Best Practice User Group

Report on Workshop: A tour through the new M_o_R® Guide

The workshop on 02 May was attended by a good spread of public and private sector representatives, with attendees from users, consultants and training organisations. The 13 delegates were led through the new M_o_R® Guide by author Andrew Schuster. At the last minute his fellow authors became unavailable and Andrew coped admirably - a real tour de force!

The workshop was extremely lively as delegates explored the finer points of M_o_R®, picking Andrew's brain at every opportunity as well as sharing their own ideas and experiences. At the end it was declared that more time to explore wider and deeper would have been welcome.

The workshop explored all parts of the Guide, covering particularly the 12 Principles, 6 elements of the approach and the four perspectives and their linkages.

One of the new features - the Maturity Model - was discussed at length, including an exercise where delegates were invited to do a rapid assessment of their own organisation (or other familiar organisation). However, although a welcome addition, the general feeling was that more work was needed to make it a useful tool. On the other hand, the Healthcheck was particularly welcomed.

Everyone concluded that his or her understanding of M_o_R® was greatly enhanced as a result and that, overall, the new Guide was a welcome improvement over the old.

And some ideas were generated for future workshops:

• Dealing with risk as an opportunity
• Assessing initiatives from the viewpoint of "riskyness"
• Selection and use of risk management tools and techniques
• Maturity models (not restricted to the M_o_R® MM); e.g. underlying concepts, alignment of different models, practical issues in using them for real benefit

Vision and Mission

The Board of Directors of BPUG held a meeting in January to discuss strategic direction. They invited a number of other people to contribute, based on their experience and knowledge. There have been many outputs from the meeting and over the next year you will start to see the fruits of this. Initially, you may like to know that a new Vision and Mission have been adopted.

Vision

To be the official user group of choice for programmes, projects and risks.

Mission

To help users adopt, use, share and shape the application of OGC PPM products.

Welcome to the Best Practice User Group Blog. Feel free to use this to comment, contact, and contribute if you're in (or interested in) the international programme and project management community.