E-maginative - Project and Programme Office implementation

Understanding project and programme offices

Our specialist areas include:

• Project office
• Project support office
• Programme office
• Programme support office.

There has been much debate about the exact functions that each of the above should undertake. The following guide outlines the key functions and benefits of each.

The Project Office - this is generally established to undertake the project governance of a specific project, especially useful on large and complex projects. This will cover things like project reporting, budget tracking, project progress tracking and other organisation-specific governance requirements.

The Project Support Office - more akin to providing hands-on support and assistance to project managers in ensuring that large complex projects are managed appropriately. Such assistance could be in project planning, document management, issue and risk management and general project management support.

The Programme Office and Programme Support Office - extensions of the above generally support the corporate portfolio or mix of projects. It is these functions that ensure consistency of approach across projects.

At e-maginative we work with our clients to determine what they want to achieve and then we work with them to implement and staff the function.

Project and programme office goals

Before embarking on the setup, it's crucial to clearly understand what you want to achieve.

Since a project office can do many things, organisations need to:

• Consider carefully the key areas the project office should address
• Decide what the underlying business drivers are
• Determine what lessons can be learnt from previous projects
• Specify which services the project office needs to provide
• Establish appropriate levels of corporate governance
• Design a standard (though flexible) project lifecycle
• Determine what priority should be placed on each project.

The value of organisation

Whatever your needs, we can help you to design, develop and resource successful high-performance project offices that deliver real organisational value.

At e-maginative we have significant capability in the following areas:

• Project delivery on time and to budget (everyone says this, but we really do it)
• Project and programme support
• Project and programme governance
• Project, programme and portfolio management
• Corporate governance
• Benefits realisation
• Introducing and implementing Prince 2 and DSDM
• Tailoring methodologies to an organisation's needs
• Establishing organisation-specific lifecycles, processes and standards.