Leading towards GREEN PMO – The Way Forward

PMO in many organizations defines and maintains processes, based on project management principles, which are further based on accepted, industry standard methodologies such as PMBOK or PRINCE2. As PMO owns the processes and is responsible for facilitating the strategic alignment of organization’s projects to core business objectives, PMO can play a key role in helping organizations to meet their GREEN objectives.

Organizations that are serious about incorporating green practices have typically created an Environmental Management System. PMO help in this initiative can boost up these efforts through a number of channels. There are a number of process avenues that PMO can influence to introduce GREEN synergy in organization culture. Lets us discuss the systematic plan and avenues that PMO can participate into this GREEN transition.

• Process Green Scores: PMO is responsible for portfolio management, business planning & governance methodology. One key aspect of portfolio analysis is to compare & prioritize projects based on the score determined by Values & Risks associated with that project. PMO can add certain emphasis for projects through positive scores associated with environmental adherence & taking into consideration environmental risks in project Value Risk Criteria. I will call the weight associated with environmental parameters as Green Scores. Introduction of these Green Scores in portfolio analysis will help organizations to take the next steps towards going GREEN.

Three pointer initiatives in this regard can be:
1. Define Green Score criteria & its weight to organizational portfolio
2. Add certain risk domains to consider environmental effects caused by implementation of projects
3. While doing portfolio analysis, develop scenarios which will have prioritization emphasis for GREEN adherence proposals

• Best Practices: The PMO is the most logical place to collect and consolidate green processes metrics (measures). The PMO can also collect key learnings from projects to help formulate a set of green best practices that will be applicable to all project methodologies. Some examples of these best practices will include
o Energy saving hardware procurements for projects
o Electronic document management systems to reduce paperwork
o Preference & acceptability of digital signatures for all project documentation

• Training: One of the key responsibilities of PMO is to build competencies around project management methodologies & processes through trainings to ensure that good processes and techniques are understood and practiced. These trainings can be reviewed for environmental awareness & integration of green practices in existing processes. PMO can influence certain training aspects like
o Emphasis can be given to use media based & web cast training
o PMO can conduct certain training classes to give green best practices
o Incentives can be offered to projects conducting training in minimum cost & leveraging environmental guidelines

• Audits: Organizations have internal audits during project kick off & periodic reviews to ensure that project are in scope, budget & all deliverables are adhering to organization standards. PMO can introduce certain guidelines in these periodic audits to ensure green practices are followed. PMO can put a green hat on auditors with certain guidelines in audit checklists
o PMO can create familiarization documents for new projects which will give them directions for keeping minimum impact on environment during project execution
o Periodic audits can keep a check on adherence of projects to these guidelines
o Project closure documents can have mandatory section for green practices followed during projects.

• Business Alignment: Enterprise PMO in organizations influences many infrastructure decisions like procurement of new real estate facility, hardware, storage plants. They can put emphasis on investment in GREEN infrastructure for an organization based on industry best practices.
o Organization wide recognition program can be created to recognize green practices followed by projects
o Certain facilities can be converted to GREEN centers which will be role models for other departments. Patni has recently setup a GREEN IT center in Noida & this practice can be followed for other new development centers to share key learning and benefits.
o Leadership can propel these initiatives using PMO as channel for communication of industry best practices

PMO is already a promoter of various standards and processes within their organizations. With the GREEN goal being a global responsibility for everyone, it is evident that the PMO can be another avenue for an organization to its environmental focus.

Comments

[HP]

Sagar,

Green is an area which is still unexplored at least by the services industry. I had hoped you could have shed more light as to what practices we could follow to achieve a better green score rather than drawing a roadmap for PMO.
The above points you mentioned stand good for any new thing added in the PMO checklist.
Will be glad to see more on this subject.

~HP

[Ajay]

If Green is identified as one of the strategic drivers and translates into selection criteria for projects, then yes the practice of portfolio management will ensure initiatives aligned to the strategic objectives get prioritized and selected. I don't know how PMO can drive this unless portfolio management services is part of the PMO. Assuming that all PMO do or would do portfolio management is a wrong assumption. Defining a PMO aligned to the context and maturity of the organization is critical to success. By the way what does the "P" in the PMO in your definition above stand for?