Book writing week 6

Over half way there

Surprisingly it is still going well with the book this week. The number of services to write has come down from 300+ through to around 260. That means that I have am about half way through all of the services that I have to write. I do suspect that at some point that list may come up again as I work through the remainder and find items that are missing.

Thanks

Thanks to those people who contacted me after last week’s blog post with suggestions as to how I could improve the categorisation of the services, without duplicating them. It is great to know that a) people are reading this and b) they are doing this critically with a view of making this PMO Services and Capabilities book the success it should be.

PMO-Services Book

Advice

For too long we have had advice available which gives an overview about the promised land where everything works well in the world of PMO and everyone loves you. However, in my experience having talked to lots of different PMO people over the years, what is really required is some detail into how do you do that? I think this is down to the analytical nature of the PMO person. They are naturally curious and want to get to the bottom of things. I am hoping that this book will satisfy the curious and the people reading it will be able to get down into the detail of how to do the role, and why.

Application

For some people, it won’t go far enough. Why? Because any book can’t know the detail of your organisation and the culture and politics within it. It doesn’t understand the people who will be asked to deliver these services. This is where the sections within the book on how to apply this come in. Not only will you get a list of services, but you will get some guidance on how you can apply this to your organisation.

Book writing week five

The easy stuff is done

PMO-Services BookI am maintaining good progress towards the goal of documenting what all of the services are likely to be. I feel good in that quite a few of the domains are done, so that looks positive in the items delivered column. This week I have written 100 services of the 300+ services we started with. I did manage to finish the group I started last week plus another one.

Duplicates

On the way I have found a whole lot of duplicate services. I had a disappointing week this week as 3 of the services I wrote or tried to write turned out to be duplicates. I spent time writing one of them completely before working out it was duplicate. The next one I looked at I got half way through and then realised was a duplicate and the third one I realised was duplicated just as I started it. It felt like a morning wasted but I then realised this is why we are doing this. At no point has anyone tried to do this before, so there are bound to be duplications.

It is then how do you group them together? If I have a service of review business cases does that go under Benefits, because there are benefits in the business case? Does it go under Finance, because there are costs in the business case? Does it go under Portfolio Management as you need a business case in order to approve a project? Does it go under Project Start-up as you need a business case when you start a project? Does it go under consultancy as you are providing advice to the project manager? I am sure there will be other examples where we can have a healthy debate about the grouping of these services

Additions

As well as finding duplicates, I have found items that we missed. Whilst that is great as it makes it a more complete book, from a writing point of view just when you think you have completed a section then you find additional work for yourself.

Looking forward to next week

Now all of the smaller domains have been written it is time to tackle the larger domains. I expect if I am lucky I can get one of these domains written, maybe one and a half. I would like to finish this month if possible, but I do need to concentrate on trying to get the next contract sorted as well. If you know of anyone who could do with a PMO person then please get in touch.