abide by to continue participating in the event.
Now that your event is online, consider whether your code of conduct requires updating. Are there new types of appropriate/inappropriate online behavior that you need to define for your attendees?

Harassment reporting

If your organization has an event harassment reporting process, determine how this process will transfer over to the digital event.
Ensure the reporting process has an owner and a clear methodology to follow to deal with complaints, as well as a digital reporting channel (a dedicated email or form) that is only accessed by approved staff to protect sensitive information.

Develop a risk management plan

Plan for how you will mitigate technical risks during your virtual event
Provide presenters with a process to follow if technical problems arise.

• Presenter’s internet connection cuts out
• Attendees cannot log in to event platform
• Attendees cannot hear/see video feed
• What process will be followed when technical problems occur: ticketing system; chatbot; generic email accessible by all IT support assigned

Testing/Rehearsal

Test audio hardware: Ensure speakers use headphones/earbuds and mics (they do not have to be fancy/expensive). Relying on the computer/laptop mic can lead to more ambient noise and potential feedback problems.

Check lighting: Avoid backlighting. Reposition speakers so they are not behind windows. Ask them to open/close shades. Add lamps as needed.

Prevent interruptions: Before the event, ask panelists to turn phone and computer notifications to silent. Put a sign on the door saying Do not Disturb.

Control audience view of screenshare: If your presenters will be sharing their screens, teach them how this works on the platform they are using. Advise them to exit out of any other application that is not part of their presentation, so they do not share the wrong screen unintentionally. Advise them to remove anything from the desktop that they do not want the audience to see, in case their desktop becomes visible at any point.

Control audience view of physical environment: Before the event, advise participants to turn their cameras on and examine their backgrounds. Remove anything the audience should not be able to see.

Test network connectivity: Send the presenters a link to a speed test and check their internet speed.

Emergency contact: Exchange cell phone numbers for emergency backchannel conversations if problems arise on the day of the event.

Set expectations: Presenting to an online audience feels very different to a live crowd. Prepare presenters for a lack of applause and lack of ability to see their audience, and that this does not mean the presentation was unsuccessful.

Identify requirements

To determine what kind of technical requirements you need to build the virtual expression of your event, consult the Virtual Event Platform Requirements Tool.

1. If you have determined that the requirements you wish to use for the event exceed the capabilities of your existing communication and collaboration toolset, identify whether these gaps tip the scale toward purchasing a new tool. Use the requirement gaps to make the business case for purchasing a new tool.
2. Use the Virtual Event Platform Requirements Tool to create a list of requirements.
3. Consult the Software Reviews category for Virtual Event Platform Data Quadrant and Emotional Footprint reports.
4. Assemble your documentation for approvals and the Rapid Application Selection Process.

Download the Virtual/Hybrid Event Software Feature Analysis Tool

Rapid Application Selection Framework and Contract Review

Launch Info-Tech’s Rapid Application Selection Framework.

Using the requirements you’ve just gathered as a base, use Info-Tech’s complete framework to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of software selection.

Once you’ve selected a vendor(s), review the contract. Does it define an exit strategy? Does it define when your data will be deleted? Does it set service-level agreements that you find acceptable? Leverage Info-Tech’s contract review service once you have selected the virtual event solution and have received a contract from the vendor.

Further research

Run Better Meetings

Bibliography

Dutt, Raj. “7 Lessons from This Company’s First-Ever Virtual Conference.” Fast Company, 29 Jul 2020. Web.

Kelly, Samantha Murphy. “Microsoft Build Proves Splashy Tech Events Can Thrive Online.” CNN, 21 May 2020. Web.

“Phases.” Event Management Body of Knowledge (EMBOK), n.d. Web.

Price, Michael. “As COVID-19 Forces Conferences Online, Scientists Discover Upsides of Virtual Format.” Science, 28 Apr 2020. Web.

“Stanford HAI Spring Conference - Key Advances in Artificial Intelligence.” Stanford Digital Economy Lab, 2022. Web.

“Virtual Event Tech Guide 2022.” Skift Meetings, April 2022. Web.

Warren, Tom. “Microsoft Build 2022 Will Take Place May 24th–26th.” The Verge, 30 March 2022. Web.

Contributors

6 anonymous contributors

Improve Service Desk Ticket Queue Management

Strong queue management is the foundation to good customer service

Analyst Perspective

Secure your foundation before you start renovating.

Service Desk and IT leaders who are struggling with low efficiency, high backlogs, missed SLAs, and poor service desk metrics often think they need to hire more resources or get a new ITSM tool with better automation and AI capabilities. However, more often than not, the root cause of their challenges goes back to the fundamentals.

Strong ticket queue management processes are critical to the success of all other service desk processes. You can’t resolve incidents and fulfill service requests in time to meet SLAs without first getting the ticket to the right place efficiently and then managing all tickets in the queue effectively. It sounds simple, but we see a lot of struggles around queue management, from new tickets sitting too long before being assigned, to in-progress tickets getting buried in favor of easier or higher-priority tickets, to tickets jumping from queue to queue without progress, to a seemingly insurmountable backlog.

Once you have taken the time to clearly structure your queues, assign resources, and define your processes for routing tickets to and from queues and resolving tickets in the queue, you will start to see response and resolution time decrease along with the ticket backlog. However, accountability for queue management is often overlooked and is really key to success.

Natalie Sansone, PhD
Senior Research Analyst, Infrastructure & Operations
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Tickets come into the service desk via multiple channels (email, phone, chat, portal) and aren’t consolidated into a single queue, making it difficult to know what to prioritize.
• New tickets sit in the queue for too long before being assigned while assigned tickets sit for too long without progress or in the wrong queue, leading to slow response and resolution times.
• Tickets quickly pile up in the queues, get lost or buried, or jump between queues without finding the right home, leading to a seemingly insurmountable backlog and breached SLAs.

Common Obstacles

• All tickets pile into the same queue, making it difficult to view, manage, or know who’s working on what.
• There are no defined rules or processes for how tickets should be assigned and routed, meaning they often take too long to get to the right place.
• Technicians have no guidelines as to how to prioritize their work, and no easy way to organize their tickets or queue to know what to work on next.
• Nobody has authority or accountability for queue management, meaning everyone has eyes only on their own tickets while others fall through the cracks.

Info-Tech’s Approach

• Clearly define your queue structure, organize the queues by content, then assign resources to relevant queues depending on their role and expertise.
• Define and document queue management processes, from initial triage to how to prioritize work on assigned tickets. Ensure everyone who handles tickets is clear on their responsibilities.
• Establish clear ownership and accountability for queue management.
• Once processes have been defined, identify opportunities to build in automation to improve efficiency.

Info-Tech Insight

If everybody is managing the queue, then nobody is. Without clear ownership and accountability over each and every queue it becomes too easy for everyone to assume someone else is handling or monitoring a ticket when in fact nobody is. Assign a Queue Manager to each queue and ensure someone is responsible for monitoring ticket movement across all the queues.

Timeliness is essential to customer satisfaction

And timeliness can’t be achieved without good queue management practices.

As soon as that ticket comes in, the clock starts ticking…

A host of different factors influence service desk response time and resolution time, including process optimization and documentation, workflow automation, clearly defined prioritization and escalation rules, and a comprehensive and easily accessible knowledgebase.

However, the root cause of poor response and resolution time often comes down to the basics like ticket queue management. Without clearly defined processes and ownership for assigning and actioning tickets from the queue in the most effective order and manner, customer satisfaction will suffer.

For every 12-hour delay in response time*, CSAT drops by 9.6%.

*to email and web support tickets
Source: Freshdesk, 2021

A Freshworks analysis of 107 million service desk interactions found the relationship between CSAT and response time is stronger than resolution time - when customers receive prompt responses and regular updates, they place less value on actual resolution time.

A queue is simply a line of people (or tickets) waiting to be helped

When customers reach out to the service desk for help, their messages are converted into tickets that are stored in a queue, waiting to be actioned appropriately.

Ticket Queue

Email/web
Ideally, the majority of tickets come into the ticket queue through email or a self-service portal, allowing for appropriate categorization, prioritization, and assignment.

Phone
For IT teams with a high volume of support requests coming in through the phone, reducing wait time in queue may be a priority.

Chat
Live chat is growing in popularity as an intake method and may require routing and distribution rules to prevent long or multiple queues.

Queue Management

Queue management is a set of processes and tools to direct and monitor tickets or manage ticket flow. It involves the following activities:

• Review incoming tickets
• Categorize and prioritize tickets
• Route or assign appropriately
• View or update ticket status
• Monitor resource workload
• Ensure tickets are being actioned in time
• Proactively identify SLA breaches

Ineffective queue management can bury you in backlog

Ticket backlog with poor queue management

Without a clear and efficient process or accountability for moving incoming tickets to the right place, tickets will be worked on randomly, older tickets will get buried, the backlog will grow, and SLAs will be missed.

Ticket backlog with good queue management

With effective queue management and ownership, tickets are quickly assigned to the right resource, worked on within the appropriate SLO/SLA, and actively monitored, leading to a more manageable backlog and good response and resolution times.

A growing backlog will quickly lead to dissatisfied end users and staff

Failing to efficiently move tickets from the queue or monitor tickets in the queue can quickly lead to tickets being buried and support staff feeling buried in tickets.

Common challenges with queue management include:

• Tickets come in through multiple channels and aren’t consolidated into a single queue
• New tickets sit unassigned for too long, resulting in long response times
• Tickets move around between multiple queues with no clear ownership
• Assigned tickets sit too long in a queue without progress and breach SLA
• No accountability for queue ownership and monitoring
• Technicians cherry pick the easiest tickets from the queue
• Technicians have no easy way to organize their queue to know what to work on next

This leads to:

• Long response times
• Long resolution times
• Poor workload distribution and efficiency
• High backlog
• Disengaged, frustrated staff
• Dissatisfied end users

Info-Tech Insight

A growing backlog will quickly lead to frustrated and dissatisfied customers, causing them to avoid the service desk and seek alternate methods to get what they need, whether going directly to their favorite technician or their peers (otherwise known as shadow IT).

Dig yourself out with strong queue management

Strong queue management is the foundation to good customer service.

Build a mature ticket queue management process that allows your team to properly prioritize, assign, and work on tickets to maximize response and resolution times.

A mature queue management process will:

• Reduce response time to address tickets.
• Effectively prioritize tickets and ensure everyone knows what to work on next.
• Ensure tickets get assigned and routed to the right queue and/or resource efficiently.
• Reduce overall resolution time to resolve tickets.
• Enable greater accountability for queue management and monitoring of tickets.
• Improve customer and employee satisfaction.

As queue management maturity increases:
Response time decreases
Resolution time decreases
Backlog decreases
End-user satisfaction increases

Ten Tips to Effectively Manage Your Queue

The remaining slides in this deck will review these ten pieces of advice for designing and managing your ticket queues effectively and efficiently.

1. Define your optimal queue structure
2. Design and assign resources to relevant queues
3. Define and document queue management processes
4. Clearly define queue management responsibilities for every team member
5. Establish clear ownership & accountability over all queues
6. Always keep ticket status and documentation up to date
7. Shift left to reduce queue volume
8. Build-in automation to improve efficiency
9. Configure your ITSM tool to support and optimize queue management processes
10. Don’t lose visibility of the backlog

#1: Define your optimal queue structure

There is no one right way to do queue management; choose the approach that will result in the highest value for your customers and IT staff.

Sample queue structures

*Queues may be defined by skillset, role, ticket category, priority, or a hybrid.

Triage and Assign

• All incoming tickets are assigned to an appropriate queue based on predefined criteria.
• Queue assignment may be done through automated workflows based on specific fields within the ticket, or manually by a
• Queue Manager, dedicated coordinator, or Tier 1 staff.
• Queues may be defined based on:
• Skillset/team (e.g. Infrastructure, Security, Apps, etc.)
• Ticket category (e.g. Network, Office365, Hardware, etc.)
• Priority (e.g. P1, P2, P3, P4, P5)
• Resources may be assigned to multiple queues.

Define your optimal queue structure (cont.)

Tiered generalist model

• All incidents and service requests are routed to Tier 1 first, who prioritize and, if appropriate, conduct initial triage, troubleshooting, and resolution on a wide range of issues.
• More complex or high-priority tickets are escalated to resources at Tier 2 and/or Tier 3, who are specialists working on projects in addition to support tickets.

Unassigned queue

• Very small teams may work from an unassigned queue if there are processes in place to monitor tickets and workload balance.
• Typically, these teams work by resolving the oldest tickets first regardless of complexity (also known as First In, First Out or FIFO). However, this doesn’t allow for much flexibility in terms of priority of the request or customer.

#2: Design and assign resources to relevant queues

Once you’ve defined your overall structure, define the content of each queue.

Info-Tech Insight

Start small; don’t create a queue for every possible ticket type. Remember that someone needs to be accountable for each of these queues, so only build what you can monitor.

#3 Define and document queue management processes

A clear, comprehensive, easily digestible SOP or workflow outlining the steps for handling new tickets and working tickets from the queue will help agents deliver a consistent experience.

Process recommendations

As you define queue management processes, keep the following advice in mind:

Rotate triage role

The triage role is critical but difficult. Consider rotating your Tier 1 resources through this role, or your service desk team if you’re a very small group.

Limit and prioritize channels

You decide which channels to enable and prioritize, not your users. Phone and chat are very interrupt-driven and should be reserved for high-priority issues if used. Your users may not understand that but can learn over time with training and reinforcement.

Prioritize first

Priority matrixes are necessary for consistency but there are always circumstances that require judgment calls. Think about risk and expected outcome rather than simply type of issue alone. And if the impact is bigger than the initial classification, change it.

Define VIP treatment

In some organizations, the same issue can be more critical if it happens to a certain user role (e.g. client facing, c-suite). Identify and flag VIP users and clearly define how their tickets should be prioritized.

Consider time zone

If users are in different time zones, take their current business hours into account when choosing which ticket to work on.

Info-Tech Insight

Think of your service desk as an emergency room. Patients come in with different symptoms, and the triage nurse must quickly assess these symptoms to decide who the patient should see and how soon. Some urgent cases will need to see the doctor immediately, while others can wait in another queue (the waiting room) for a while before being dealt with. Some cases who come in through a priority channel (e.g. ambulance) may jump the queue. Checklists and criteria can help with this decision making, but some degree of judgement is also required and that comes with experience. The triage role is sometimes seen as a junior-level role, but it actually requires expertise to be done well.

For more detailed process guidance, see Standardize the Service Desk

Info-Tech’s blueprint Standardize the Service Desk will help you standardize and document core service desk processes and functions, including:

• Service desk structure, roles, and responsibilities
• Metrics and reporting
• Ticket handling and ticket quality
• Incident and critical incident management
• Ticket categorization
• Prioritization and escalation
• Service request fulfillment
• Self-service considerations
• Building a knowledgebase

#4 Clearly define queue management responsibilities for every team member

This may be one of the most critical yet overlooked keys to queue management success. Define the following:

Who will have overall accountability?

Someone must be responsible for monitoring all incoming and open tickets as well as assigned tickets in every queue to ensure they are routed and fulfilled appropriately. This person must have authority to view and coordinate all queues and Queue Managers.

Who will manage each queue?

Someone must be responsible for managing each queue, including assigning resources, balancing workload, and ensuring SLOs are met for the tickets within their queue. For example, the Apps Manager may be the Queue Manager for all tickets assigned to the Apps team queue.

Who is responsible for assigning tickets?

Will you have a triage team who monitors and assigns all incoming tickets? What are their specific responsibilities (e.g. prioritize, categorize, attempt troubleshooting, assign or escalate)? If not, who is responsible for assigning new tickets and how is this done? Will the triage role be a rotating role, and if so, what will the schedule be?

What are everyone’s responsibilities?

Everyone who is assigned tickets should understand the ticket handling process and their specific responsibilities when it comes to queue management.

#5 Establish clear ownership & accountability over all queues

If everyone is accountable, then no one is accountable. Ownership for each queue and all queues must be clearly designated.

You may have multiple queue manager roles: one for each queue, and one who has visibility over all the queues. Typically, these roles make up only part of an individual’s job. Clearly define the responsibilities of the Queue Manager role; sample responsibilities are on the right.

Info-Tech Insight

Lack of authority over queues – especially those outside Tier 1 of the service desk – is one of the biggest pitfalls we see causing aging tickets and missed SLAs. Every queue needs clear ownership and accountability with everyone committed to meeting the same SLOs.

The Queue Manager or Coordinator is accountable for ensuring tickets are routed to the correct resources service level objectives or agreements are met.

Specific responsibilities may include:

• Monitors queues daily
• Ensures new tickets are assigned to appropriate resources for resolution
• Verifies tickets have been routed and assigned correctly and reroutes if necessary
• Reallocates tickets if assigned resource is suddenly unavailable or away
• Ensures ticket handling process is met, ticket status is up to date and correct, and ticket documentation is complete
• Escalates tickets that are aging or about to breach
• Ensures service level objectives or agreements are met
• Facilitates resource allocation based on workload
• Coordinates tickets that require collaboration across workgroups to ensure resolution is achieved within SLA
• Associates child and parent tickets
• Prepares reports on ticket status and volume by queues
• Regularly reviews reports to identify and act on issues and make improvements or changes where needed
• Identifies opportunities for improvement

#6 Always keep ticket status and documentation up to date

Anyone should be able to quickly understand the status and progress on a ticket without needing to ask the technician working on it. This means both the ticket status and documentation must be continually and accurately updated.

Ticket Documentation
Ticket descriptions and documentation must be kept accurate and up to date. This ensures that if the ticket is escalated or assigned to a new person, or the Queue Manager or Service Desk Manager needs to know what progress has been made on a ticket, that person doesn’t need to waste time with back-and-forth communication with the technician or end user.

Ticket Status
The ticket status field should change as the ticket moves toward resolution, and must be updated every time the status changes. This ensures that anyone looking at the ticket queue can quickly learn and communicate the status of a ticket, tickets don’t get lost or neglected, metrics are accurate (such as time to resolve), and SLAs are not impacted if a ticket is on hold.

Common ticket statuses include:

• New/open
• Assigned
• In progress
• Declined
• Canceled
• Pending/on hold
• Resolved
• Closed
• Reopened

For more guidance on ticket handling and documentation, download Info-Tech’s blueprint: Standardize the Service Desk.

• For ticket handling and documentation, see Step 1.4
• For ticket status fields, see Step 2.2.

#7 Shift left to reduce queue volume

Enable processes such as knowledge management, self-service, and problem management to prevent tickets from even coming into the queue.

Shift left means enabling fulfilment of repeatable tasks and requests via faster, lower-cost delivery channels, self-help tools, and automation.

Shift to Level 1

• Identify tickets that are often escalated beyond Tier 1 but could be resolved by Level 1 if they were given the tools, training, resources, or access they need to do so.
• Provide tools to succeed at resolving those defined tasks (e.g. knowledge article, documentation, remote tools).
• Embed knowledge management in resolution workflows.

Shift to End User

• Build a centralized, easily accessible self-service portal where users can search for solutions to resolve their issues without having to submit a ticket.
• Communicate and train users on how to use the portal regularly update and improve it.

Automate & Eliminate

• Identify processes or tasks that could be automated to eliminate work.
• Invest in problem management and event management to fix the root problem of recurring issues and prevent a problem from occurring in the first place, thereby preventing future tickets.

#8 Build in automation to improve efficiency

Manually routing every ticket can be time-consuming and prone to errors. Once you’ve established the process, automate wherever possible.

Automation rules can be used to ensure tickets are assigned to the right person or queue, to alert necessary parties when a ticket is about to breach or has breached SLA, or to remind technicians when a ticket has sat in a queue or at a particular status for too long.

This can improve efficiency, reduce error, and bring greater visibility to both high-priority tickets and aging tickets in the backlog.

However, your processes, queues, and responsibilities must be clearly defined before you can build in automation.

For more guidance on implementing automation and AI within your service desk, see these blueprints:

For examples of rules, triggers, and fields you can automate to improve the efficiency of your queue management processes, see the next slide.

Sample automation rules

Criteria or triggers you can automate actions based on:

• Ticket type
• Specific field in a ticket web form
• Ticket form that was used (e.g. specific service request form from the portal)
• Ticket category
• Ticket priority
• Keyword in an email subject line
• Keywords or string in a chat
• Requester name or email
• Requester location
• Requester/ticket language
• Requester VIP status
• Channel ticket was received through
• SLAs or time-based automations
• Agent skill
• Agent status or capacity

Fields or actions those triggers can automate

• Priority
• Category
• Ticket routing
• Assigned agent
• Assigned queue
• SLA/due date
• Notifications/communication

Sample Automation Rules

• When ticket is about to breach, send alert to Queue Manager and Service Desk Manager.
• When ticket comes from VIP user, set urgency to high.
• When ticket status has been set to “open” for ten hours, send an alert to Queue Manager.
• When ticket status has been set to “on hold” for five days, send a reminder to assignee.
• When ticket is categorized as “Software-ERP,” send to ERP queue.
• When ticket is prioritized as P1/critical, send alert to emergency response team.
• When ticket is prioritized as P1 and hasn’t been updated for one hour, send an alert to Incident Manager.
• When an in-progress ticket is reassigned to a new queue, alert Queue Manager.
• When ticket has not been resolved within seven days, flag as aging ticket.

#9 Configure your ITSM tool to support and optimize queue management processes

Configure your tool to support your needs; don’t adjust your processes to match the tool.

• Most ITSM tools have default queues out of the box and the option to create as many custom queues, filters, and views as you need. Custom queues should allow you to name the queue, decide which tickets will be sent to the queue, and what columns or information are displayed in the queue.
• Before you configure your queues and dashboards, sit down with your team to decide what you need and what will best enable each agent to manage their workload.
• Decide which queues each role should have access to – most should only need to see their own queue and their team’s queue.
• Configure which queues or views new tickets will be sent to.
• Configure automation rules defined earlier (e.g. automate sending certain tickets to specific queues or sending notifications to specific parties when certain conditions are met).
• Configure dashboards and reports on queue volume and ticket status data relevant to each team to help them manage their workload, increase visibility, and identify issues or actions.

Info-Tech Insight

It can be overwhelming to support agents when their view is a long and never-ending queue. Set the default dashboard view to show only those tickets assigned to the viewer to make it appear more manageable and easier to organize.

Configure queues to maximize productivity

Info-Tech Insight

The queue should quickly give your team all the information they need to prioritize their work, including ticket status, priority, category, due date, and updated timestamps. Configuration is important - if it’s confusing, clunky, or difficult to filter or sort, it will impact response and resolution times and can lead to missed tickets. Give your team input into configuration and use visuals such as color coding to help agents prioritize their work – for example, VIP tickets may be clearly flagged, critical or high priority tickets may be highlighted, tickets about to breach may be red.

#10 Don’t lose visibility of the backlog

Be careful not to focus so much on assigning new tickets that you forget to update aging tickets, leading to an overwhelming backlog and dissatisfied users.

Track metrics that give visibility into how quickly tickets are being resolved and how many aging tickets you have. Metrics may include:

• Ticket resolution time by priority, by workgroup
• Ticket volume by status (i.e. open, in progress, on hold, resolved)
• Ticket volume by age
• Ticket volume by queue and assignee

Regularly review reports on these metrics with the team.

Make it an agenda item to review aging tickets, on hold tickets, and tickets about to breach or past breach with the team.

Take action on aging tickets to ensure progress is being made.

Set rules to close tickets after a certain number of attempts to reach unresponsive users (and change ticket status appropriately).

Schedule times for your team to tackle aged tickets or tickets in the backlog.

Info-Tech Insight

It can be easy for high priority work to constantly push down low priority work, leaving the lower priority tickets to constantly be ignored and users to be frustrated. If you’re struggling with aging tickets, backlog, and tickets breaching SLA, experiment with your team and queue structure to figure out the best resource distribution to handle your workload. This could mean rotating people through the triage role to allow them time to work through the backlog, reducing the number of people doing triage during slower volume periods, or giving technicians dedicated time to work through tickets. For help with forecasting demand and optimizing resources, see Staff the Service Desk to Meet Demand.

Activity 1.1: Define ticket queues

1 hour

Map out your optimal ticket queue structure using the Service Desk Queue Structure Template. Follow the instructions in the template to complete it as a team.

The template includes several examples of service desk queue structures followed by space to build your own model of an optimal service desk queue structure and to document who is assigned to each queue and responsible for managing each queue.

Note:

The template is not meant to map out your entire service desk structure (e.g. tiers, escalation paths) or ticket resolution process, but simply the ticket queues and how a ticket moves between queues. For help documenting more detailed process workflows or service desk structure, see the blueprint Standardize the Service Desk.

Input

• Current queue structure and roles

Output

• Defined service desk ticket queues and assigned responsibilities

Materials

• Org chart
• ITSM tool for reference, if needed

Participants

• Service Desk Manager
• IT Director
• Queue Managers

Document in the Service Desk Queue Structure Template.

Related Info-Tech Research

Standardize the Service Desk

This project will help you build and improve essential service desk processes including incident management, request fulfillment, and knowledge management to create a sustainable service desk.

Optimize the Service Desk With a Shift-Left Strategy

This project will help you build a strategy to shift service support left to optimize your service desk operations and increase end-user satisfaction.

Improve Service Desk Ticket Intake

This project will help you streamline your ticket intake process and identify improvements to your intake channels.

Staff the Service Desk to Meet Demand

This project will help you determine your optimal service desk structure and staffing levels based on your unique environment, workload, and trends.

Works Cited

“What your Customers Really Want.” Freshdesk, 31 May 2021. Accessed May 2022.

Align Projects With the IT Change Lifecycle

Increase the success of your changes by integrating project touchpoints in the change lifecycle.

Analyst Perspective

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Improvement can be incremental. You do not have to adopt every recommended improvement right away. Ensure every process change you make will create value, and slowly add improvements to ease buy-in.

Info-Tech’s approach

Use the change lifecycle to identify touchpoints.

The Info-Tech difference:

1. Start with your change lifecycle to define how change control can align with project management.
2. Make improvements to project-change alignment to benefit the relationship between the two practices and the practices individually.
3. Scope the alignment to your organization. Take on the improvements to the left one by one instead of overhauling your current process.

Use this research to improve your current process

This deck is intended to align established processes. If you are just starting to build IT change processes, see the related research below.

Successful change management will provide benefits to both the business and IT

Respond to business requests faster while reducing the number of change-related disruptions.

IT satisfaction with change management will drive business satisfaction with IT. Once the process is working efficiently, staff will be more motivated to adhere to the process, reducing the number of unauthorized changes. As fewer changes bypass proper evaluation and testing, service disruptions will decrease and business satisfaction will increase.

Change management improves core benefits to the business: the four Cs

Most organizations have at least some form of change control in place, but formalizing change management leads to the four Cs of business benefits:

1. Alignment at intake

Define what is a change and what is a project.

Both changes and projects will end up in change control in the end. Here, we define the intake.

Changes and projects will both go to change control when ready to go live. However, defining the governance needed at intake is critical.

A change should be governed by change control from beginning to end. It would typically be less than a week’s worth of work for a SME to build and come in at a nominal cost (e.g. <$20k over operating costs).

Projects on the other hand, will be governed by project management in terms of scope, scheduling, resourcing, etc. Projects typically take over a week and/or cost more. However, the project, when ready to go live, should still be scheduled through change control to avoid any conflicts at implementation. At triage and intake, a project can be further scoped based on projected scale.

This initial touchpoint between change control and project management is crucial to ensure tasks and request are executed with the proper governance. To distinguish between changes and projects at intake, list examples of each and determine what resourcing separates changes from projects.

Need help scoping projects? Download the Project Intake Classification Matrix

Info-Tech Insight

While effort and cost are good indicators of changes and projects, consider evaluating risk and complexity too.

1 Define what constitutes a change

1. As a group, brainstorm examples of changes and projects. If you wish, you may choose to also separate out additional request types such as service requests (user), operational tasks (backend), and releases.
2. Have each participant write the examples on sticky notes and populate the following chart on the whiteboard/flip chart.
3. Use the examples to draw lines and determine what defines each category.

• What makes a change distinct from a project?
• What makes a change distinct from a service request?
• What makes a change distinct from an operational task?
• When do the category workflows cross over with other categories? (For example, when does a project interact with change management?

Download the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

2. Alignment at build and test

Keep communications open by pre-defining and communicating project milestones.

CAB touchpoints

Consistently communicate the plan and timeline for hitting these milestones so CAB can prioritize and plan changes around it. This will give change control advanced notice of altered timelines.

RFCs

Projects may have multiple associated RFCs. Keeping CAB appraised of the project RFC or RFCs gives them the ability to further plan changes.

Change Calendar

Query and fill the change calendar with project timelines and milestones to compliment the CAB touchpoints.

Leverage the RFC to record and communicate project details

The request for change (RFC) form does not have to be a burden to fill out. If designed with value in mind, it can be leveraged to set standards on all changes (from projects and otherwise).

When looking at the RFC during the Build and Test phase of a project, prioritize the following fields to ensure the implementation will be successful from a technical and user-adoption point of view.

Filling these fields of the RFC and communicating them to the CAB at go-live approval gives the approvers confidence that the project will be implemented successfully and measures are known for when that implementation is not successful.

Download the Request for Change Form Template

Provide clear definitions of what goes on the change calendar and who’s responsible

Inputs

• Freeze periods for individual business departments/applications (e.g. finance month-end periods, HR payroll cycle, etc. – all to be investigated)
• Maintenance windows and planned outage periods
• Project schedules, and upcoming major/medium changes
• Holidays
• Business hours (some departments work 9-5, others work different hours or in different time zones, and user acceptance testing may require business users to be available)

Guidelines

• Business-defined freeze periods are the top priority.
• No major or medium normal changes should occur during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
• Vendor SLA support hours are the preferred time for implementing changes.
• The vacation calendar for IT will be considered for major changes.
• Change priority: High > Medium > Low.
• Minor changes and preapproved changes have the same priority and will be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Roles

• The Change Manager will be responsible for creating and maintaining a change calendar.
• Only the Change Manager can physically alter the calendar by adding a new change after the CAB has agreed upon a deployment date.
• All other CAB members, IT support staff, and other impacted stakeholders should have access to the calendar on a read-only basis to prevent people from making unauthorized changes to deployment dates.

Info-Tech Insight

Make the calendar visible to as many parties as necessary. However, limit the number of personnel who can make active changes to the calendar to limit calendar conflicts.

3. Alignment at approval

How can project management effectively contribute to CAB?

As optional CAB members

Project SMEs may attend when projects are ready to go live and when invited by the change manager. Optional members provide details on change cross-dependencies, high-level testing, rollback, communication plans, etc. to inform prioritization and scheduling decisions.

As project management representatives

Project management should also attend CAB meetings to report in on changes to ongoing projects, implementation timelines, and project milestones. Projects are typically high-priority changes when going live due to their impact. Advanced notice of timeline and milestone changes allow the rest of the CAB to properly manage other changes going into production.

As core CAB members

The core responsibilities of CAB must still be fulfilled:

1. Protect the live environment from poorly assessed, tested, and implemented changes.

2. Prioritize changes in a way that fairly reflects change impact, urgency, and likelihood.

3. Schedule deployments in a way the minimizes conflict and disruption.

If you need to define the authority and responsibilities of the CAB, see Activity 2.1.3 of the Optimize IT Change Management blueprint.

4. Alignment at implementation

At this stage, the project or project phase is treated as any other change.

If you need to define transitioning changes to production, download Transition Projects to the Service Desk

5. Alignment at post-implementation

Tackle the most neglected portion of change management to avoid making the same mistake twice.

1. Define RFC statuses that need a PIR

Conduct PIRs for failed changes. Successful changes can simply be noted and transitioned to operations.

2. Conduct a PIR for every failed change

It’s best to perform a PIR once a change-related incident is resolved.

3. Avoid making the same mistake twice

Include a root-cause analysis, mitigation actions/timeline, and lessons learned in the documentation.

4. Report to CAB

Socialize the findings of the PIR at the subsequent CAB meeting.

5. Circle back on previous PIRs

If a similar change is conducted, append the related PIR to avoid the same mistakes.

Info-Tech Insight

Include your PIR documentation right in the RFC for easy reference.

Download the RFC template for more details on post-implementation reviews

2 Implement your alignments stepwise

1. As a group, decide on which implementations you need to make to align change management and project management.
2. For each improvement, list a timeline for implementation.
3. Update section 3.5 in the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). to outline the responsibilities of project management within IT Change Management.

Download the Change Management Standard Operating Procedure (SOP).

Related Info-Tech Research