Benchmarking & Measurement

As Chris Walters writes in the foreword to my new book ‘Leading Successful PMOs’ (Gower) – ‘The role of the PMO leader is one for a particular breed of individual. Be clear: this is a very senior position in any organisation that takes project delivery seriously – the days of co-ordinating project administrators are over. PMO...
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First, let us be clear on the terminology here; a ‘projectised’ organisation is one, which runs its business primarily by performing projects i.e. each work undertaken is different from the previous work and produces unique results. Examples are management consulting firms, construction firms, law firms etc. Whereby a ‘non-projectised’ organisation may not conduct projects per se...
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Your business case should be more than a financial document; it should be a strategy document. Crafting a business case that shows a strong return on investment can be powerful, but those numbers alone do not tell the whole story about a project’s potential impact. When weighing project acceptance, there are other crucial factors to...
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The current state is often as follows: A PMO or HR has engaged ESI (The best of the best!) to run a professional development programme for increasing the competency of Project Managers and make a difference to the organisation A solution is in place for multiple levels in the organisation Often the impact is assessed based on...
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Strengthening and evolving your company’s skill and performance level requires more than educating your employees. Without a thoughtful plan mapped around metrics, milestones and the right learning for the right people, you can rapidly get off track, lose sight of your objectives and waste your training budget. To achieve long-term benefits and positive ROI,...
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As mentioned in the previous blog, an easy, scalable and repeatable project assessment is needed.  Something that is based in the then current realities of projects, is actionable, and gets multiple perspectives. This is not to replace the deep dive into project metrics if they exist.  Nor is it meant to be the be...
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Whenever the subject of measuring learning effectiveness comes up, most organisations think medium-term impact.  Not many people think of its impact to ongoing projects.  What if the focus was for ongoing projects with an easy, scalable and repeatable feedback mechanism! In this two-part blog, I will set the stage in the first and describe...
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As I travel the world presenting for clients and at conferences, one question that I am often asked is how to ensure high response rate and high quality feedback from individuals after their training—90 days after their training.  Organisations are not necessarily expecting great results, many of them are OK with challenges/areas to do...
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As organisations embark on various learning programmes to improve knowledge, skills and most importantly competencies, they often think about how to measure the impact—at least they should.  If they are doing this “by the book” they assess their target audience level of knowledge and level of throughput or success (which is very dependent on...
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Before becoming a project manager I had been working as a hardware engineer for a computer company. One day I was called to solve a problem with a computer that seemed to have caught fire whilst one of my colleagues was working with it. Arriving at the site, I found my colleague completely in distress;...
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