Role-Based Project Management Software
- Blogs
- Show more
The Process-less, Value driven PMO
Nowadays, value-driven Project Management Offices (PMOs) no longer need strict adherence to processes. Merely enforcing procedures or requesting documents from project teams does not guarantee their performance. Similarly, expecting managers to make timely decisions solely based on reading reports is ineffective. PMOs that rely on these practices are often perceived as cost centers by senior management. During crises, such PMOs are often downsized, outsourced, or eliminated.
To deliver value, PMOs must allocate their time to anticipating problems and governing the project portfolio. By shifting the management burden to project teams, PMOs can significantly enhance their effectiveness without increasing resources. This shift can commence by instilling three simple habits in Project Managers:
- Project Managers generate easy and frequent project status reports.
- Project Managers are accountable in regular project review meetings.
- Project Managers serve multiple stakeholders who can monitor the project at their convenience (the “panopticon” effect).
Latest Posts
PMI will release PMBOK® 8th Edition in 2025
If you are a member of PMI, you can access this link to comment the current drafts for The Standard for Project Management and “A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge”:
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge
The main changes are three:
- Processes are Reintroduced.
- Project Management Principles are Reduced by Half.
- Project Performance Domains are now Process Driven.
Read on to get the details …
March 1, 2025
February 27, 2025
Project management training is growing every day. More and more providers around the globe are offering project management courses. PMI’s Authorized Training Partners list is growing steadily. Many business schools are offering master degrees in project management. According to PMI, by 2027, employers will need nearly 88 million individuals in project management-oriented roles. As long as these training needs are not typically covered by schools or universities, we still need academic institutions teaching us on the standardized body of knowledge to manage agile or predictive projects.
At PMPeople, we want to help these organizations with our service PMPeople University. Any accredited organization providing courses in project management can use PMPeople for half price. Online support for students and trainers is also included.
These organizations can save big money if they pay for other project management tools for students, since PMPeople covers most use cases in professional project management and has integrations with other freemium tools. What’s more, organizations can add value to students by providing an up-to-date learning experience practicing collaborative professional project management, as expected in the Project Economy.
If you are interested, please email us to info@pmpeople.ai with the subject: “UNIVERSITY”.
Service setup will take less than a week. Our team will create a separate premium organization, with your logo. Our user PMPeople admin will be the one to manage all organization settings, no need to do that work with your people. Typical operation during one learning cycle is described below:
- Organization owner will email support@pmpeople.ai the list with the names and emails of students and teachers to start a new training subject, or training course. Users will be provisioned in less than a week.
- Professors will be invited to our Slack support workspace and trained in 1 hour webinar during the activation week. Professors can be trained up to 10 times a year.
- Students will also be invited to our Slack support workspace. Maximum response time to doubts will be less than 1 day.
- Training subjects or courses will be modeled as Business Units inside the tool. The main professor will use the role of Functional Manager for that Business Unit, being able to see all projects inside. When there are many projects, they can use filters to access effectively to just one student group, for instance. Students’ activities, projects or even a Final Master Thesis Project, can be modeled as projects belonging to the right Business Unit. Activity leader will use the PM role, and the other team members can use the PMO Supportive role to edit all data, if needed.
- PMO role is reserved to our user PMPeople admin to provide functional support and also fix any functional problem, such as when users by accident archive a project, block a planning, etc.
- Project data are modeled under PMBOK standard terminology. For instance, projects States are initiating, planning, executing, closing, and archiving. Knowledge areas are integration, scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communications, risk, procurement, and stakeholder project management. Specific features are provided to manage the project ROI, funding, status reviews, tasks, changes, issue logs, agile retrospectives, timesheets, expenses, capacity management, calendars, etc. Projects can be “archived” if no further changes are allowed.
- Students can schedule their projects using Microsoft Project, Project Libre, Primavera or SmartSheet. PMPeople tool is integrated with those scheduling tools, so that they do not need to enter data twice, but they could schedule directly in our tool, as well. Other integrations available are with file sharing tools —Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive, Sharepoint— task management tools —Asana— and instant messaging tools —Slack.
- Users can access via mobile application —iOS or Android— to read/edit many data.
- Practice results —project charter, stakeholder register, schedule, EVM charts, ROI analysis, funding plan, funding controls, risk register, issue log, capacity plan, status review dashboards, change logs, etc.— can have online evidence or as PDF files. Professors can check in real time via web or mobile application.
- At the end of the learning cycle, students will be deprovisioned by our team at PMPeople.
February 23, 2025
Editors pick
Blockchain, the cryptocurrency underlying technology, is starting to change the way we do business, and will soon change the way we manage projects. Project management Blockchain applications will not be just for paying subcontractors with digital money.
Chances are Project Management Information System (PMIS) tools start with Blockchain by using features known as smart contracts to extend transaction logic with programmed logic. This will make project management more trustworthy by automating transactions related to subcontractors’ terms and conditions, registering project work performance data and project status reports.
Reliable project status reports can make stakeholders trust project management:
- Stakeholders will trust project management if they have access to reliable periodic status reports.
- Stakeholders will not trust project management if, for instance, everything is “green” on week 11, and everything is “red” on week 12; or even worse, if now we say that week 11 was already “red” but we said “green” in the first place.
- Consider this Indian NGO to help kids with vision problems. How many additional donations could they get only if they periodically reported the project global status, issues, risks, schedule and costs variances, etc.? How many donations would be canceled if any stakeholder find these reports deceptive?
Think of a non-professional project management, who manages the project just by tracking tasks. How is he different from a professional one? The main distinction is that the project management professional reports periodically to a project steering committee. While reporting about the project, this professional is also involving key stakeholders in the problems and seeking the solutions with them. For example: What activities should we compress to save a 2-week delay? What activities should we reduce costs on, to avoid 10,000 EUR over cost, before the project ends?
Periodic project reporting brings two main benefits:
- Project managers are more effective if they know there are vigilant eyes watching the project status at each review date.
- Stakeholders will trust PM if they satisfy their communication needs with project status reports.
The story of a project can be summarized throughout its status reports.
Project stakeholders can easily understand project status report terminology:
- Projects have 4 states: initiating, if not approved yet; planning, if it is approved but not started, and effort is devoted to planning but no cost is spent; executing, if project is using effort and costing money; and closing, if all deliverables have been accepted.
- Data dates: At each review date, stakeholders need to know planned or actual start and finish dates. Published project status will be referred to a review date.
- Synthetic data: Each project status report contains global and detailed, qualitative, and quantitative information. Above all, stakeholders appreciate traffic lights: Green color meaning “on-track”; amber meaning “action required to get back on-track”; read meaning “off-plan”.
Let’s set an example of a project story summarized in these 5 snapshots:
- Status #1: As of today, the project is not approved yet. It is on initiating state. There is an estimate for start and finish.
- Status #2: Today, the project is on planning state. We cannot use resources nor spend money on it. We will start soon. Review dates are planned.
- Status #3: Today, the project is on executing state. We can submit timesheets and expenses. It was started recently. No project status is reported yet.
- Status #4: Today, the project is still on executing state. Project status date is previous, but there is no published status report for the status date. Stakeholders can review one status report at the beginning, with some information but no traffic light was reported (white). Second status report stated the project was on-track (green).
- Status #5: As of today, all technical work is accepted. Project is on closing state. We can review 5 status reports during the project lifecycle. One review date has no report associated. The last 3 shows issues but we closed on time, eventually.
To make periodic project status reports trustable, that is, impossible to face, the unique feasible technological solution is to publish project status reports files in Blockchain. In PMPeople, the organization owner can set the “reliable organization seal”, allowing status reports have a certified copy in Blockchain.
In reliable organizations, any project manager can publish project status reports in Ethereum, at a cost of 0.10€ each.
Four states are possible for any project status report:
- Private: Project status has not been stored on Blockchain.
- Public: Project manager has stored project status on Blockchain.
- Verified: At least one stakeholder has checked that the stored project status matches the information in the PMPeople tool.
- Invalidated: At least one stakeholder has checked that the stored project status does not match the information in PMPeople tool.
Imagine a project as of September 21st. Project status report has been published in Blockchain. At that time, the project is on track:
- Users granted to access project status reports in PMPeople can see that dates August 17th and 24th are not been published.
- August 31st report is published but nobody has verified it yet
- September 7th and 21st reports are verified indeed.
- September 14th report has been changed in PMPeople and does not match Blockchain record.
- Project manager can always publish August 17th and 24th.
- Project manager can also “unpublish” September 14th and set it to public again –PMPeople will call a new Blockchain transaction that will be secured in a new block.
In reliable organizations, stakeholders and project managers know that project status reports are kept in Blockchain. PMPeople hides technical details, though.
See this state diagram with the possible transitions:
- Initial State: Project status report is not published in Blockchain, it is “private”.
- Publish: Project manager, or other management role, publishes the project status report in Blockchain. Status report state name is “published”. Organization’s balance is decremented 0.10 € –if organization’s balance is totally spent, then the seal is removed.
- Verify: Any project stakeholder clicks the report icon. This calls an internal process to compare all published data against data stored in PMPeople. If all data match, then status report state is changed to “verified”.
- Invalidate: Any project stakeholder clicks the report icon. This calls an internal process to compare all published data against data stored in PMPeople. If some data do not match, then status report state is changed to “invalidated”.
- Unpublish: Any time, the project manager, or other management role, can make public reports get back to “private”.
PMPeople is the tool for professional collaboration in project management. Organizations need their projects profitable, strategy aligned and value adding. Top managers do not have time to manage each project crisis. Project management should be addressed professionally.
PMPeople gets organizational project maturity to the next level, in an agile way, without changing organizational processes, nor adding more bureaucracy. People don’t need to be trained, or getting certified in project management. Costly PMO teams are not needed, either.
Follow this steps to start collaborating professionally in project management:
- Sign up PMPeople and create a new organization.
- Load the projects your organization is executing now –you can automate loading with an Excel file organizing your projects in business units, programs and portfolios.
- Invite people and assign them roles to collaborate on projects.
- Read periodic status reports published by project managers, accessing via web or the mobile application. Find the project information you need in one or two clicks –no need to ask the project manager again and again.
PMPeople makes people start collaborating on projects, improving organizational project maturity, even for agile organizations, to lead the project economy.
Say goodbye to uncontrolled projects, bureaucratic work flows, depending too much on individuals, unpredictability, etc. With PMPeople, your organization will close more projects successfully.
Stop putting out fires! With PMPeople you will have more time to initiate, control and close more value projects in your organization.
Digital transformation is affecting Project Management Offices. Project management organizations see how their projects grow exponentially, but their team doesn’t grow. Overnight, senior managers authorize projects with a high technological component, involve the organization as a whole, but requirements are not clear. Project steering committees ask for status reports, risk reports, cost forecasts, etc. Project managers ask for resources, methodological guidance, etc. Teams ask for agile courses, coaches, collaborative workspaces, tools, etc. Many business representatives still see agile as a passing fad , only applicable to software projects, etc.
At this point, the corporate PMO knows that the way to manage adaptive projects should not be predictive, but agile. Any Agile PMO will try to implement certain paradigms:
-
- Projects should be value driven better than planned driven.
-
- Business representatives should be engaged to provide continuous feedback.
-
- Business analysis professionals need to focus on “what”. Development team need to focus on “how to”.
-
- The PMO should not centralize project management because it would become a bottleneck. It should not introduce bureaucracy or approval workflows. The PMO must achieve more with less.
-
- The PMO should encourage distributed project management models: project managers, program managers, portfolio managers, functional managers, resource managers, etc., should share project management from their respective knowledge areas, so that the PMO can focus their work better.
PMPeople tool does not avoid the necessary agile face to face collaboration within teams, participation in the different ceremonies, the use of other tools to communicate, information radiation, virtual boards, etc. PMPeople facilitates all the collaboration among people involved in project management, accessing with the mobile application or via the Web, enhancing value orientation and eliminating waste. PMPeople also facilitates agile scaling when large teams need to collaborate.
Thanks to PMPeople, the PMO can go from being a bottleneck, to a facilitating unit that delivers more value projects successfully, faster and cheaper.