In today’s fast-evolving landscape, central government departments increasingly recognise the power of technology to enhance project management and drive efficiency. This blog post delves into how central government teams, like those at Cafcass, leverage modern project management tools to overcome traditional challenges and unlock new productivity levels. In a recent community event, we looked at the critical aspects of their journey, from adopting centralised solutions to tackling common pain points in portfolio management, governance, and resource planning.
We share some insights from Lucy Oldham-Smith, PMO Manager at Cafcass, who discusses their shift from reliance on outdated tools like SharePoint and Excel to a more cohesive, Microsoft-integrated platform. Lucy offers a firsthand account of the benefits and obstacles encountered, highlighting essential considerations such as the importance of change management, phased rollouts, and training.
Whether you’re part of a government PMO team or simply interested in how technology can elevate public sector project management, this blog will equip you with actionable insights. Join us as we unpack the journey towards streamlined, tech-driven project management in the public sector and discover how you can apply these practices within your organisation.
Key drivers for implementing a centralised project management solution at Cafcass
- Portfolio Management: to provide roadmap oversight and, importantly, to ensure that the right projects are being identified and approved – those that are aligned with the organisation’s strategic goals.
- Project Governance: to ensure the processes were being followed to ensure successful outcomes.
- Benefits Tracking: Track the benefits that would arise from the project.
- Resource Management: to support better demand and capacity planning.
- Business Intelligence: to access instant visibility of projects and portfolios and to enable the team to focus on analysis.
PPM Challenges for organisations
This aligned well with the Mentimeter responses when participants were asked what their top 3 project and portfolio management challenges were:
Achieving ‘consistency’ was notably one of the biggest challenges that participants faced, with reporting/visibility and resource management being common themes.
To address these challenges, the Cafcass Programme Management Office team set about selecting a solution. As a Microsoft 365 user, a native Microsoft Project and Portfolio Management app seemed a natural choice.
Blockers to change for organisations implementing a project management solution
When participants were asked via Mentimeter what their top blockers were to technology, we received the following responses:
Cost and budgetary constraints were prominent, alongside technology-specific themes revolving around ‘data security concerns and IT’. By implementing a Microsoft solution, Cafcass could somewhat negate these concerns, as the organisation was already aligned with the Microsoft cloud.
Lucy did, however, stress that a tool alone would not address all the problems raised by stakeholders and that it was important to bring people with you on the journey, emphasising the importance of change management, adequate training and coaching to improve uptake. She also highlighted that an implementation should not be rushed and stressed:
- The introduction of the PPM tool is something that is going to take some time
- A tool by itself is not going to solve the problems raised by stakeholders
- Consider friendly early adopters to help you
- Consider a phased implementation
- A PPM tool has so much functionality; consider which elements you wish to focus on initially to build a strong foundation and expand into more challenging areas later
- Review and implement training and coaching as required
- Bring people with you on the journey
- Use a Comms Plan to improve the visibility of the PMO and the tool
One of the key outcomes of the implementation within Cafcass was the setup of a Community of Practice, which built on the insights from the community to help mature project management practice. Feedback is regularly captured through this to help drive continuous improvement and raise maturity.
In conclusion
In summary, moving from manual ways of working towards a centralised solution has already started to yield positive results, and it’s a transition that all organisations should consider. If you belong to a larger organisation that has adopted M365, you may also find that you’re already licensed, so do have a chat with IT.
