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PROJECTS from JOBS to PROGRAMMES
ABBERMIST LIMITED
Programme Office Specialists
Established 08/11/1985

See also:

0. What does a PO do for you?
1. What is a Programme?
2. What is a Programme Office?
3. What is the PO Role?
4. What is the PO Function?
5. This page...
6. What are typical Problems?
7. SET UP A PROGRAMME OFFICE FROM SCRATCH.

PM QUIZ

Free Project Management Quizzes
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OUR BACKGROUND GO TO HOME PAGE

OUR PRODUCTS
Overview page.

Product Details by package
Programme Office Package
Programme&Project Planning
Copyright Statment
Issue Management
Risk Management
Change Control
Cost Control
Organisation
Version Control
Communications

How do we organise?

5.1 The PO Organisation for Programmes Management

An assessment should be made of the volume of programme work the parent organisation can be expected to undertake and an organisation chart should be drawn up that describes the delivery component of the parent organisation.

The delivery component is different from the parent organisation structure as some departments may never be called upon to take responsibility for delivery of a programme or project even though they play an essential role in that delivery.

The objective is to identify the responsible managers of projects, the projects parent sub-programme and their parent programmes to describe a delivery hierarchy that can be coded and provided with a naming convention.

Care must be taken to ensure that support activities that are not directly related to Programme Delivery or PO administration are identified and accommodated by provision of additional resources for the PO team.

A PO for a single programme

The minimum number of Programme Office staff required is four (4) for even the smallest programme.

The minimal PO Organisation

All Programme Office staff will be responsible for the administration function

The ideal PO organisation

A Programme Office for many programmes

Where more than one programme falls within the remit of a single PO (the usual case) then consideration is to be given to the work loading on the existing resource. Additional resources should be considered that have the ability to support more than one, if not all functions.

Many Programme Offices

There may be a requirement to increase the number of Programme or Project Offices to accommodate the increased complexity of a particular programme, the geographical dispersal of programmes and programme support staff or unique customer requirements .

In this situation a senior Programme Office must be identified to ensure that all standards, procedures etc are applied consistently across all the offices. The senior PO could still operate with similar resource levels although their types or skill levels may have to change.

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5.2 The PO functions

5.3 How do we align Organisation with Function?

By Synchronisation

The alignment of Programme Organisation and its Activities with the required Management Functions

  1. Starts with an agreed naming convention for the organisation that can be applied to all functions
  2. Finishes when a structured file management system is established, all functions are centralised and processes are defined and understood by the organisation.

When part 1 is complete the components of the Programme Office (its tools) can be constructed.

5.3.1 Functions and controlling elements

5.3.1.1 Functions:

.          Programme Control

.          Document Control

.          Cost Control

.          Risk Management

.          Issue Management

.          Change Control

.          Planning

Each function has to be able produce standard and ad-hoc reports and support QA & QC activities.

5.3.1.2 Controls for Functions:

.          Team Register

.          Document Library

.          Cost Control sheet& financial input from Accounts Dept

.          Risk Register

.          Issue Register

.          Change Register

.          Consolidated Plan

All reliant on the projects register, defined processes and appropriate procedures.

5.3.2 The Administration function

Administration in this sense is related to general office and building/site administration only i.e. additional to the administration requirements of the other six functions.

It has been indicated but will not be discussed here due to the demands of this function being unpredictable and dependant entirely upon the parent organisation requirements.

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5.4 Functions Relationships

At the core of all the controls for each function is the tool that identifies the work requirement as a Programme, Project or activity and produces the name for that work following the agreed naming convention i.e. the ABBTCHGREG001 Project Register.xls.

This register as provided by Abbermist Limited is in the form of an Excel spreadsheet that is dynamically linked to all surrounding elements. See 'Controlling Elements' illustration below.

See Products Page  for further details.

5.5 Staff Skills Required

As can be imagined when viewing the 'controlling elements' image above there will be a number of tools needed to be applied that in themselves require skill and experience to utilise.

All staff should be skilled and experienced in the application of each and every tool provided by the parent organisation.

The TOOLS available from this site are created using Microsoft Office application and Windows Explorer.

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FOR FURTHER INFORMATION WATCH OUR PROGRAMME OFFICE VIDEO