Soon after, it became clear that the scope of what was needed to achieve the preliminary project goals was the evolution of a PMO. Bringing project management into such a project-heavy environment without offering standard work, tools and templates, and the ability to report at the program and portfolio level, would do little more than add some project support to a subset of the projects. It became clear that to accommodate Direct's strategic goals fully and support the credit union's growth, it would be vital for project leads and product owners to learn PM strategies and achieve consistency across the organization in how project work was being performed.

Direct faced the challenge of bringing another wide-spanning methodology to the organization, at a time when lean was still in its earlier stages of adoption. The challenges included:

• Information overload while employees received information about both lean and PM methodologies;
• Achieving buy-in for the use of a collection of new templates;
• Establishing the different approaches needed for projects specifically, and separating projects from daily operations;
• Addressing bottlenecks that have existed for years prior;
• Establishing metrics and approaches for staff with different levels of project involvement and availability for project work; and
• Respecting Direct's priority in establishing the desired employee culture.

Through some hiccups and growing pains, it became clear that slow and steady was the way to proceed, which was challenging due to multiple large, enterprise-wide initiatives planned for 2018. The balance between achieving project milestones and setting realistic expectations was the PMO's biggest challenge in 2018. Major takeaways from the experience of the first year included:

• It is important to understand that PM knowledge is new to all, but also to not introduce too many concepts at once, and to always sync it with lean language and culture.
• Not all employees are able to find excitement and passion for new methodologies. Getting creative with celebrating milestones and offering frequent positive reinforcement can go a long way.
• It is important to offer a lot of opportunities for training, but ultimately to avoid hand-holding project leads and product owners.
• Patience is important and gentle communication is key.
• Asking questions about what people find most useful in project management is very important to create value in a PMO.
• While the PMO is its own department, its team members need to focus on learning about all the departments it serves and not become too siloed.
• It is important to maintain awareness of the different priorities, both operational and project-oriented, that people at your organization deal with regularly.

As 2018 ended, Direct achieved the successful completion of a number of large projects that satisfied its strategic goals, and was able to utilize PMO resources in its strategic planning efforts for 2019. All employees of the credit union got exposure to PM updates, both via screen displays and through its newly-launched intranet. The PMO building work continues into 2019 and will take three to five years to ramp up to its ideal state. The focus for 2019 is to continue bridging the gap between lean and PM methodologies, offering career development and education in PM concepts, implementing a new project management system and allocating more time to planning and scoping larger projects. The PMO is working closely with Direct's Team Lean to continue to build lean knowledge, and offer better integration of both sets of tools.

Maria Vasilevsky

Maria Vasilevsky, PMP is Director of PMO for Direct FCU. She can be reached at 781-433-2900, Ext. 294 or [email protected].