PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY | EXAMPLES | WORK EXPERIENCE | CREATIVE

PMO TRANFORMATION EXAMPLE | FRAMEWORK CHANGE

MOVE FROM QUARTERLY 'BIG ROOM PLANNING' EVENTS TO A CONTINUOUS PLANNING MODEL

Scenario

• Situation
• The tech department at Allergan Aesthetics operated on a quarterly 'Big Room Planning' (BRP) model, where every quarter all of Technology (Product, Program, Engineering) would meet and coordinate all the anticipated work for the upcoming three months, across all Eng teams, Marketing, and Customer Support
• This system of org-wide planning became very disruptive, as all teams would end up in a scurry starting about six weeks out, spending more and more time prepping and coordinating
• Cross-team dependencies were identified and centralized into a temporary weekly coordination process managed on a large, mutually-managed manual spreadsheet
• At the same time, Marketing and leadership often had last-minute shifts and changes to delivery priorities, adding further complication to the pre-BRP process
• This presented a challenge to be solved: What could we improve to mitigate the cyclical productivity disruption and time-intensive, often chaotic prioritization and planning process
• I had been an individual TPM managing three separate engineering teams through this process for three of these cycles before stepping into an interim Director role and taking on PMO leadership duties and control of my particular silo/tribe of engineering teams and TPMs
• Task
• After discussion with the head of the PMO, I volunteered to prototype a simplified model for continuous planning for my silo/tribe
• We would maintain a persistent 7-sprint (90-day) working roadmap across all teams in the group
• This plan would remain flexible, allowing for organic intake and priority changes
• We would remain part of the official BRP process for the time being until our prototype was fully vetted and approved to roll out org-wide
• The plan was to implement the model prototype, demonstrate its efficacy, expand to the greater org, and then expand the working roadmaps to be 15+ sprint (half-year) plans to mitigate heartburn other groups like Marketing were experiencing being unable to project budgets and product launches with confidence
• As a self-imposed restriction, I determined that this model needed to be process-light, freeing the TPM team from burdensome processes wherever possible
• Actions
• During the weeks ahead of the next BRP, I coordinated with my entire tribe and went over the plan with each of them, outlining what would change and what the expectations were for success
• We went through the standard BRP process as it existed one last time, walking out with an initial 90-day roadmap of work that the teams were to maintain in perpetuity
• I established a new intake/priority review process for work requests and changes to be introduced to the tribe
• I informed the entire PMO of our shift so that all dependency coordination would occur as an ongoing process as opposed to a cyclical burst of rushed ad hoc meetings
• I coordinated with leaderhsip and outside stakeholders like Marketing so they knew to come to us organically with requests and priority shifts
• I established a weekly 'Office Hours' meeting open to anyone to join
• The tribe leads (Product, Program, Design, and Engineering) were available during this time to introduce any new requests and priority changes
• All new work requests were presented and discussed, placed up against the current work roadmap to understand the implication of the change and get stakeholder/leadership signoff
• I then created a bi-weekly meeting for all the TPMs and team leaders in the tribe to meet with the tribe leads and discuss any roadmap adjustments introduced
• Any new questions or unforeseen complications idenfitifed would be surfaced and raised with stakeholders to address
• Teams would otherwise adjust their roadmaps accordingly and return to their teams to make the shifts needed beginning in the next/appropriate sprint
• We repurposed an existing weekly tribe/Marketing sync to indclude further-reaching Marketing launches and future delivery needs
• In parallel, we had our Product team expand its roadmap and used this as our basis for a continuous set of work to address, pending interjections as described above
• Each team in the tribe established a weekly huddle specific to their own roadmap management to maintain their perpetual 7-sprint plan
• I met with my TPMs weekly to connect on progress, discuss challenges, and gnerally support them as this new model began rolling out
• All plans were kept evergreen and avialable for anyone to see, allowing for transparency and for teams/stakeholders to call out questions or concerns
• We remained part of the org's continuing BRP process, and would simply report in what our 90 day roadmap looked like without the chaotic crush of pre-planning that we had previously experienced
• Result
• We were able to report at the next BRP what our plans were while mitigating the last-minute rush to prepare for the sessions
• We successfully demonstrated the basic prototype was viable and could be implemented, accounting for individual tribe adjustments as needed
• Full implementation was stalled due to organizational changes within the company and Technology department; as of the time of this writing this has not been fully rolled out org-wide

Business Impact

• Quarterly prodctivity dips and team frustration were set to be mitigated once adopted org-wide
• Business needs and priority changes would become more organic and not held frozen for three months at a stretch

Approach and Coordination

• I looked at the quarterly tensions and chaotic flurry of rushed coordination as a an organizational snag that needed to be addressed
• I spoke with peers about where they were feeling the heartburn and gathered up a set of chalenges to mitigate or resolve
• I coordinated with my partners in tribe leadrship to agree on a process where we all could be involved with intake and prioritization for the teams we were responsible for
• I kept as much stucture in place as I could to minimize the scale of change and to keep the lift as light as possible
• I kept leadership informed of my intentions and design in order to be transparent, gain buy-in, and allow for any input or guidance

Challenges

• Within the tribe
• One team lagged due to difficulties with the business decided what they wanted to do in the longer term
• Cross-tribe dependency coordination
• Attendance to the intake office hours was slow to adopt, off-channel coordination persisted creating some hiccups
• Leadrship and organizational changes
• As we were rolling out the prototype, there was a major organizational change across the company
• Major changes in leadership personnel and delivery direction including teh Technology org caused uncertainty and delays
• Technology roadmaps were in flux as decisions were being made as to what to continue with or pivot to
• Full rollout for this effort was stalled during this period and has not yet been picked back up by leadership as of the time of this writing

Key Learnings

• Change is hard
• Buy-in on principle was straightforward and fairly universal
• Beginning with a single tribe while maintining the BRP framework presented pros and cons

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