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Change Toolkit Programme Office Overview

Purpose

The Programme Office manage the logistics and reporting for the Programme. Their responsibilities include managing:

  • Meetings
  • Contracts
  • Documents
  • Information
  • Risk Register
  • Reporting
  • Budgets
  • Resources
  • Approvals
  • Advising Decisions
  • Governance
  • Standards
  • Audits

Role

The role of the Programme Office will usually be negotiated with the Programme Management team. When negotiating with the Programme Management team the position of the Programme Office needs to be considered:

  • What functions will the team provide?
  • Will the team only offer back office administration support?
  • Will the team provide proactive support for all administration functions?
  • Will the team be an integrated activity to the Programme?
  • Will the team support all Programme areas?

Answers to these questions will determine what functions the Programme Office will provide and how they will be delivered.

Programme Support

Programme Office can make a significant difference to the performance of the Programme. Although the Programme Office has a support role a well run office can enhance the Programme team by providing proactive support such as:

Key Activity

Key Activity

Description

Programme Plans
  • Support the development of all plans into a common template
  • Ensure all plans are integrated
  • Maintain plans to reflect in-progress changes

Reporting
  • Prepare draft status reports based on plans
  • Support team to review plans

Support key meetings
  • Prepare agenda for key meetings
  • Attend key meetings
  • Minute outcomes of key meetings

Capture, Track & Publish
  • Key decisions
  • Business feedback
  • Risks

Managing all budgets
  • Tracking
  • Reporting
  • Approvals
  • Audit control
  • Early advice on budget issues
  • Liasing with the Finance group

Managing the Programme environment
  • Office space (desks & meeting rooms, stationery)
  • Equipment, phones etc
  • Security
  • Email
  • Distribution lists, Contact lists

Managing resources
  • Sourcing
  • Initial interviews
  • Holidays
  • Contracts
  • Liasing with Human Resources

Managing the governance processes
  • Prepare presentation materials
  • Reviews
  • Approvals

Building processes

The Programme Office will usually develop processes to manage all the functions they are responsible for. These processes are a combination of:

  • What the Programme Office needs to do, and
  • The internal processes of the organisation such as:
    • Human Resource processes
    • Finance processes
    • Governance processes

The Programme Office build processes that bridge between the needs of the Programme and the business rules of the organisation.

This can often create conflict for the Programme Office team as, although they wish to be supportive, they can end up building complex processes to comply with the business rules of the organisation.

Briefing the Programme team

Programme Office usually create custom processes to support the Programme team. The Programme team do need to be briefed in the Programme Office processes. There is a temptation to produce one document to manage all Programme Office processes but this tends to result in a unwieldy process document that the Programme team will not read.

Programme Office processes should be documented in two versions:

Version

Description

Internal Programme Office processes
  • This should be the process reference for the Programme Office team
  • It will need to be quite detailed and include all forms and formats for the processes

Programme team processes
  • This should be a summary version for the Programme team
  • It should only include the specific details that the team need to know