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Designing a programme management framework is hard

Safe LandingNo organisation can successfully deliver programmes and projects without an effective framework and common lifecycle around which controls can be based.
Our maturity and capability assessment of over 120 organisations enabled us to review a wide range of processes, guidance and tools that are used across a range of sectors.
We found:

  • Incomplete frameworks with inadequate lifecycles
  • Frameworks that replicate manuals and basic theory but add no value
  • Roles and responsibilities that are generic, confusing or conflicting
  • Themes, such as risk, that are not connected to the lifecycle or sit in isolation
  • Generic role definitions with no application of the responsibilities
  • Templates that bear no resemblance to the lifecycle or processes
  • Little connection between programme and project management systems
  • Portfolio Management frameworks that fail to address balancing priorities

To overcome this, we developed our own Align Framework® and offer it as a fully supported package. If you would like to find out more about the Align Framework®, click here

Align Framework® is a registered trademark of Aspire Europe Limited.

Portfolio offices play a key role in strategy delivery – Forrester research


In this article by Forrester Consulting, they have written an excellent paper on how strategic PMOs play a key role in increasing an organisations ability to deliver the right projects in the right way, thus improving organisational performance and agility.
It includes an interesting section about the triggers for PMOs taking on this strategic relevance, not surprisingly, most are linked to a corporate calamity of some sort or a new CEO who is a believer.
Their findings illustrate that the critical success factors include:

  • They have a seat at the executive table
  • They are a critical part of the strategic planning process
  • They embrace core competencies
  • They use consistent objectives across industries and regions

For those of you that are familiar with Eileen Roden’s P3O®, some of this will be old news but it is still a very interesting article with current examples.

P3O® is a [registered] trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

Wasting money on training – what can we do to help?

Strange but true

  1. In 2011 the UK National Audit Office (NAO) reported that a lack of programme and project management skills was one of the major concerns for senior managers. In 2017 there is an estimate that the UK public sector is 4,000 short of the number needed to deliver Brexit.
  2. Our skills and capability assessments have also highlighted some other alarming statistics, one of which is that 23% of people involved in transformation programmes and projects have no formal qualifications.
  3. Over 250,000 people worldwide are qualified in PRINCE2® and over 50,000 in Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®), but when we undertake maturity assessments and assurance reviews, we find organisations do not actually use the fundamental concepts or processes. So basically people are gaining qualifications on subject areas they do not use.

If you are interested in finding out more about why organisations fail to extract better value from the training market, why not read our article – delivering better value from training
In the meantime, here are the things that the Aspire Academy award winning team can help you with.
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If you want targeted development to improve organisational and individual performance in both the processes and leadership of change, we can help with the  following:

  1. Competency Framework – that can be adapted for your organisation to help target your training and is aligned to the APM Body of Knowledge.
  2. Competency and Capability Assessment – the process and survey that can profile the current organisation to target your training more effectively.
  3. Short Courses – a range of  ‘off the shelf’, customisable topic and role related courses specifically targeted at improving performance. A number have associated vocational qualifications from C4CM.
  4. eLearning Courses – we have all the main APM Group and AXELOS Limited qualification courses and a range of topic specific courses that focus on application of the concepts, e.g. planning.
  5. Accredited Qualifications – we can offer the full range of APM, APM Group, AXELOS Limited and C4CM qualifications in face-to-face events. Result statistics from the APMG exam institute show our average pass rate across all our products and qualification levels is a 97% success rate over the past year!
  6. Align Framework – A portfolio, programme and project framework which provides a self-help knowledge base and just-in-time guidance for teams. For more information on the Align Framework, click here.
  7. Community of Practice – will enable personal development and networking and organisational learning and improvement.
MSP® and PRINCE2® are [registered] trade marks of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

Ever wondered how you become a thought leading company?

Anyone can claim to be at the leading edge of the industry or a thought leader, but not many people back themselves and go into print as authors, even fewer get the backing of one of the world’s leading publishing companies such as The TSO.
Why not check out some of the books that we have written.
Managing Successful Programmes 2011
The lead author was Aspire Europe Managing Director, Rod Sowden and was supported by Geof Leigh, Aspire Assess Director. Together they wrote both the 2007 and 2011 versions of the manual for the OGC and Axelos and helped to establish MSP® as the de facto standard for programme management around the world.
MSP® Survival Guide for Senior Responsible Owners
This was jointly written by Rod Sowden and Nick Carter (one of our lead trainers) who had a significant track record as an SRO himself. It addresses the needs of new SROs who come into an intimidating environment and are expected to take full accountability for what is going on. The book is designed to help them keep their ship steady and navigate it safely to an acceptable destination.
MSP Survival Guide for Business Change Managers
This was the first in the Survival Guide series and the first of the publications intended to enhance the MSP® body of knowledge by focusing on the roles, tasks and techniques of each of the roles. The author was Rod Sowden with support from a number of the Aspire Europe team. The book was published in 2015 and filled in many of the gaps that link MSP® to business change and business architecture environments.
MSP Survival Guide for Programme Managers
This book was written jointly by Rod Sowden and Geof Leigh with support from the internal team. Published in 2016, the book developed a number of the concepts around MSP® and rewrote them for the benefits of programme managers new to MSP® and included large amounts of new materials to help set up programme governance and programme offices.
The Practical Guide to Project Planning
This book was written by Rod Sowden with the help of Tom Ford. It started life as a set of guidance for one of the Aspire Europe customers, developed into a course and finally became a book. It came as a result of P3M3 assessments and spotting a systemic problem with planning  in most organisations.  It is a global epidemic, so we wrote the book to help pull all the threads and concepts together into one practical guide which pulls the best out of many bodies of knowledge from around the world.
Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3®)
This is the product which changed the industry. From Version 1, the academic framework developed in 2005 to becoming a globally recognised and internationally adopted standard for measuring performance by 2015. Version 2 in 2008 was developed by Rod Sowden as the lead author, and the update released in 2015 had joint lead authorship with Andy Murray (Outperform and PRINCE2® lead author). In addition, Geof Leigh developed large sections of the model, Sam Jenkins was heavily involved in reviewing and testing the new model, Claire Rookes was the project manager and most members of the team were absorbed in some aspect of review and development.
If you can find an organisation that has contributed more to the industry, we are looking forward to finding out who they are.
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MSP®,P3M3® and PRINCE2® are [registered] trade marks of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

Eileen Roden accepts a non executive director role at the Aspire Academy

Aspire Europe are pleased to announce that Eileen Roden has  accepted a non executive  director role at the Aspire Academy.
Rod Sowden, Managing Director, Aspire Europe said “We are very pleased that Eileen has accepted the non executive role on our board. We have had a close relationship with Eileen since her PMP days and she is already our P3O® lead trainer, one of our P3M3® assessors  and looks after a number of key clients. Eileen has a massive reputation in the P3M industry with a huge depth of knowledge around PMOs and is a fellow lead author as well, so always has an eye on developing trends but most of all, she is also great fun to have around !”
For more information on Eileen, please check out her LinkedIn profile

P3O® and P3M3® are [registered] trade marks of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

Why is learning from failure so difficult?

One of the great mysteries is why is it we keep making the same mistakes or doing blindingly stupid things. The P3M industry is just a reflection of wider society, as programmes and projects fail repeatedly for  the same reasons, yet each time it seems to come as a complete surprise.
TSO asked Aspire Europe to write the guest article for their website, so we decided to focus on this topic and share our insights. We hope you find the article useful
If just one word from this article triggers a thought or an idea that improves your performance at any time in the future, then it will have been worthwhile.
 

P3M3® at the United Nations

P3M3 Consulting Partner Logo
We would like to share with you an interesting case study about the use of P3M3® at the United Nations.
As an operational arm of the United Nations (UN), the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) helps partners deliver around $1 billion worth of aid and development projects every year. The UNOPS mission is to help people build better lives and countries to achieve sustainable development. UNOPS always aims to satisfy or surpass partner expectations by advancing sustainable implementation practices within the development, humanitarian and peacebuilding context.
UNOPS has over 20 years of experience in providing project management, procurement, and infrastructure services to governments, donors and UN organizations. Within those areas, UNOPS focuses on supplementing partner capacities, improving speed, reducing risks, boosting cost- effectiveness and increasing quality. UNOPS operates across 80 countries with over seven thousand personnel, most of whom work in some of the world’s most challenging places. UNOPS is a self- financing organization with a business model that is unique to other entities in the UN system
To see the full case study, please follow the  link 

P3M3® is a [registered] trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

Implementing P3O® – Latte experience of portfolio, program and project offices

In this short vodcast (from our partners at CC Learning in Brisbane) Elissa Farrow, a trainer at CC Learning, talks about Implementing P3O® within an organisation. Specifically she discusses the hub and spoke model of Portfolio, program and project offices.
We hope you find it useful!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbv3mpe-uhc]

P3O® is a [registered] trade mark of AXELOS Limited, used under permission of AXELOS Limited. All rights reserved.

Aspire Europe Global Customer Base

“Small enough to care, big enough to cope”
Since developing our own set of eLearning courses in 2014, our users have grown and in that time also spread far and wide. Below shows a selection of our 800+ users and where in the world they’re located.
[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/embed?mid=1AXTZtcEOqSZweGYTTARJd_NxHNo&w=640&h=480]