The importance of the project management office (PMO) in organisations like Raiffeisen Bank is to become a trusted partner to all stakeholdersand support transparent investment decision-making. C-level executives naturally operate numbers and are eager to understand the impact of investments they make in an organisation. The commercialising result from implementing innovation activities and its contribution to the strategy is the major interest for executives that PMO can support.
The biggest challenge lies in creating an appropriate decision-making model that will address all stakeholders' interests. And there could beseveral perspectives. One is how we form the portfolio of change activities, where we look at different aspects like risks, cost efficiency, income growth, and customer needs. The one where you have to speed up, you may prioritise stronger. At the same time, data for decision-making is always expected.
It is quitea challenging question of how to connect the assumptions taken during strategy definition with the implemented changes. Of course, you can calculate everything, but is it worth it or reasonable? For example, you want to gain market share in a particular customer segment. You have made certain hypotheses to verify and you start implementing a number of changes. At the same time, your daily business continues, as well as marketing campaigns, regular business process improvements etc. Your income grows, and how much it comes from which activity is tricky to evaluate.
Putting the customer at the centre and maximising return on investment through closing customer needs is the next aspect visualised for decision-making.
Another is about the overall information you rely on to evaluate the progress and make the next operative decisions.It is quite usual that the interests of each stakeholder can be slightly different. Not obligatory contradicting, but rather complementary. One can seek a permanent change, one for changes to be repeatable and sustainable, another for fast results delivery and the other for clarity and transparency. What you cannot do is create an average out of it. But what you can do is logically connectthem by focusing on the one that matters most in a period of time. They all play important roles for stakeholders and executives for fair resource allocation and investment split.
PMO is there to support executives in translating the strategy into project portfolio level and ensure the transparency of project portfolio activities, including the following: execution status, business impact, benefits, costs, risks and dependencies, and challenges.
Special focus is puton ensuring the alignment of the bank strategy with the project portfolio. It is done through strategic review by areas on a quarterly basis to define the status and discuss required correction actions. Every activity in the project portfolio should have a link to the Strategy Goal. We may have some exceptions but try to keep a low amount of such activities. Focusing on the business impact, which every activity can potentially bring to the Bank Strategy, is the further way to connect the things, mainly 'mentally'.
Enterprise-level PMO is generating value for the organisation through:
- Ensuring topics are linked to the strategic objectives and contribute to the overall bank’s targets/KPIs achievement
- Providing a transparent overview of the portfolio for progress tracking, decision making and overall bank prioritisation
"Daily communication at all levels makes it possible to identify problems based on timely feedback and act on them accordingly, fight with organisational impediments."
PMOs have to encourage the engagement of the senior management and improve the sponsorship level by providing a complete portfolio overview by the investment committee, ensuring decision-making transparency. The same importance has product owners empowerment and E2E responsibility for the banking product/service that help to build entrepreneurship culture. Open demo days on the company level help Product owners and their teams feel the connection of their work with bank strategy and get acknowledgement of their achievements.
PMO today is evolving to support an investment mindset and support the board to steer the bank transformation. It combines a coordinating role for investment committees, support with HO, help in Agile setup infrastructure, and bureaucracy reduction to manage a complex system like ours. The central source of coordination for investment and providing financial clarity on the cost side. Daily communication at all levels makes it possible to identify problems based on timely feedback and act on them accordingly, fighting with organisational impediments.
The most crucial and important enterprise-level PMO goal is to act as a value management office and connect strategic objectives down to the initiatives aimed to deliver the result for the organisation, and find the most effective frameworks and tools that help to quickly adapt to a changing environment.
