P3O demystified

Yesterday’s post talked about the connections between P3O, Yin and Yang. If you were left wondering “but what is this P3O thing, then?”, well, you shouldn’t feel alone. Read below for a quick Q&A session with our CEO Melanie Franklin; alternatively, you can listen to our podcasts.


What is P3O?

The term P3O is a play on three Ps (Portfolio, Programme and Project) and one O (Office). Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices are the support structures for Project Management, Programme Management and Portfolio Management.

P3O and P3M3

There is a benchmark for organisations that have a thorough understanding of how to approach Project Management, or have already implemented Programme Management. This benchmark is called “The Maturity Model”, and it helps organisations to understand how mature they are in their Project and Programme Management approaches, as well as to show them what they need to do next to carry on improving.

One of the Maturity Models that is sponsored by the Office of Government Commerce (owners of the PRINCE2®, MSP™ and M_o_R® methods) is called P3M3.

The three Ps stand for Project, Programme and Portfolio, and the three Ms stand for Management Maturity Model. So P3M3 is the Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model. The Maturity Model has a number of key questions that an organisation should ask itself to see how well it is doing. One of the factors that has been identified for the organisations that really know their way around Project and Programme Management is the existence of some kind of centralised support structure – and this is the link between P3M3 (the Maturity Model) and P3O (the Support Offices).

Support Structures

There are three support structures: the Portfolio Office, the Programme Office and the Project Office.

Project Office: supports individual projects, often regarded as an administrative function that provides support to the project manager – on creating project plans, attending project meetings, chasing up individual team members on the project to make sure they have done their activities, collating information for progress report, sending that up to the project sponsor.

Programme Office: enables an organisation to support an individual programme, looks at templates of documentation for the projects within that programme, provides support across the projects within the programme, keeps the support at an overall level for the programme so that the programme manager knows, at anyone time, what is happening with all of the projects within a specific programme.

Portfolio Office: a more strategic function as it supports the portfolio of programmes and projects within an organisation. It escalates information about the progress of a specific portfolio and it double checks the direction of that portfolio against the overall strategic direction of the organisation.

Level of Bureaucracy

To avoid an overly bureaucratic approach, it is important that organisations understand what these different levels of support offer them – the advantages and the disadvantages – and select a structure that is right for them.

Level of Authority

One of the key things that an organisation has to do, whether it sets up a portfolio, programme or project office, is to ensure that those providing the support are actually empowered to do so – and this is not just about administration, but assurance services, spotting issues, looking for risks, escalating that information up to the next level of authority. Therefore the project, or programme, or portfolio office has to have the endorsement of senior managers.

P3O Official Site

BPUG Congress

Last week we attended the second annual BPUG Congress, and from the conversations we have had, we can say that there is a lot of evidence that organisations are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their approach to project management. The delegates we spoke to were of a very high calibre – and all of them had specific questions and issues which they had come to the Congress to address.

Members of our Marketing and Client Relations teams (including Craig Aldridge, Sam Tuckey, Nick Tipping and Director William Franklin), spent the two days talking to delegates and attending the sessions. William said that it was a very enjoyable couple of days and that the atmosphere was excellent because people were focused on specific questions they wanted answers to.

We had some extremely interesting conversations with delegates and were able to give help and advice to those who wanted to get on and start making a difference to their organisations by adopting Best Practice.

Our CEO Melanie Franklin found that delegates had already implemented project management and their interest had now been elevated to programme management. She said that “more senior executives are becoming aware that programme management provides a strategic route map, and they’re willing to fund programme and project offices because they realise they will achieve efficiencies that have otherwise eluded them”.


Not surprisingly, Sue Vowler’s presentation on P3O (Portfolio, Programme & Project Offices) was very well attended as delegates grappled with how to make the new guidance work in their organisations.

Perhaps the economic climate has honed the focus of board level executives to getting things done, and they want to know how initiatives such as P3O will contribute to the bottom line.

We were also delighted to meet the author of the Stepping into Project Management blog, Soma, which we all follow avidly – along with Elizabeth’s lovely PM4Girls.

Middle East P3M Community of Practice Conference

The Middle East Project, Programme and Portfolio Management (P3M) community of practice will hold its third Members' Conference in Dubai on 19th January 2009 at the Dhow Palace Hotel.

The Middle East community of practice was established in June 2007 to enable like-minded professionals to regularly meet to share best practices in project, programme and portfolio management. The 1-day conference will include a mixture of plenary sessions, seminars, workshops and panel debate. The line-up of speakers is quite impressive - and our very own CEO Melanie Franklin is one of them:

•Janice Crompton – Comptency Development Manager, Unitied Utilities
•Dr Mohammed Dulaimi - Director of Research and Innovation, Abu Dhabi International Centre for Organisational Excellence (ADICOE) and Director of Project Management MSc Programme, The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
•Melanie Franklin – Soft skills author and Managing Director, Maven Training
•Qamar Hamid – Associate Director, Mubadala
•Andrew Hudson – Portfolio Management expert and Managing Director, ChangeDirector
•Andy Murray – PRINCE2 Lead Author and Director, Outperform
•Paul Rayner – Chair of the APM Programme Management special interest group (ProgM) and Managing Consultant, Logica
•Richard Renshaw – Senior Manager Special Projects, Nakheel Program Mngt. Team - Palm Island

There are several benefits of attending this event are multiple - case studies, hearing about P3M developments from internationally recognised experts, networking... - so if you happen to be in Dubai on the 19th January, don't miss the chance! Click here for more information and to register.