As part of our ongoing initiative to grow our project, programme, and portfolio management (P3M) capabilities, we recently welcomed Mark Britton, PMO Lead Scheduler, to the Step5 team. We took some time to speak to Mark about how his diverse experience compliments the wider Project Management Office (PMO) function as they deliver tangible benefits to our clients.
Collaborative Team Dynamics
“Working as part of a team is something I enjoy immensely. I think the strongest teams are those that work cohesively and are unified in their approach and purpose. Despite my short time with Step5, I’ve quickly integrated into the team thanks to the support from my colleagues.
“Our strength lies in our variety of experience and skillsets, all of which complement each other well. My expertise lies in scheduling, taking the timeline and scope, objectives and deliveries of a project and turning that into something that is workable from both a resource management perspective and a timeline perspective. I’m responsible for managing the major milestones with various stakeholders and keeping everything on track, driving out risks and issues on the back of the schedule – an integral part of what we deliver in our PMO function.
“The unity in the team means that everyone is in complete alignment on the importance of the schedule, and so we’ve been able to create an effective and efficient working relationship that enhances what we all do very quickly. We all share the same understanding of where the principal deliveries of the PMO sit and how everything fits together, which leads to an enhanced offering, something harmonious which is a complete package that delivers tangible benefits. Everyone is playing their part, and each element is as important as the next. As a result of this synergy, our clients end up with something that’s well developed, reliable, and provides genuine value.”
Driving Change
“Usually, client teams are made up of a strong group of busy project managers with a variety of skillsets. Often, they will have access to a range of toolsets but have varying levels of experience using them amongst the team. Part of our job is to work with those who aren’t as familiar with the toolset, making sure they have the support they need and helping them to avoid common pitfalls by introducing scheduling standards and a robust Microsoft Project template based on the client’s project lifecycle. That’s really just the starting point.
“Once the schedule is starting to take shape, we turn our focus to the quality of the schedule, ensuring everything we would expect to see from a quality schedule exists within the client’s, monitoring progress and making sure it is doing what the project manager wants it to do to ensure the project is a success and delivers on time and to budget. It’s about designing and implementing things in a way that meets the client’s needs and optimising everything to ensure they see the biggest benefit.
“It's important we put the schedule at the centre of the principals within a project; making sure the data we derive from any schedule actually comes from the schedule itself. As a team, we each contribute to create a comprehensive solution. Governance and process is driven by the PMO Lead, Henry Yorke, who makes sure we’ve got the correct checks and balances in place to drive the scheduling forward and keep things progressing smoothly, while my role involves consolidating these efforts. Our data analysts extract data from the schedule so we can represent it in different ways and different formats depending on the various stakeholders’ needs and requirements. We give project managers the ability to communicate their progress within a project more accurately, bringing clarity and accuracy at speed to help keep things moving in the right direction. By leveraging the schedule as the primary source of truth, we streamline information flow, avoiding any disconnect.”
Embedding Long-Term Success
“Step5 is all about people, and we treat customers in exactly the same way, working closely with their teams to help them deliver something with a tangible benefit at the end of it. There is real substance behind what we’re delivering and not just a set of templates that clients then struggle to implement. A template is great in itself but adapting that template into something that’s going to drive the benefit is difficult.
“Our aim is to offer something comprehensive but also replicable, something that brings benefit to our clients even after our engagement has ended. We’re making our processes as robust and reusable as possible so that when we are implementing toolsets and standards, we leave something behind that the client can pick up and use themselves so they can continue to drive their project forward. Ultimately, we’re setting them up for long-term and sustainable success.”
Transform your project delivery approach and see tangible benefits. Connect with Step5 today to explore how our PMO expertise can elevate your project outcomes.
