In its ongoing pursuit of operational excellence and global recognition, the University of Johannesburg (UJ) has successfully unified project management practices across six key departments through Project Portfolio Office’s project portfolio management solution, PPO. 

The implementation of PPO has provided the university with enhanced project visibility, governance and alignment with its broader strategic goals, under its ‘OnePMO’ initiative.

An integrated approach to project management

UJ’s journey toward a unified project management approach began with the vision of Dr. Mpoti Ralephata, Chief Operating Officer (COO), who sought to standardise project management practices across his domain within the university. This constitutes six departments, namely: Facilities Management; Human Capital Management (HCM); the Sustainability Project Office; Protection Services; Information and Communication Systems (ICS); and the Ethics Office.

Prior to the implementation of PPO, project management practices varied widely among the abovementioned departments. Other project management related departments such as Central Technical Services (CTS), followed structured methodologies within a PMBOK-type environment and were already PPO tool users with great success, while others had no formal project management processes in place. This fragmented approach made it challenging to consolidate project data, which was scattered across multiple spreadsheets, or gain consistent insights into the true number of active projects and their statuses. This, in turn, created difficulties with the assessment of the overall Facilities Management’s portfolio progress and capacity management.

“When Dr. Ralephata joined UJ, he came from the mining industry, where centralised project management is the norm,” explains Professor Andre Nel, a prior Executive Director of Facilities Management at UJ – now an advisor in the office of the COO. “He very quickly realised that there were inconsistencies in the project management practices across the UJ departments in his domain and sought a solution to establish a single version of the truth.

“This lack of structure made it difficult for Dr. Ralephata, who was accustomed to structured reporting, to draw consistent data across departments. Reports varied greatly in format and quality, which made consolidating information challenging, and he would often receive conflicting information from different departments.”

The ‘OnePMO’ approach was officially launched in January 2024, after months of preparation and alignment. As part of this process, PPO was selected as the central ‘OnePMO’ application for project management, largely due to its successful use in CTS and its intuitive, user-friendly design.

Standardisation across departments

“When I joined UJ in August 2023, my role was to ensure a standardised way of managing projects across all departments through the ‘OnePMO’ approach’,” says Mesiti Nkabinde, Project Management Office (PMO) Delivery Manager at UJ. “We implemented PPO as the chosen PPM tool to provide visibility and stability across the portfolio, which was previously lacking. It allowed us to identify active, planned and completed projects, and mitigate risks more effectively.”

Despite varying levels of project management maturity, from experienced teams in CTS to departments with no prior methodologies and very little project management training, PPO enabled the university to create a standardised framework. “The application’s simplicity and configurability made it easy to adopt, even for departments with limited project management experience,” continues Nkabinde.

Guy Jelley, CEO and co-founder of Project Portfolio Office, clarifies that, while there were varying levels of maturity, PPO is able to support each department at its required level, which in some cases included specific requirements, like the ability to support Agile, Hybrid and Waterfall approaches: “We were able to scale the implementation to meet the requirements of the various departments based on each one’s maturity level, aligning with their governance processes, the style and frequency of reporting, and the methodology they wanted to adopt. This was achieved while still producing one version of the truth but, in the details, also supporting each department.”

“Aligning everyone to the ‘OnePMO’ enterprise-wide project management approach was one of our biggest hurdles,” adds Nel. “In my own exposure to PPO, I was struck by how easy it is to learn. Not only this, but we could also easily implement a reporting and management style, which is completely aligned with PMBOK type processes. And the fact that we could do this across these differing levels of project management experience was key.”

Improved high-level visibility, accurate reporting

From Nel’s perspective, two important benefits have been seen since the rollout of ‘OnePMO’ and PPO. “The first is the governance-related stop-light model, which makes it very easy to cast a quick eye over a large number of projects and to settle upon those that are at risk or need remediation. 

“The second is the fact that, because the large majority of our projects are now in PPO, we are able to see - with an eagle eye for the very first time - the extent of the project management effort required by our middle to senior managers in the various departments. Previously, we knew that they were working on projects, but we didn’t know how many resided within HCM, for instance. Now, we can see which departments are more strained in terms of the number of projects per manager, while also taking into account the other parts of their day jobs, over and above the project management element. This is an important outcome that was never available previously, no matter how much effort was put in.

“Furthermore, ‘OnePMO’ and PPO have made it possible for these UJ departments to ensure that they can produce compliant reports with a minimum of effort. This means that, instead of having to sit down every three months and spend three to four days working on massive narrative reports and manually adjusting information based on their memories, the reports now follow the process naturally as part of our project managers’ day jobs and can be compiled within an hour or two.”

According to Nkabinde, an improvement in the way that projects are being managed has been another real plus for the university. “We’re finding now that our project managers aren’t just doing what they have to do, but are considering other elements that could affect the success of their projects. For the first time, they are asking questions like: What is the risk to my project? What are the issues that I'm experiencing? How am I reporting in terms of my cost? Am I really spending in line with my budget? And if there are any variances, can I explain this? 

“This is a definite reflection of growing maturity and how the ‘OnePMO’ and new process in managing projects supports this.”

Empowering strategic alignment

The ‘OnePMO’ approach and implementation of PPO have empowered UJ to align its projects with the university’s broader strategic objectives. By unifying project reporting and creating consistent data, the university can now make informed decisions and track progress toward its goals.

“Before ‘OnePMO’ and PPO, gaining an overview of active projects or their statuses was nearly impossible,” notes Nel. “Now, we have real-time visibility and can plan effectively, ensuring that our projects contribute to UJ’s mission of shaping the future and achieving global recognition.”

This alignment has been particularly impactful in the ICS department. Dr. Chelma Sliep, Director of Infrastructure and Operations for the ICS department, highlights the benefits: “PPO has transformed the way we manage IT-centric projects. It provides the governance and structure needed to ensure that our infrastructure supports UJ’s vision effectively.

“While the ICS team had previously used a different PPM application, we had not been able to align with the application’s capabilities, leading us to consider alternatives. From an executive point of view, reporting was also a real struggle. For UJ Council committee meetings, COO and EXCO presentations, it was challenging to trust that the information we put forward was both current and accurate. In addition, we had to start reporting preparations a month in advance, with multiple internal meetings to verify data and ensure accuracy.

“With PPO, I can now simply export reports as needed. Updates happen in real-time, and it’s just a matter of exporting and submitting reports. This has saved us at least one to two weeks of effort per quarter and reduced the number of preparatory meetings significantly. Collaboration across domains has also improved.

“PPO’s navigation is intuitive, and our project managers and teams gained a better understanding of their roles in managing projects. PPO has helped us to centralise our data, enforce role-based access, and implement governance checks efficiently. Templates and processes are standardised, improving visibility and ensuring everyone is aligned. Integrating methodologies like Agile for our solutions delivery team within PPO has been transformative,” Sliep comments.

“Limited project visibility was a major issue historically, but now it’s possible to login to PPO and immediately see project statuses, governance checks, and progress across domains. The role-based access and centralised database are game-changers. Finally, the standardisation of templates and processes ensures consistency across all projects.”

Looking ahead

Currently, there are around 65 users within the ‘OnePMO’ environment, looking after over 100 projects. Nel advises though that, this year, the CTS department’s projects – numbering around an additional 120 – will also be merged with the ‘OnePMO’ environment. 

“Post-merger, we’ll be looking at in excess of 200 projects being run in the COO domain of the university.”

“As UJ continues its journey with PPO, the focus remains on building project management maturity and further integrating CTS into the ‘OnePMO’ framework,” says Jelley, commending UJ’s achievements: “The university’s success demonstrates the power of a centralised approach to portfolio and project management. By leveraging PPO, they have laid a strong foundation for operational excellence and strategic alignment.

“With the ‘OnePMO’ initiative firmly in place, the University of Johannesburg is now better equipped to shape the future, achieve its strategic goals and solidify its position as a globally recognised institution,” he concludes.