When a large regional bank prepared for a $10B acquisition, the PMO director needed strategic advisory and operations rigor to prepare 175 projects for integration without compromising governance.
The Situtation
The project management office (PMO) at a large regional bank was responsible for 175 strategic projects representing tens of millions of dollars in investment. However, after the announcement that the bank was being acquired by another regional competitor, the PMO was suddenly responsible for preparing all projects for completion, closure or integration on an accelerated 5-month timeline.
To further the complexity, half of the existing project managers were called into action on integration and transition projects, leaving the remaining staff to handle all legacy PMO projects in a highly ambiguous and deadline-driven environment.
Even in this time of change, project governance and risk management could not be compromised. As chief of staff to the PMO director, I was responsible for acting as a strategic advisor and cross-functional operator, ensuring that we maintained smooth operations, consistent governance, and continuously pivoted to meet the evolving needs of the integration.
The Approach
In an environment where decisions were made and minds were changed by the hour, it was critical that I build the systems, operating cadence, and cross-functional relationships required to keep up with the pace of change.
- I established an operating cadence with the PMO director where I helped maintain his strategic focus, enabled context-driven decisions, served as a confidential thought partner for inbound requests, and ruthlessly prioritized the most valuable action items.
- I built a model and dashboards which enabled clear visibility into the status of all existing projects, surface risks (such as changes in project health), and forecast resource needs to ensure no disruptions occured during transition.
- I developed clear and consistent lines of communication in all directions – upward to executive and C-level leadership, outward to cross-functional partners in Technology, Finance, Procurement and HR, and downward across the organization of 50 project managers.
- I developed timely executive-level reporting of the PMO’s progress toward integration, driving a concise narrative around our progress, risks and action plans.
The Results
Legacy PMO operations were completed prior to integration: Before legally merging, the bank successfully completed or cancelled 153 of the original 175 projects, with the remaining 22 set for full integration into the new bank’s PMO.
The PMO director had clarity and bandwidth: While I managed strategic execution, the PMO director had the clarity, context and bandwidth required to do high-impact integration work, collaborating with executive leaders at both banks to define the full integration strategy and combined project governance frameworks.
Unnecessary costs were eliminated: By coordinating across the individual project managers and our Procurement partners, the PMO eliminated hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary costs by terminating or pausing contracts for projects where the vendors were no longer necessary.