How I reduced or eliminated specific Resource requirements

Through the implementation of a PMO project costs are reduced significantly by focusing project team members on the delivery of the core project and centralizing administrative functions within the PMO thereby reducing the individual overhead project costs.   Clearly one of the functions of a PMO is to identify and reduce the "hidden" costs to organizations during the execution of mission critical projects.  Some of the "hidden" cost reductions that I have achieved are:

Process:  Quality Assurance Checkpoints and Reporting

Ø       Early quality assurance review of scope and approach identified gaps in the teams understanding of user requirements and the selected technology solution.  The identification of these gaps provided the opportunity to reevaluate the project business case, scope and budget prior to initiation saving the organization significant budget impacts ($3.7 million estimated savings based on identified gaps) and delays in a mission critical project.

Ø       Pre-scheduling and budgeting of periodic Quality Assurance Reviews provided long term benefits to the organization by providing fundamental support to teams and managers in addressing key issues and risks in a timely manner and providing the foundation for early warning and incremental adjustments throughout the project rather than large cost and/or timeline adjustments after the risk is realized.

Process:  Formalized Business Case Development Tools

Ø       Provided a framework for evaluating the mission critical requirements of a project and supporting solution definition.  Formalization of process and presentation materials prevented projects from being undertaken that did not provide clear strategic value to the organization thus insuring that budgeted dollars were spent appropriately.

Ø       Enabled clearly defined expectations to be established based upon supported metrics actual value to the organization in real dollars savings or profit increase and / or the incremental improvements to operations.  

Process:  Formalized RFP / RFI Development and Vendor Selection / Management

Managing the process of vendor selection and contract management centrally insures that integrated schedules are maintained and activities tracked across the organization rather than at the individual project level.  This oversight insures that the "left hand knows what the right hand is doing" and reduces the cost to the organization of activity replication.   

Ø       Created easy to use checklists to assist in the development of RFP's.

Ø       Provided evaluation methods and questionnaires that supported vendor selection methodology and negotiations for services that were easily modified based upon project requirements and scope of work to be undertaken. 

Ø       Defined a centralized negotiation process for all vendor selection and contract negotiations that supported organizational pricing of contracts versus the traditional "project" negotiations reducing overall the cost of external resources to projects by creating "preferred provider" contract rates.

Process:  Internal Training and Career Planning Approach

Created organizational skills mapping and future requirements resource plan that identified gaps in internal resources skills and defined an approach for upgrading resources to perform as "internal" consultants to the organization over the long-term. This plan allowed individuals to be identified for skills enhancement and a training plan to be created based upon organizational needs and individual capabilities.  By replacing external resources with internal resources an average of $180,000 per annum per resource was achieved.  Additionally, internal resource career satisfaction and retention was increased thus reducing the need for recruiting, hiring and training of new employees.  

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