Dear Project Management Professionals:
I see lots of members joining this community. I am sure many of us must have implemented OPM either in our own orgainizations or in client organizations. To begin with we can share those experiences, the hardships faced, the handling of change management, any soft (human resources related) issued invloved, etc.
This experience sharing can create a resposioty of knowledge on OPM, which can be used by new members and may be useful for other practitioners to handle simlar situations.
Can we start sharing these experiences?

Thanking you

Sincerely,

Chandrashekhar S. Joshi
PMP

Hi all, It will be really helpfull for members like me who are beginers but strongly willing to implement the OPM framework in the organisation after having successfully demonstrated the PMM levels. Eagerly awaiting sharing from community members.

Warm Regards,

Vivek Sonar

Hello Chandra, Vivek and all,

This indeed is a good topic for many of us on this forum. Thank you.

By the way, at OPM CoP, we are planning to produce a booklet called "Case Studies in OPM" and this discussion may be a great place to start. Each case study will consists of 2 to 5 pages (Letter/A4 with 12 size Times New Roman font single-spaced). Those who are interested in contributing to this booklet, do get in touch with me or start the discussion here.

Cheers,

Rashed

Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D., PMP
Community Leader, OPM CoP
rashed.iqbal@vcleader.pmi.org

Dear Rashed sb and All respected members,

It was just three days ago, when we were having a meeting with one of our consultants on OPM and a unanimous demand from the participants towards the consultant was to provide them with a set of success stories in this avenue. Unfortunately, the consultant had to regret mentioning that such a thing has not yet been compiled, to the max of his knowledge.

So by saying that, I intend to bring forward all my support to this community. My organization has also recently realized the potential of OPM and has set up a cross functional team of PMPs for this assignment.

Best Regards,
Owais Siddiqui, PMP

Hello Owais and other members,

Thank you for your post. Yes. It would be worthwhile for lot of us to collect success stories (even failure stories) for various topics related with OPM.

Let us see who would throw the first stone or be the first drop of rain!

Cheers,

Rashed

Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D., PMP
Community Leader, OPM CoP
rashed.iqbal@vcleader.pmi.org

Dear Members,
I have just joined. For the past 6 years my Division of Battelle Memorial Institute has been using the CMMI methodology used by J Kent Crawford in his Project Management Maturity Model. This methodology has proven to be successful and our maturity rating has increased as well as experiencing improvement in our project sucess rate and customer satisfaction. We have decided to make the switch to OPM3 and I am searching for any lessons learned and advice about switching assessment methodologies. We presently have 7 major portfolio's in the National Security Global Business, over 1500 ongoing projects that range in size from 10's of thousand to 10's of million dollars; approximately $1Billion in total sales and we are a 501-3B not-for-profit organization with limited margin requirements. The challange is a good one!!

Richard P Krulis PMP
Director, Program Management Support
National Security Global Business
Battelle Memorial Institute
Work 410-306-8872 Aberdeen, MD

Hello Richard,

Welcome to the forum. We have many members on this forum who are OPM3 assessors/consultant and I am sure you will get good help in this transition. In fact many of us (including myself) were part of the core team which developed the second edition of OPM3.

Also, you may find following documents of interest:

- Shared Documents > Articles > Bridging OPM3® and CMMI®
- Shared Documents > Articles > OPM3 and CMMI Collaborative Opportunities

I am also curious to know what has been the key driver for switching to OPM3 for your organization?

Cheers,

Rashed

Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D., PMP
Community Leader, OPM CoP
rashed.iqbal@vcleader.pmi.org

Rashed,
Thank you for the direction to the articles. They have provided good food for thought. As for the impetous for pursuing OPM3, I have to believe from my position - management heard that it was a new best practice for assessing PM maturity and as NSGB (my division) is the largest we were tasked to look into it. As I have said before I am a Systems Engineer by trade and am very comfortable with CMMI. We have been using it for the past 6 years to establish our PM processes using the Kent Crawford book and methodology. At the same time we have obtained several ISO certifications so the organization is comfortable with the CMMI process. We look at PM Maturity assessment as one part of our four part PM process improvement program. As the article suggests it may now be beneficial to incorporate both in the assessment. We are looking at it - more to follow.

Dick

Hi all,

We have been successfully implementing PMM maturity in new product development & have reached seen @ 360% improvement in scores in a span of 3.5 years. I believe it is the right time to start working on OPM & bring in distinct connect of Projects/Programs to Strategy.

Can some one (I see lot of emminent personlaities here, who have been practicing the OPM for a quiet some time) share their experiences on following lines like

1. Where to begin? Does the the first step always start with self assessment?
2. How to decide which of the best practices are applicable directly or indirectly?
3. I recently came across a typical cycle as Knowledge -> Self Assessment -> Improvements. Is it best among other wyas of starting?
4. What are the typical pitfalls one should be aware & sensitive to while implementing OPM?

Thanx...

Hello Dick,

Combined use of CMMI and OPM3 is an interesting topic. If done appropriately, strengths of CMMI (with an overall integrated approach to products/services development) and of OPM3 (a model with in-depth focus on management of projects, programs, and portfolios) may be very beneficial. I believe PMI has been pursuing this area and once you have done some preliminary planning in your organization, we can tap into the PMI to find out how they could help.

Cheers,

Rashed


Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D., PMP
Community Leader, OPM CoP
rashed.iqbal@vcleader.pmi.org

Hello Vivek,

Thank you for your post. Yes. I guess the original idea to start this thread was sharing experience in OPM implementation and I am hoping that our members will share their experience. I think using a wiki will probably more appropriate for this.

Cheers,

Rashed

Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D., PMP
Community Leader, OPM CoP
rashed.iqbal@vcleader.pmi.org

Hello Gents, and I would like to share with you my experience in OPM implementation, it has been hard due to the lack of promotion of the vision of the benefits and opportunities that OPM3 can give to the organization, so the question here is How to promote OPM3 within organizations?, so many times a self-assessment petition is not good received by sponsors, the argument they already know what are they doing wrong.

Regards
Bernardo Contreras
PMO Director
Grupo Altavista, Mexico

Brief case studies will be very helpful to all. I like the idea. Would a template of key areas of discussion be helpful so we can compare and contrast the cases?

Separately, John Schlichter -- who was involved with the first version of OPM -- is working on a book also. He announced he is looking for chapter-length submissions on Gantthead.com and Linked-in special interest groups. He was helpful in clarifying my thinking. My whitepaper is on gantthead.com this month -- "Zero defects, zero deaths; implementing OPM3 in rural hospitals."

Regards
Ann.Lovejoy

Hello Ann,

Welcome to the community! I liked your idea of a template addressing key areas. Kindly tell more. You may also want to review our paper on what OPM is (of which I am going to upload a new version tomorrow - Sunday).

Yes. I did see John Schlichter's invitation on LinkedIn SIG. I will get in touch with him requesting participation in this community. Your paper seems to bear a stimulating topic. Will look into it.

Cheers,

Rashed

Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D., PMP
Community Leader, OPM CoP
rashed.iqbal@vcleader.pmi.org

All,

This community is a great place to share ideas around OPM. I'm glad that you all have joined and started discussions. I've been involved with OPM for about the past 10 years in various roles. I look forward to sharing experiences and knowledge amongst the team.

I wrote the paper regarding OPM3 and CMMI Collaborative Opportunities a little while ago and believe that the two are truly collaborative. There are many tools in the marketplace including those mentioned in this thread, many of which can be useful to organizations. They just need to know which ones to pull out that are the most appropriate for their situation to advance their capabilities in OPM.

Cheers,
Tom

Hello Tom,

Welcome to the community!

I am looking forward that we all in this group will learn from you with your strong experience and thorough knowledge of OPM. I also wanted to invite you to review our position paper which defines OPM (please follow >> Defining OPM - A white paper under Popular Links). Your feedback will be very valuable for us all.


Cheers,

Rashed

Rashed Iqbal, Ph.D., PMP
Community Leader, OPM CoP
rashed.iqbal@vcleader.pmi.org

I'm so glad to find this OPM3 forum for community discussions! I must have missed the notification regarding it.

One point we want to be sure and clarify is that OPM, as it is defined for the purposes of this community, is a much broader consideration than just OPM3®. OPM is the sum total of all aspects of the organization’s ability to perform projects and programs. This includes the way it is aligned, its tools and processes, its OPM enablers, its corporate knowledge and even its people’s knowledge and skills involving the management of programs and projects.
OPM3® is a standard developed by PMI to try and measure the maturity of an organization’s OPM. You might think of it as something like the difference between the Program Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) at large, and PMI’s Guide to the PMBOK. It is only a subset of the whole. At best, it is a model to help us understand the whole.
Any organization that has done projects or programs, has implemented some type of OPM simply by executing those projects. To implement OPM3® is a specific effort to use the PMI standard and tools to measure the maturity level of the organization’s OPM and to determine how to improve it.
I only make a point of this because we want to be sure that this community does not limit itself only to the discussion of OPM3®, but explores all the aspects and realm of OPM in general.

Richard,

Battelle is one of my clients, and I led the OPM3 implementation there in a separate division. I will connect you with others in your company who were involved.

Regards,
John Schlichter
CEO, OPM Experts LLC
http://opmexperts.com

Organizational Project Management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to choose the right projects through Portfolio Management and deliver them successfully through Program and Project Management. OPM3 is the Standard for making such a system capable within any organization. An organization is defined as any goal-directed subset of the enterprise. OPM3 can be implemented enterprise-wide or within any subset of the enterprise. It is not necessary and indeed in most cases not efficient to attempt to projectize all operations of a company.

There are many newcomers to OPM3 in this group. I think it would be wise to clarify that OPM is defined as a Standard through a formal PMI process. While the goal of expanding the body of knowledge regarding OPM is good and the mission of improving the OPM3 Standard is worthy, there are thousands of opinions and only one published Standard from PMI. The Standard is not prescriptive, and the instantiation of the Standard within any organization is perforce unique to that organization.

Regards,
John Schlichter
CEO, OPM Experts LLC
http://opmexperts.com
jschlichter@opmexperts.com