CASE STUDY: PMO STANDARDS
From 35 Individual Consultants
to One TPMO.
A PMO standards case study: how an interim leader brought standards to a technical program management office running 80 to 100 projects at a time, in about 60 days, without stopping the work.
“As a TPMO, we currently operate as a bunch of individual consultants, leveraging our individual strengths and approaches to every project we manage. From a customer standpoint, that means every customer gets a different experience from our products and services.”
Dr. Josh Stephens, in his first meeting with the teamAT A GLANCE
A PMO becoming a TPMO, with no standards to build on.
Client: Fortune 500 global data center company
Situation: A leadership transition, while the PMO was being rebranded as a Technical Program Management Office (TPMO)
SIG role: Dr. Josh Stephens, interim TPMO leader, recommended based on earlier coaching and leadership work with the company
Timeline: About 45 to 60 days, alongside the full duties of the interim role
BY THE NUMBERS
80 to 100 projects
Running through the TPMO at any one time.
About 35 people
Project and program managers, each running projects their own way.
4 weeks
To roll out a complete, standard reporting package, one slide per week.
3 levels of visibility
A standard view of every project, then every program, then the full portfolio.
THE CHALLENGE
Talented people. A different experience every time.
The TPMO had strong project and program managers, but no shared way of working. Some led with technical depth. Others led with business knowledge and relationships. Most had both skills, but each one came at every project from their own strengths.
For the internal customers whose projects the TPMO managed, that meant a completely different experience depending on who was assigned. It created confusion about the team’s strengths and weaknesses, and no shortage of escalations, because preferences were based on past experience with individuals rather than the capability of the team.
No standard reporting
No common slide deck. Every status update was built from scratch.
No job descriptions
Nobody had a written definition of what their role was expected to deliver.
No standard plans
No common communication plan, change management plan, financial reporting, or architecture view.
Inconsistent Jira
Even the agile teams had Jira set up differently from one team to the next.
Out of date guidance
The SharePoint site was years old, so people would “phone a friend” whenever they hit something new.
Everything looked custom
Team members were constantly creating new slides and documents for work that should have been routine.
WHAT WE DID
Three standards. Rolled out without disrupting the work.
1. Clear roles through job families and job descriptions. Dr. Stephens drafted job families and job descriptions for every role in the TPMO, using AI to speed up the drafting, then asked his leadership team for feedback before releasing them. For the first time, everyone knew what was expected of their role.
2. A standard project reporting package. Together with his leadership team, Dr. Stephens built one reporting package containing every slide needed to report on any project in the organization. Project managers just filled it in. It included a project lifecycle checklist covering everything to think about from start to finish, and a standard executive summary slide, so every executive got the same experience when they received an update.
The rollout was deliberately gradual. The executive summary came first, then one new slide each week. By the fourth week, the full package was released. The ask was simple: don’t create anything new. Use the template for new projects, and pull slides from it for new requests on existing ones. Projects that already had a custom executive summary with their steering committee kept it, so established communication wasn’t disrupted.
3. A self-service SharePoint site, built for AI. With a few talented team members leading the work, the TPMO completely rebuilt its SharePoint site so people could stop phoning a friend and find answers themselves. It held the reporting templates, a cheat sheet for prompting Jira’s AI assistant, and standards for how agile teams should operate, both as individual scrum teams and grouped together as release trains. The team also worked with the company’s AI teams so that when anyone in the organization asked their AI assistant a question about project standards, it pointed them to these pages.
Setting projects up for AI. Every project’s executive summary was also saved in PowerPoint to a single SharePoint folder. That was one more file to maintain, and the team pushed back at first. Once they understood why, they were fully on board: those summaries gave AI a consistent example to learn from when creating new ones, and a single source it could use to answer questions about any project in flight.
THE RESULTS
One TPMO, one experience, one view of the work.
Done in about 45 to 60 days. All three standards were in place within two months, completed alongside the full duties of an interim leadership role.
High adoption, welcomed by the team. Team feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The standards were welcomed rather than resisted, because they removed work instead of adding it.
A standard view of every project. With one reporting package, the TPMO quickly had a consistent view of all 80 to 100 projects in flight. It then built a program view on top of that for every program.
All the way up to the portfolio. Combined with Lean Portfolio Management, leaders gained a portfolio view that made it simple to see, at the highest level, what everyone was working on.
One experience for every customer. Internal customers got the same reporting, the same executive summary, and the same lifecycle discipline, no matter which project manager was assigned.
Ready for AI. Standard, centrally stored project summaries gave the organization a foundation for AI to draft future updates and answer questions about any project in flight.
USE WHAT WE BUILT
Start from our standards, not a blank page.
The work in this case study shaped several of the free resources on our site. Use them to give your own PMO a head start.
Standard reporting templates, including an executive summary every leader can read the same way.
Practical tools for running programs and projects consistently.
Role frameworks for project, program, and agile delivery roles, from individual contributor to leadership.
IN THEIR WORDS
From leaders on the team.
“Josh also has a genuine gift for motivating people. He builds trust quickly, communicates with clarity and honesty, and has a way of inspiring teams to buy into change rather than simply comply with it.”
Director, Technical Program Management
Global Data Center Company
“Josh brings deep industry expertise in Agile and Lean transformation, but what I admire most is how he translates that expertise into something teams can actually use.”
PMO Portfolio Director
Global Data Center Company
Most PMOs are full of capable people working in their own way. Standards don’t take that talent away. They make it visible, repeatable, and easy for your customers to trust.
Start the ConversationDoes every project in your PMO
look a little different?
We will help you build standards your team actually wants to use, without stopping the work in flight.