Julia Walker is the PMO manager for Anglian Water. An experienced project manager of 20 years, Julia is well versed in what is required to deliver project success. A user of Execview for the past 8 years, Julia champions our software as an essential component in project delivery. We spoke with Julia about her progression to a PMO manager, the value of Execview as a project management software tool, and – having lived abroad for nearly 6 years – how to maintain efficiency in working remotely long-term.
How did you get into project management?
I was managing sports centres and I landed this management role in a leisure centre. They introduced a new software tool to manage their point of sale, the money and memberships. The centre needed people who could understand it, so I said I would go to the training and support rollout to other sports centres. After that, my role changed. I became a central resource. I was going out to the other centres, assessing how they worked and making sure that the software we were putting in met their needs. I saw this PMO role with Anglian Water, I thought – well, I have never been a PMO manager, but I understand project management. Being a PMO manager is slightly different from project management. I do not have to go out and deal with the implementations anymore. I only need to make sure they have done it the right way.
Do you think the role of a project manager has changed to meet an evolving world?
I don’t personally see that it has changed an awful lot. The principles will always be the same. You need your requirements and you need to work out how you are going to meet them. Then, you must come up with a solution through good design. You either build that design or implement the chosen software. Then it is just a question of deployment. Also, making sure you have got some change management processes in there. It’s managing the stakeholders, communications and training. Those principles will never change. However, what does change are the tools that you have to support with deliveries. Also, the organizations that you are working with, maybe their goals have changed, or their aspirations, or they need you to be more efficient. But if you are a good project manager you will deliver quickly, cheaply and with the highest quality.
What would you say you enjoy the most about being a project manager?
Achieving the goals. To go from the grassroots of people’s requirements to delivering something that meets all their needs or exceeds them where they get extra bang for their buck. It’s great seeing a project in practice when you’ve been there from start to finish. There is a lot of satisfaction in persuading people in organizations who are averse to change that they should try new software. I had some real resistance at some places. When I was working with the sports centres, a lot of the centres were ex-council run. They had been there for 30 years, operating the same way. I was told that the people there weren’t going to want to change, that they would leave. Addressing those hurdles, getting that stakeholder management, and coming away with people hugging you and thanking you as you walk out. These were the people that I was told would leave because the change is too much for them. That’s that sense of a job well done. Now – as a PMO – it is seeing the project managers embrace all the reporting because no project manager likes doing any admin. If you can make sure that they know how to report well, they will see the benefits. And then, seeing them support other people in doing it, is the biggest satisfaction that I get in my role, but it happens very rarely.
Would you say that is the biggest challenge? Managing people and/or convincing people to work a certain way instead of the way they’re used to?
From a PMO manager perspective, yes! Only because we work with partners from different organizations who all do things differently. We want them to work in the Anglian Water way. So, 1, making sure they understand the processes, 2, to make sure they understand what that process means, and 3, helping them to do it.
What is your story with Execview?
When I became PMO manager at Anglian Water, eight years ago now, I was the first person in the role. I had to create all the processes to capture the information we wanted, but we had no software tool. At that point, I think we probably had around 50 inflight projects, and everything was Excel-based. There was only one external partner that we were working with, but generally they weren’t embedded in the programme’s delivery processes. The number of projects coming in was too big, and the amount of admin I was doing – just to get the reporting I wanted – was far too complex. My boss at that time said our business solutions analysts were using Execview, but it turns out they weren’t using it optimally. I was sure it did much more. I went home one weekend thinking there has got to be more to this because I could see the potential. So, I logged on at home and played with it all weekend. By the end of that weekend, I’d come up with exactly how I wanted it to work. It was basic stuff compared to what I do with it now. But at the time, it gave me what I wanted. I had a couple of questions just to confirm my understanding and they came back positive. With some collaboration from Exeeciew developers, we found a solution.
The relationship has grown since then. I feel people will listen to me and help me evolve what I’ve got set up to meet the needs of my office. My team started to grow, so I was then sharing Execview and training my team. We were increasing the amount that we needed the project managers to do on Execview on a monthly or weekly basis. The training element of the software helped there. We have since rolled it out to wider teams in other departments. I’ve got reports on Execview where the cybersecurity people can now self-serve to see the status of tasks. It just surfaces what they need to see. With commercial, they have reports which they self-serve from Execview through measures that have been set up. Also, our investment management and general investment group have information on Execview that gets exported out and imported into their spreadsheet. It’s now being embraced in a wider setting. This is the only source of truth for programmes delivery and that has been fully embraced. People come to me with reporting needs all the time saying, “Oh, can we get X or Y?” And I can always say, yes, we can.
What aspect of Execview do you find most useful?
Execview improves the quality of a project management report with minimal effort. As I said, when I first joined, we had about 50 inflight projects. Currently, it’s around 200. If I was trying to do all this on an Excel spreadsheet with submissions from each project every month, how do I know if I’ve got them all? I’d have to do a lot of ‘v lookup’ formulas and if I accidentally delete one somewhere, it messes everything up. Having one tool that everybody’s putting their raids into, I can cut and dice that information in as many ways as I want. I know that I’m not going to have a formula that’s messing something up somewhere, just because I’ve accidentally deleted it from one cell and then trying to find the error as well. With Execview, it’s a better way to manage your projects. And that’s speaking from experience when I was just trying to manage 50 projects.
I can be asked how many risks we have got in association with scale or technical issues and I can do that because we’ve got categorization against risk in Execview. I just pick the category. If I’m asked how many red severities we have, I can report that. You can do that on an Excel spreadsheet, but everybody must be in that Excel spreadsheet. And to get the reporting you need to rely on formulas. Why not just let a tool like Execview do it for you? You know that every time you go into that scorecard, it’s giving you the information and live data, without you doing anything. I know for me; I couldn’t run my office with the level of confidence that I have in terms of the quality of reporting without Execview.
Of course, the quality of the data is only as good as the information that’s being put in. However, if I want all the information associated with a certain project, I know that I could pull that out. What I’m reading might be rubbish, in terms of what the project managers put in, but at least I’ve got visibility of it. Whereas if it’s buried in a project raid log within a folder, which may be in their personal OneDrive, how am I going to report on that? Risk management is a big area of improvement that the IT department is working on now. When they wanted information from us, it was easy for me to provide. I just said here is a scorecard back. Every other department who were asked for their tactical raids had to explain that they needed to make sure that they had all their info in one place… and they didn’t! I was a step ahead of the game because I’m using Execview. When it comes to month-end reporting, we can present something to the sponsor, so they can see where the problems are. They can surface the key problems because all the other rubbish has been filtered out. No one has had to pull that information together and put it on that scorecard, because it’s automatically being pulled in each month. I know that at least the quality in terms of the figures is right because it’s come from that one source of the truth.
Since starting your role as PMO you’ve moved to France. Has Execview helped with that in your personal working life and also in managing global office space?
I think COVID has demonstrated people can work wherever, whenever. When you’ve got clear deadlines, guidance and standards in place, using one tool is always going to enhance that because everyone knows the deadlines and you can submit from anywhere. I recently came back to the UK for a couple of weeks but I could still work because I had my laptop with me. Execview is always available, like any internet browser, I can work anywhere whenever I have access. I’ve been working remotely for five and a half years and I’m sure some people still don’t even know I live in France because they never worked in the same office as me anyway. I do feel that Execview helps bring everybody together, combined with other collaborative tools like, Teams and Office 365. I’ve never looked back, and remote working never affected my ability to do my job well.
