The University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Central Technical Services (CTS) project office has significantly enhanced its project portfolio management (PPM) practices through recommendations made following a comprehensive diagnostic maturity assessment provided by Project Portfolio Office.
The maturity assessment results have enabled UJ to refine its approach to monitoring the progress of critical projects, such as campus expansions, student residence upgrades and facility modernisations.
Addressing complex projects and reporting requirements
According to Greg James, director of CTS at UJ, the CTS section he leads within the broader Facilities Management division is a fairly small entity – with a team of around 15 project managers and coordinators as well as some external resources, including project managers and quantity surveyors – which looks after between 40 to 50 projects of varying sizes per year.
“Our projects span UJ’s space, architecture and maintenance projects; ranging from smaller projects to large-scale undertakings funded collaboratively by the Department of Higher Education and Training and UJ. As part of UJ’s Facilities Management side, we are required to report back to the Planning and Resources Committee of Council (PRCC), which reports to the main Council and works in parallel with the Management Executive Committee, on our project progress four times per year.
“And, as many of these projects involve a sizable budget, compared to certain other domains, there’s a keen eye on how effectively our projects are being run, and the progress being made on them.”
Laying the groundwork for project success
UJ’s CTS project office initially adopted PPO on a smaller scale in 2016, based on the previous positive experience of the Advisor to the Vice Chancellor overseeing Facilities Management at the time. Over time, the CTS project office has systematically grown its use of the solution to cater for its increasing project management needs.
Professor Andre Nel, a prior Executive Director of Facilities Management at UJ and current advisor in the office of the Chief Operating Officer (COO), recalls an initial maturity assessment completed by CTS early on.
“The first maturity assessment was nothing more than a quick review of the PMO’s capabilities, focused on the day-to-day operational elements of its PPO use. However, by 2018 we realised that a deeper analysis was required to ascertain how the project office measured up in terms of international best practices and standards,” he continues.
“Having evaluated the maturity assessment offerings of several project management consulting companies, Project Portfolio Office’s offering stood out not only because the team already understood our environment and unique circumstances, but also due to our requirements for a software-agnostic approach.
“The value proposition was clear – to such an extent that we convinced our UJ procurement colleagues that our normal tendering process was not necessary – and decided to make use of Project Portfolio Office’s maturity assessment service, as an extension of their existing services, to shed further light on where the gaps in our project maturity lay.”
From insight to action
The primary goals of this second maturity assessment were to:
- Evaluate current strengths and weaknesses throughout the project lifecycle;
- Develop actionable recommendations for further improvement; and
- Co-create an improvement roadmap aligned with departmental goals and objectives.
Following the assessment, CTS immediately launched a project to implement the key recommendations.
Says Guy Jelley, CEO and co-founder of Project Portfolio Office: “Maturity assessments are only valuable to projects offices if they act on the insights delivered. In the case of the CTS project office, instead of overlooking the crucial step of implementing the recommendations – as many PMOs do – they took swift action, launching a dedicated project immediately after receiving their PPO maturity assessment results, and carefully selecting several recommendations to ensure their implementation.”
Post maturity assessment
“In project management, especially within a university environment, where workload is a constant challenge, it’s difficult to objectively identify areas for growth and improvement,” clarifies Nel. “Having said this, we were initially surprised by the maturity assessment findings but also recognised that it was a valuable learning experience. The prioritised recommendations and road map put forward by Project Portfolio Office, which we then turned into achievable targets, helped us address those gaps and make significant improvements to our PPO implementation.
“The PPO maturity assessment provided a very clear understanding that there were lacunae in the way that we used the PPO tool, and we needed to improve the staff’s understanding of where it could be used more effectively in areas like finance management and for the proper collection of project management documentation.”
Key improvements and measurable impact
Following the PPO review, the CTS project office prioritised several recommendations for implementation.
The first of these was to establish clear criteria for differentiating between projects and maintenance requests. “In our overall facilities management environment, UJ also has a separate but parallel domain called ‘Campuses’, which attends to day-to-day maintenance. However, in the instances that these projects are too large for them to implement, the requests are passed on to the CTS project office,” James explains.
“As mentioned, CTS receives Department of Higher Education Funding for backlog maintenance and waterproofing and other types of maintenance projects. Where we found that a distinction needed to be made – particularly for reporting to senior colleagues – was between those types of pure maintenance projects and new capital infrastructure projects, which could include a new building or new space.”
Next was the standardisation of terminology and definitions for project types, categories, and management approaches. “In a higher education environment, while our project office is the implementing agent for the university, there are different stakeholders involved, such as academic entities, faculties and support divisions, such as the library, finances, Student Affairs and so on. So, again, when it came to providing clarity to our senior management, we found that the CTS project office’s reports needed to provide details on the types of projects being delivered and who is responsible for them. By standardising on project definitions and so on using PPO, we were able to remove any vagueness from our reporting and hone in on the correct domains.”
The following step taken by the CTS project office was to integrate its new framework into the PPO tool to enhance accessibility for the project community. “One of the maturity assessment recommendations was that we finetune the framework and structuring of how we report and how projects are managed, defining project roles and responsibilities to ensure clarity and consistency across projects. This was critical not only from the perspective of the detail required in reporting to senior management, but also for governance and auditing purposes.”
Furthermore, the CTS project office needed to outline the mandate process and responsibilities of forums or key stakeholders involved in accelerating projects, based on strategic importance. James notes that this essentially comes down to CTS’s role in ‘keeping the university’s lights on’, ensuring that everything is running smoothly and that UJ is continually developing its infrastructure. “It boils down to the fact that, amongst many stakeholders, our PPM process within PPO supports our project delivery, which then in turn supports the university’s greater strategic objectives.”
Continuous improvement through competency development
The final maturity assessment recommendation was to develop a project management competency framework. Says Nel: “This refers to the consistent work our project managers put in to improve their competencies, as well as the process we have in place to deliver projects. Here, PPO keeps us aligned in terms of all the steps that we need to follow to maintain our competency in the delivery of projects.”
The competency framework was put in place to create an aspirational process that will allow CTS project office staff to naturally want to enrich their abilities, he adds. “The roadmap CTS has been executing on is viewed as a continuous, rolling improvement process. We could not have done this on our own; the project office is simply too tunnel focused on achieving what we need to get done.
“The PPO maturity assessment allowed for an honest external view, providing clarity in its findings and allowing the CTS project office to become increasingly self-aware and identify growth opportunities.”
“Our ongoing relationship as UJ with Project Portfolio Office has always been a positive one, and the support we receive is excellent. Project Portfolio Office’s approach to stakeholder relationships and working with clients is well appreciated. In our environment, project delivery and the pressures therein are significant, but this type of partnership and support makes that so much easier,” concludes James.
