The Road to PPM Success

Posted on May 17, 2013 by pmocentral

New PMO Central customers are always impressed with our roadmap process, but have never heard of this technique before. Yet again, Métier stands out with something unique in the PPM industry. Believe it or not, for us, it’s not only about software. It’s not only about the near term. It’s about a roadmap to help you monitor and execute the plan to achieve your strategy.

In the early days of the company, people advised us to stay away from services. “Sell and go, like other software companies”, they advised. But, we couldn’t leave our customers when they needed us. We realized that our expertise in PPM and their domain expertise was an incredible partnership. We’ve never sold just our software. We have always sold our expertise right alongside the software. As we became more sophisticated, we built a suite of services ultimately culminating in PMO Central. We built a long term partnership offering that helps our customers to get to the better place than just implementing our software. Now, the offering has evolved to award-winning PPM consulting at a SaaS price point with an SLA that covers most of what you need, but with value–added services to help fill your gaps. The roadmap is the plan that drives what we deliver and recommend. Because it is tied to your organizational strategy, the PMO Central roadmap process delivers consistent value to your organization through PPM Maturity.

Success - next exit

Industry analysts and our own experience says that our customers will receive 100% ROI on the software implementation in short order, usually not much longer than the implementation itself. When you implement PPM software, it results in a fairly rapid cessation of doing dumb projects. Silly projects may last a bit longer, but the dumb projects are the ones that really cost an organization. Once implemented, what happens next is where the real success lies. Does the software become a dumb repository for standard reporting, or does it become the engine for continuous improvement?

PMO Central is in the maturity business and the ROI for maturity far outpaces the initial software implementation ROI. It is not even close. As part of the initial implementation, PMO Central assists the customer in developing a roadmap for the “to be” state. Milestones are developed for each new capability along with the accompanying metrics. Our benchmarking metrics provide clients insight into how well they are performing, compared to their peers, and provides them with realistic goals to improve based on their current maturity. The metrics drive changes to the roadmap, which drive adoption of new capabilities, which drive enhanced metrics, rinse and repeat.

Real human experts in a certain domain, virtually enhancing a SaaS driven software product is the next great sea change for enterprise software. We are already there. We have been recognized by truly independent third parties as the cutting edge of business intelligence, interface design, and exemplary project management methods. Our suite of things we sell speaks of a company that wants to engage with customers for long term success.

Not bad that you also get ever increasing ROI and real help getting there.

How I Learned to Stretch and Reach my Professional Goals

Posted on May 1, 2013 by saraethompson

Having a métier means finding your true calling. For me, this quest began at an early age; I was driven to find success. I studied hard in school and was excited to apply my new skill set. I was very fortunate to land an opportunity with a fast growing company with a well established culture. In my new venture, I had hopes of contributing to the company’s goals and becoming a real professional. Looking back, I don’t think that I could have even anticipated how much I could achieve with a little encouragement to stretch.

A few colleagues and friends celebrated with me at the North Bay Business Journal Top Forty Under 40 event this week

A few colleagues and friends celebrating with me at the North Bay Business Journal’s Top Forty Under 40 event this week

I started my career at Métier working under Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder Sandra Richardson. Sandra founded Métier’s award-winning mentorship program and is a visionary of the company’s culture and results-oriented work environment. As my manager and mentor, Sandra and I met regularly for coaching sessions. During coaching, we frequently discussed the concept of ‘my next level’. Where was I today? Where did I want to be? From the conceptual level, we moved to strategies. Sandra offered suggestions, new tactics and just plain savvy advice to help me sharpen my professional toolkit.

Coaching helped me identify ways to stretch. I gained confidence in my ability to tackle new challenges, and had a way to get help if I needed it. I started small by testing out new behaviors in my everyday encounters. It was ironic because I had always thought that the journey to the top had to be made in a series of leaps and bounds, but I actually found the method of incremental improvements much more effective. Through this process I came to know the ins and outs of my own professional style. I started to recognize opportunities everywhere.

I had the privilege of working on a project at Métier to design a refreshed user interface for our software product. The intellectual challenges involved with this project were fascinating. They required each member of our multidisciplinary team to think far outside the box. I recognized this opportunity as a chance for me to stretch, which resulted in me leading the design effort for the new interface that would eventually disrupt the enterprise software market.

My training had paid off, but I realized that I couldn’t stop there. Coaching had given me the confidence to lead and the skills to achieve my professional goals. This week, I had the privilege of being honored as one of the Top Forty Under 40 professionals in my community by the North Bay Business Journal. At one point during the nomination period I was asked to name the most significant thing that has happened to me professionally. I thought about my growth and how far I had come from being that eager college grad. From all the things that happened along the way leading up to that question, the thing that stood out was taking my turn to share what coaching had taught me and becoming a mentor. I only hope that I can become the person who provides that pivotal nudge that encourages others to stretch and achieve their goals. For me, that has made all the difference and I am excited to help others workforward®.

To learn more about opportunities to workforward with Métier, visit the careers area of our website.

The Value of Taxonomy

Posted on April 26, 2013 by sandrakrichardson

How to Build Your PPM Data Structure

In many of our first meetings with prospective customers, the concept of a taxonomy in project portfolio management is completely new to them. Why is this concept an important foundation of Métier’s approach to PPM?

Think of it this way – the first step in implementing PPM is to create an inventory of what encompasses your portfolio. What are all of the aspects of the portfolio that you want to track? You will probably open an Excel worksheet and try to organize this information. You may start to list departments in your organization and their projects and programs. But, oh wait – what about assets? Oh wait, what about the service catalog? Oh wait, what about operations and maintenance activities? Oh wait, what about ideas we want to track? And oh wait, what if they overlap?! Without a classification system, this becomes very difficult. And even if you can create a basic list, how do you pivot on something to slice and dice across it?

Let’s say that your steering committee wants to see this report:

Data services (from service catalog)

In Brazil’s project portfolio (from lines of business and locations)

Implementing the Media product version 6.9

And, they want to know only those tagged as high priority

That’s impossible to do in Excel!

When we talk about the value and power of the taxonomy, it is the ability to think further down the line than just creating a simple inventory. Many of our competitors dump all of your data into a project or program bucket, giving no thought to the more complex analysis that you will need once you start using PPM. One of our new employees likened the power of the taxonomy to iTunes. You can separate Genres, Artists and Albums, but how do you see all songs that are over 10 minutes in length? Now you can see how to apply the concept of taxonomy outside of PPM!

The taxonomy also gives power to reporting. One report can produce multitudes of visualizations from the use of the taxonomy displaying different context. If I only want to see resource utilization in the Denver office on projects that need a skill set of engineer level 5, why should I have to wade through a ton of other data to get only that?

Every organization that conducts projects has big data. You have it in multiple sources, spread out all over your organization. If you don’t use a taxonomic structure to organize, classify and report on it, you will never have full, fast and accurate visibility into that data for the end result of making better decisions. Use our taxonomic structure and start to workforward® today!

To see a demonstration of Métier’s software, PPM Central, request a login on our website here.

Métier T-shirt Competition: Picture Yourself

Posted on April 4, 2013 by metiermarketing

How do you workforward®?

Métier held a contest that asked our employees to take a picture of themselves in their Métier t-shirt that answers the question, “How do you workforward?” The submissions we received were reflective of each individual and their interests. We received submissions ranging from high technology cameos to high altitude action shots. The common thread across all of the photos we received was the concept of workforward, embodied in the creativity of each person’s submission.

We invite you to take a look at a few of the top workforward t-shirt photos, below:

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As you can see, the competition was fierce! The winner received a pizza lunch for 10 friends at Oenotri in downtown Napa, CA. Congratulations, Garret, winner of the the Métier t-shirt competition!

To learn about opportunities to join our team and workforward, visit the careers section of our website.

Developing the First International Project Management Standard

Posted on March 29, 2013 by vaccarae

Amy Vaccari, Chief Operating Officer of Métier, shares her experience working with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) team to develop the world’s first standard for project management.

ISO 21500, the first international project management standard, is the result of five years of work by individuals from countries all over the world. I was fortunate enough to participate on the team for the last five years. During that time, I met amazing people, learned more about the standards building process, and got to see a little bit of the world.

The team that was responsible for development of ISO 21500 consisted of individuals that represent standards organizations from around the world. My team, based in the US, was accredited by the American National Standards Institute, ANSI. The United States, Canada, Brazil, Italy, Australia, Sweden, South Africa, France and many more were represented at our meetings. We were fortunate to be able to meet face to face approximately two times per year. My engagement in this activity has brought me friends and potential business partners from all over the world.

Prior to joining the ANSI team, I also participated on US based standards setting bodies. The differences between the US process and the ISO process are often enlightening. Due to language and cultural differences at the international level, we adhered to strict procedures and processes developed by ISO to guide our work and decision making. Consensus building and negotiating are key skills that we leveraged during our work. During our working sessions, the team would usually appoint a facilitator to guide our discussion and the facilitator would focus the group on coming to an agreement that could meet the underlying concerns of everyone in the room. Additionally, it was exciting to see – despite our language and cultural barriers – how much we do have in common on a project management level. Individuals in our profession employ similar management techniques regardless of industry, nationality or experience level. This realization makes the world seem much smaller!

The other component of the experience that also made the world seem much smaller was the ability to travel to the international meetings. Meetings are held all over the world, hosted by the home country national body (i.e., ANSI in the U.S.). Over the five years, we met in England, Japan, Germany, and the United States just to name a few. For each meeting, the host country also planned a tour for one or two nights of our stay. This was a great opportunity to network with our teammates and sight see the best of each of those countries.

If you are considering participating in a standards setting process, I highly recommend it. I am very proud to have been a part of ISO 21500 development and look forward to contributing to future ISO standards.

Read the press release about Vaccari’s involvement with the ISO 21500 standard here.

Gantt’s Death has not been Exaggerated

Posted on March 21, 2013 by dougdclark

About a decade ago, when I was still a young entrepreneur, I boldly told one of the founding members of the Project Management Institute that in 20 years the Gantt chart would be a novelty tool of project managing, if used at all. My technology friends and I would see to that. I’m thinking I was pretty close, and 15 years may be more accurate. I write today that the Gantt chart is mostly an anachronism within modern project management.

I’ll only posit one caveat. Where tangible things are built such as buildings, submarines; a computer, but not a network; a work visualization structure of activities must-following other activities is still quite useful. It’s really hard to build the second floor before the first floor walls are up. My dear friends Mike Mosely and Charlie Folin would slay me without said caveat.

However, the bulk of project work today is variables of varying activities that can occur variably. Oh, and even the best teams are fairly myopic. We have moved from activities “logically” sequenced to activity bags. Some bags are more organized than others! Most teams use spreadsheets to track activities and resource assignments. Better teams organize around Agile, where the activity bag releases activities onto a sprint. At some point, status must be conveyed, and pretty charts, mostly disconnected from the activity bag, are deployed in low energy status meetings. Help me.

Back in the day, it was really enjoyable to see a project manager try to explain his Gantt logic to Julie Dunlap, one of the greatest program managers to every grace this Earth, once she smelled something amiss. The artistry of tearing down that PM to come clean is just beautiful debate logic. Not surprisingly, she does well in the Agile world, too.

Today, actually, it is better, as PM’s are not held responsible for silly work logic that has gone awry 12 weeks after the team started work and 1,000,000 new variables have been introduced or discovered. However, work still needs to get done. It still needs to get done efficiently. It still needs to have a known status – ground truth. A bag of activities is not a known status. Grabbing the next activity off the top is not very efficient. Spreadsheets and presentations from software disconnected from the activities and their ground truth status is nothing but a well intended, yet self deceiving lie.

However, as a software guy that has spent the bulk of his career thinking about people working in the project context, I believe there are efficiency and status answers to the activity bag. I believe there is a follow-on to the Gantt chart. In PPM Central, we have work visualizations from swim lanes, to milestone charts, to yup, Gantt charts (of at least 31 flavors) and more.

Request a demo of PPM Central here.

What we have found is that each organization, and in most cases, each team wants to organize project work in a way that suits their need. It’s the way the team thinks about the problem. It’s an organizational method that supports the team’s expectations of how the work will proceed. We like Kanban, while Lenny Skutnik’s team likes swim lanes. With control over how they convey their work amongst the team, it becomes much easier to convey status to outside the team. If they have a software construct to present their unique way of organizing the activity bag, decision makers will be oh so close to ground truth. The Gantt chart was at best a 20,000 foot view. A team organized, transparent activity bag can provide ground truth. Once we get to routine visibility of ground truth, project success rates will skyrocket. We are so very close.

That, you see, is our mission. We must provide software that allows teams to organize their activity bags as they see fit. Then, we must give them a way to convey status to themselves, and others that is reflective of their activity organization, and efforts to date. This software, connected to the activities, must be as easy to use as a spreadsheet, while as visually powerful as presentation software. Each sprint we workforward® to providing ground truth. Sometimes a chart has to die on the way there.

To learn more about how Métier can help you workforward, contact us at info@metier.com.

3.14159

Posted on March 14, 2013 by metiermarketing

Métier Math Enthusiasts Celebrate Pi Day

Thursday, March 14 is a special day for us at Métier. March 14, or Pi Day, is a celebration of the infinite.

As mentioned in our previous post, PMO Central: A Hub for Knowledge, Technology and New Innovation, our intellectual curiosity transcends from the artwork we hang in our office, to the innovative products and services we offer. Our company culture is rooted in this concept of endless learning. Today, we celebrate this borderless mathematical constant, and Einstein’s 144^th birthday, with, you guessed it–pi. Lots and lots and lots of pi.

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