Recognized as one of the PMO's most-important functions, PMO project planning comprises a wide range of activities, including risk management. Based on your Module 3 Portfolio Milestone assignment’s P

Running head: SUBJECT ORGANIZATION AND RATIONALE

Subject Organization and Rationale

October 1, 2021

Subject Organization and Rationale

The project portfolio is one of the essential tools that big organizations use to monitor their projects. The portfolios can also be used to establish centralized management for the project being undertaken by the business. It is easy for a company to trace a problem in a given project run by a project portfolio (Miller, 2017). This is because the portfolio usually contains a collection of assets, investment products, and other items the business might use in the project. This discussion focuses on the advancement of the PMO that is in existence in Walmart. In any business, there is usually a project management team. This team consists of people given the mandate of ensuring the success of the organization's project. However, some companies prefer to have people or another team managing the project managers. The primary role of the project management office is to ensure that the project managers work accordingly to ensure the success of a given project. Someone else could argue that a project management office acts as double management for a project.

Organization Information

An example of one international company that uses PMO in its management is Walmart. Walmart is a retail enterprise dealing in a variety of goods ranging from household to heavy machinery. It has up to 6,000 operating stores outside the US and has an online shopping platform for its customers. A PMO is, therefore, necessary to oversee the scale of operation of its business projects.

Mission

The mission of Walmart is "helping people around the world save money and live better – anytime and anywhere – in retail stores and through e-commerce." The company has since then been striving to work towards this mission. Walmart saw a gap in the retail market. Their goal was to be the largest online marketing firm around the globe (Corporate.walmart.com, n.d.). The secrets to the success of this company can be attributed to the kind of management structure it has.

Vision

The vision of the company has a close relationship with the mission. The vision of Walmart is to "make every day easier for busy families." Walmart sees busy families as the strong-holds in their business strategy. The management realized that most busy families are not able to go shopping by themselves. They, therefore, introduced online shopping to help their customers shop without going to the retail shops. Another service Walmart introduced was the delivery of goods to its customers. This made it more accessible as more customers were willing to pay for delivery charges rather than shop by themselves. This created a good business strategy for this company.

Value Statements

The company, Walmart, has four significant value statements geared towards offering the best for the customers. The first value statement for this company is served to customers. This value, from the beginning, is just an attraction for customers. The simplified meaning of this value statement is that customer is always the priority. The second value statement for Walmart is respect for individuals. Respect in this perspective is to the customers. As mentioned earlier, Walmart has its customers as its priority. The respect should then be mutual for the employees. There is a common tendency in most companies that respect is, in most cases, upward and not downward. By upward, it means the employees only have respect for the management and senior-most employees. They, however, have no respect for those below them. Walmart saw a loophole in that and decided to gear its operations towards promoting respect for all employees. The third value statement of Walmart is striving for excellence. This company saw a gap in other companies and decided to be the best among the best. The last value statement is acting with integrity (Hanbury, 2020). This is tailored to the employees. With integrity, the company can reduce fraud and embezzlement of funds which might lead to the collapse of the business.

Industry Type

Walmart is in the retail industry and deals in various goods with after-sale services such as delivery for the goods ordered. It is important to note that since the store's opening, Walmart has opened more than 5700 stores in the United States. The industry has attracted millions of shoppers. It is important to note that Walmart is the largest retailer in the US and the world. The industry has grown significantly in the past 13 years. Walmart has been in the limelight because of the increase in customers, profits, retail stores, to mention a few.

Organization Demographics

Currently, Walmart has about 6,000 stores, with the superstores taking up 75% of this number. Many of them are in the USA, with almost an even distribution in the states and cities. However, the top spender states in this retailer are the people of Oklahoma, followed by South Dakota and Arkansas (Ghazzawi et al., 2014). At the same time, Walmart is the top private employer in the US despite being in the media for negative publicity about employee wages and poor treatment. They have, however, recently improved the employee hourly pay to $16. In addition, they employ up to about 1.5 million employees in various departmental stores and clubs countrywide.

Furthermore, the company has also enhanced employment inclusivity in its workforce. For instance, in 2015, Walmart had a women population of about 57%, with 42% under management and up to 40% of the employees being people of color (Ghazzawi et al., 2014). This, therefore, means that Walmart has enhanced both gender and racial diversity in its work environment.

Organization's Culture

Walmart has a retail culture geared towards ensuring that their customers save money at any time of their shopping. For a long time, Walmart has had to create an employee and customer-friendly environment by training their employee to be free to talk and discuss any problem that may arise. Some key values of Walmart include the customer is the Boss, and excellent customer service is their priority. Secondly, their employees should act with integrity and be truthful all time. Walmart also allows employees to give suggestions on the company's developmental policies and decision-making process (Bohatala.com, n.d.). In Walmart, all the employees are respected and treated equally, issues of race, color, and creed prohibited, and all that is striving for excellence.

Executive Sponsor and Key Stakeholders

The executive sponsorship of Walmart is divided into various sections. For instance, the executive sponsor of the tribal voices Walmart associate Resource group is Rachel Brand. Brett Biggs serves as the organization sponsor and Hispanic/Latino Resource group, and Julie Murphy is the corporate sponsor. This format suggests that Walmart sponsorship is based on the board representatives and their specific roles (Walmart, n.d.). The key stakeholder of the company includes their investors, customers, employees, and suppliers. These stakeholders have interests, and the company ought to consider them.

PMO Business Case

A business case was presented when Walmart launched the Walmart Canada continuous improvement team to increase productivity and enhance efficiency in the delivery department. The new team was required to define a new protocol to manage the work effectively. This team selected the Wrike management system, which helped them increase their efficiency by improving communication, organization, and contextualization of the project through management automation and informed decision-making (Fakhir, 2019).

Assessment of Existing Project Management

The current PMO of Walmart is effective considering some of the significant successes in changing the business operations in the organization. One of the successful projects was the introduction of the new mode of grocery delivery from the stores, which ensures grocery delivery to customer doorstep. The PMO team provided the success of this through the application of AI and proper management. They believe that this will revolutionize their deliveries in most Walmart grocery stores. Another successful project was the increment of the employee hourly pay from $17 to $18. Increasing the hourly wage was part of the bigger project to change the employee experience—the team management through the reduction of incentives of some of their associates in the business.

Project Management Methods

Walmart PMO case is extensive in terms of description. However, it is essential to understand that Walmart is a purely retail dealer with no mix-up in its business operations. Walmart has about ten strategies for their management, which we would refer to as methods of management. These strategies include quality management, location strategy, supply chain management, inventory management, and process capacity design.

Project Management Tools

The company uses effective management as one of the tools to gear its management. The PMO system in the organization ensures effective management of the projects.

Project Management Experience

The experience of PMO is overwhelming because of the tremendous steps the business has made over the past 13 years. The PMO was introduced at the business's early stages, hence ease of working with PMOs.

Project Management Maturity

It is also essential to state that the organization has had the PMO for long enough to make it one of the most mature PMOs. With the experience, the stakeholders are confident in the current PMO.

Perceived PMO Benefits

The PMO is perceived to increase the business operation efficiency and success levels. The PMO team is dedicated to multi-project management and keeping track of all the processes, changes, risks, and challenges. This, therefore, means that PMO enhances visibility and level of business result optimization (Holicky, 2020). Another advantage of this team is that it enhances time management and enables project managers and teams to deliver added projects. This is the goal of a business organization as a drive to revenue increment and customer attraction.

Overarching Business Rationale

The company's overarching business rationale can be linked to the efficient supply chain management strategy, which has created a tremendous competitive advantage over the other businesses.

Long Term Goals

The primary goal of Walmart was to be the largest retail shop in the United States which they achieved. The other goal was to provide the best online marketing platform for its customers. This is a goal that took some time to achieve, but it was eventually managed.

First Year Goals

At the beginning of the year, it was to have great value and excellent customer service. All they wanted was to make it the best retail dealer in customer satisfaction.

Metrics

Project Execution is one of the metrics that measure the success rate of the PMO depending on the budget given. This means that the PMO should stick to the budget allocated for the company and merit using specific actual costs. Walmart PMO should strictly adhere to this, and the success rate is not questionable (Walmart, n.d.).

Value Proposition

Walmart has an excellent quantified value proposition (Ram, n.d.). The customer relationship depends on the value proposition, which entails cheap, best service, easily accessible, excellent, and varied merchandise.

Conclusion

The primary role of the project management office is to ensure that the project managers work accordingly to ensure the success of a given project. Walmart is a retail enterprise dealing in a variety of goods ranging from household to heavy machinery. Walmart PMO case is extensive in terms of description. The PMO team is dedicated to multi-project management and keeping track of all the processes, changes, risks, and challenges. This, therefore, means that PMO enhances visibility and level of business result optimization (Holicky, 2020). This means that the PMO should stick to the budget allocated for the company and merit using specific actual costs. The current PMO of Walmart is effective considering some of the significant successes in changing the business operations in the organization.

References

Bohatala. (2019, May 27). Walmart organization culture. BohatALA.com - Online Learning Made Easy. https://bohatala.com/walmart-organization-culture/

Corporate.walmart.com. (n.d.). Collaboration. Retrieved from https://corporate.walmart.com/sourcing/collaboration

Fakhri, N. (2020). How Walmart uses Wrike for project management. Wrike. https://www.wrike.com/customer-stories/walmart/

Ghazzawi, I. A., Palladini, M., & Martinelli-Lee, T. (2014). The Wal-Mart stores, Inc.: An American dream that touched the world. Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies, 20(1), 9-32.

Hanbury, M. (2020, January 19). This is what the average Walmart shopper looks like. Retrieved from Business Insider Africa: https://africa.businessinsider.com/strategy/this-is-what-the-average-walmart-shopper-looks-like/yk3vx8d

Holicky, K. (2020, December 17). What is a project management office, and why do we need it? Meisterplan. https://meisterplan.com/blog/what-is-a-project-management-office/

Miller, J. A. (2017, October 19). What is a project management office (PMO), and do you need one? CIO. Retrieved from https://www.cio.com/article/2441862/what-is-a-project-management-office-pmo-and-do-you-need-one.html

Ram. (n.d.). Value proposition for Walmart. Retrieved from Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/9881821/Value_proposition_for_Walmart

Walmart. (n.d.). Corporate - US. https://corporate.walmart.com/