Enterprise PMO Maturity Assessment

The Challenge

A new national pension fund was created and had aggressive milestones to establish the fund administration for initial members and support continued expansion with the inclusion of new members.   

To support the portfolio of projects required to build and grow the fund, a strategic Project Management Office (PMO) was established. The organization recognized the PMO needed an improved structure and mandate to: 

• Ensure the team can scale while continuing effective delivery of the portfolio of projects 
• Remove dependency on key people, ensuring all stakeholders have a consistent, high-quality experience from all team members 
• Enable continued oversight of the complete portfolio of work; ensuring the overall portfolio of projects can be delivered on time and on budget 
• Ensure staff are effectively utilized, recognizing talent across the team and enabling the development of staff 
• Enable the business to continue to meet their strategic objectives  
• Identify and resolve key responsibilities and interactions that are already recognized as creating confusion within the organization

The Approach

The engagement approach was structured into three phases: 

 Mobilize: 

CRG initiated the engagement by aligning on project objectives, scope, success criteria, expectations, governance structure and cadence. This was followed by Voice of the Employee (VoE) feedback from key business partners, senior leadership and department SMEs to assess the current state, internal challenges and opportunities. The CRG team collected portfolio and project management methodologies, tools and artifacts to support the analysis. 

 Current State Evaluation & Future State Design: 

The engagement team used CRG’s proprietary maturity assessment tool to measure the team’s maturity level across eight distinct categories. Workshops were conducted to validate current state findings and align on future state accountabilities and level of maturity. The insights were organized into pillars of activities and compared against the current state to determine the required changes to reach the recommended maturity. 

 Org Design & Maturity Roadmap: 

Through workshops conducted with the client, CRG developed a maturity roadmap that included sequenced implementation activities, timelines, high-level resourcing requirements, activity dependencies, change management activities and identified risks​. Each activity included a detailed summary and resource requirements needed to successfully mature each category to the desired level.   The accountabilities and roadmap were reviewed and approved by the organization's senior leadership team for implementation.

The Outcome

CRG successfully supported the client to define the future state mandate and vision of the PMO Team. The 3-year maturity roadmap and organization design anchored to the team’s accountability pillars was validated by the senior leadership team and adopted into the corporate strategy.  

 In total, nine distinct recommendations were identified, each with its own summary and steps to implementation. The interaction models between priority groups were clearly defined allowing for a more seamless project initiation process.   Ultimately, the maturity roadmap framework was leveraged across the organization to support a consistent approach to developing each departments’ future state vision.