Project Management Office Implementation helps increase visibility in just ten months.

The first phase completed in ten months provided project, resource, budget and repository of templates. The next leg of the journey is Portfolio Management and Strategic Project Delivery.

Company

Dalhousie University is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Founded in 1818, they are one of Canada’s oldest universities, attracting more than 19,000 students worldwide. They lead transformative academic programs with pioneering research on Canada’s East Coast.

The Information Technology Services (ITS) is one the Dalhousie’s biggest departments and manage intranet, students and employees’ access, campus visitor including guest access accounts and audio-visual support.

Challenge

Dalhousie ITS needed an integrated project/portfolio solution to raise the visibility of ongoing tickets and small projects. Dalhousie ITS department took the opportunity to enhance project tools, practices and knowledge. Dalhousie engaged Capstone to guide the development of an ITS Project Management Office, identify risks and collect requirements from a representative stakeholder group. The team needed support from an experienced Project Manager to help address all risks, issues, and requirements throughout the project.

The implementation requirements included integration between Microsoft Project and SharePoint Sites, supporting forms, project approval workflow and training. During COVID, all meetings, workshops and training helped using online platforms.

Solution

In January 2020, Capstone engaged with Dalhousie University ITS department to deliver the Project Management Office Implementation. After conducting stakeholder’s requirement sessions, Capstone supported the team to convert the findings into actionable tasks, and led the team from solution requirements, architecture design, wireframe to execution and solution implementation.

Capstone consulted with Dalhousie ITS PMO to implement a customized project management solution. Working collaboratively with the in-house team of experts, Capstone offered recommendations and direction to guide the development of the Project Management solution and supporting practices. Culture change was sparked by establishing PM Workgroups and other professional training, performing project reviews and project health checks, addressing the need for a project governance structure, and implementing systems for improving project portfolio management and resource management/planning. Finally, metrics were introduced so that resulting gains in project performance and productivity due to the PMO implementation could be tracked.

Results

Within ten months, the Project Management Office went live to an enthusiastic audience of Directors, Managers, Supervisors, and team members. The key deliverable was an interactive project center providing visibility to pending, inflight and closed projects, resource management, budget tracking, and knowledge repository templates and user reference materials.

Because of these results, Capstone will continue to collaborate with Dalhousie University ITS PMO. During phase 2, the combined teams will plan and deliver a Portfolio Management and Strategic Project Delivery solution.

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