As the Project Management Office Manager at IFS, I designed the high level strategic vision to shift our IT group from being a technical support team to a business partner enabling the rest of the business. The primary visual I created, simply called ‘the purple bubble slide’, became used by our Swedish CIO at leadership conventions earning him and our team accolades for its simplicity and effectiveness.

Key Challenges

• Mindset Change: A large part of our IT team as well as the supported business units were not accustomed to IT being a ‘partner’. Teaching IT folk to ‘speak business’ and convincing business partners that we were there for more than just plugging in computers was a long endeavor.
• Lack of Project Knowledge: While our department had long run projects, it did not do so with any standard PM processes or knowledge. I set up a PMO to provide processes and education to learn how to work within projects.
• Resistance: While there was little active push back, the changes I was making effected every member of our team, and changing the way one works is very often a challenge to accept. I embarked on a mission of education to bring everyone on board. At one point I went on a month long tour to each of our global sites to present our changes.

Accomplishments

• Increased from 0% to 100% the number of projects selected and run via standard processes. Increased from 4 to 20+ employees who follow standard PM methodologies.
• Created a Project Portfolio, allowing our CIO for the first time to measure and show the business value of our projects.
• Centralized the work environment for employees, 50+ projects and task monitoring leading to improved prioritization and elimination of ~$1M from the department’s project budget.