Building a Culture-Focused PMO in a Lean-Thinking Credit Union

Organizations that perform a lot of work within projects and programs, and that complete large, enterprise-wide projects, often utilize a Project Management Office structure. In the project management profession, working within a PMO is quickly becoming the industry standard. In simple terms, a PMO is a department that is dedicated to the management of projects for its organization. This includes offering standardized templates and tools, reporting, resource management services, research and analysis, planning, execution and records maintenance services to internal customers, be they product owners or department managers. The PMO centralizes all project portfolio activities and offers different levels of support and control.

There are many reasons organizations build and utilize internal PMOs. A large volume of projects, complexity of projects, the need for better archiving and the risk to the organization posed by poorly-executed projects are just some of the reasons. In the case of Direct Federal Credit Union, it was a combination of factors: A robust annual strategic planning process that segued into a heavy annual project load, frequent resource bottlenecks, an upcoming core conversion and a rapid rate of growth. In addition to these factors, Direct has been in the throes of a major culture shift, which started in 2014 when Joseph Walsh became CEO. An environment that is dominated by constant change is one that poses considerable challenges and needs to be balanced with consistent structure and a positive culture. For this reason, Direct had begun to implement a lean culture in 2017. Originating from the Toyota manufacturing process and based on the Sixth Sigma Lean “belt” certifications, lean cultures focus on seeing the work from the customer’s point of view, and commit to continuous improvement and quality.

As an organization of just over 70 employees, Direct started its PMO with the hiring of one project manager in 2018. The chosen candidate had both IT and non-IT experience and was a Project Management Institute-certified Project Management Professional (PMP). The preliminary goals for project management at Direct were to map the activity of the credit union’s busiest shared resources in a visual format, to create visibility around bottlenecks and encourage careful planning of tasks involving these resources’ time, as well as to establish reporting of all project activities thus generating accountability and discussion across the project portfolio. These initiatives went hand in hand with Direct’s budding lean culture; lean stresses visual management for information sharing, and all reports were posted on monitors around the credit union, as well as emailed out to all employees.

Soon after, it became clear that the scope of what was needed to achieve the preliminary project goals was the evolution of a PMO. Bringing project management into such a project-heavy environment without offering standard work, tools and templates, and the ability to report at the program and portfolio level, would do little more than add some project support to a subset of the projects. It became clear that to accommodate Direct’s strategic goals fully and support the credit union’s growth, it would be vital for project leads and product owners to learn PM strategies and achieve consistency across the organization in how project work was being performed.

Direct faced the challenge of bringing another wide-spanning methodology to the organization, at a time when lean was still in its earlier stages of adoption. The challenges included:

• Information overload while employees received information about both lean and PM methodologies;
• Achieving buy-in for the use of a collection of new templates;
• Establishing the different approaches needed for projects specifically, and separating projects from daily operations;
• Addressing bottlenecks that have existed for years prior;
• Establishing metrics and approaches for staff with different levels of project involvement and availability for project work; and
• Respecting Direct’s priority in establishing the desired employee culture.

Through some hiccups and growing pains, it became clear that slow and steady was the way to proceed, which was challenging due to multiple large, enterprise-wide initiatives planned for 2018. The balance between achieving project milestones and setting realistic expectations was the PMO’s biggest challenge in 2018. Major takeaways from the experience of the first year included:

• It is important to understand that PM knowledge is new to all, but also to not introduce too many concepts at once, and to always sync it with lean language and culture.
• Not all employees are able to find excitement and passion for new methodologies. Getting creative with celebrating milestones and offering frequent positive reinforcement can go a long way.
• It is important to offer a lot of opportunities for training, but ultimately to avoid hand-holding project leads and product owners.
• Patience is important and gentle communication is key.
• Asking questions about what people find most useful in project management is very important to create value in a PMO.
• While the PMO is its own department, its team members need to focus on learning about all the departments it serves and not become too siloed.
• It is important to maintain awareness of the different priorities, both operational and project-oriented, that people at your organization deal with regularly.

As 2018 ended, Direct achieved the successful completion of a number of large projects that satisfied its strategic goals, and was able to utilize PMO resources in its strategic planning efforts for 2019. All employees of the credit union got exposure to PM updates, both via screen displays and through its newly-launched intranet. The PMO building work continues into 2019 and will take three to five years to ramp up to its ideal state. The focus for 2019 is to continue bridging the gap between lean and PM methodologies, offering career development and education in PM concepts, implementing a new project management system and allocating more time to planning and scoping larger projects. The PMO is working closely with Direct’s Team Lean to continue to build lean knowledge, and offer better integration of both sets of tools.

Maria Vasilevsky, PMP is Director of PMO for Direct FCU. She can be reached at 781-433-2900, Ext. 294 or mvasilevsky@direct.com.