Flexibility - How effectively does your PMO leader respond to the changing needs of the projects, your PMO and your organization? How does he or she manage the balance between the requirements of project processes and the people delivering those processes?

With overall 19 years global experience Mr. Anil Bansal started the SI PMO in Ericsson Region India from scratch. Region India is one of the most strategic regions where industry has observed immense growth in telecom industry, and Ericsson has to deal with many challenges that local customers face like complex regulatory issues, market fluctuations, less uptake for 3G and market demanding high quality of service. SI PMO has a big role to play in this equation.

All systems integration projects are delivered by highly experienced project/program managers in this team. In less than 3 years time frame, the team has grown from 4 to 47 today with 550+ years total experience. Overall maturity contributed towards taking the organisation to the next level of SDMM (service delivery maturity model), still maintaining attrition to <5%.

When Anil started the team, he had 1 PMP in his PMO, but within 30 months with his serious focus on aligning the delivery processes to global standards, now the PMO have 37 PMP, 3PgMP, 1Ph.D, and 20 certified CPM's (Ericsson internal certification passed through very rigorous global criteria). It clearly consistently demonstrates a perfect balance between processes, business needs and work life balance of employees in delivering the process. There have been team members who have got many opportunities within Ericsson and there have been many who have moved in. Overall KPIs have improved exponentially and working environment has reached those required levels of maturity as expected in highly matured market.

Resilience - How effective is your PMO leader as a negotiator? How well does he or she negotiate changes to how things are done whilst maintaining the core objectives of the PMO? How well does he or she enable the PMO to respond to unexpected requests for resources or support?

Anil is an excellent negotiator who states "Change is inevitable" and he was able to achieve the same by maintaining the CORE Values of Ericsson namely:

• Respect
• Professionalism
• Perseverance

Along with our 5 principle:

• Customer First
• Innovate Every day
• Speed and Quality
• Empower Action
• Perform TEAM

He was highly successful in bringing the change with > 92% rating in 360 degree feedback from employees for the last 3 years.

With advance planning in place he was able to sustain the requirements for resources without any hiccups even when the resource requirement soared due to Telecom spending by Operators in India. He brought in 100% staff using internal references, all from top IT/Telecom companies, which shows the support he has from his team. His persistence in bringing Quality has earned his team 97% adherence within Project governance set by the management. He established good framework for competence development where new team members were able to come up to speed very quickly. Many team members helped balancing the peak workload rather than having to recruit for short duration.

Induction Manual stating all the activities (including training, self learning etc) a project manager should do before joining any project was one of his very effective ideas. This process is so much matured over period of time that different departments within the organization have felt need to replicate the setup and is widely appreciated.

Setting Example - How successful is your PMO leader is an example to everyone within the PMO and the project organization? How well does he or she express or demonstrate the standards of the PMO and champion these in the face of misunderstanding, conflicting interests or politics. How good an example is your PMO leader as an agent of change?

Anil's prophecy " It begins with Us" set best example for establishing PMO within Ericsson India as well as Ericsson worldwide and how to turn it out successfully within a short span following very high standard of Processes (SDMM 2 level, Advanced CPM Process's and self improvement of individuals (Ericsson Certified CPM, Standardised PgMP's and PMP's), End Result is his team Project Managers are now catering throughout Ericsson worldwide namely Middle-East, Japan, Philippines, Entire Africa, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan and many team members have met their long term career aspirations through Internal Mobility.

He was the axis pin for bringing the changes by placing himself in the grid weeding out misunderstanding and fear of employees when they had to change from existing processes. He was a change agent for others within Ericsson to bring in such standard and process with their teams. He himself has attended many leadership Courses like ISB, LCC, EAC and LAC within his tight schedule to encourage his team to follow the trails for change and leadership. He puts his ebullience attendance 100% on all the 6 SI PMO days organized for the team knowledge sharing and leads it every time to bring new level of changes. He encourages open communication culture and takes the whole team along while defining targets, and then drive team culture to achieve those.

The entire 3yrs maturity program was broken down into milestones and doable tasks, and slowly induced making it just a normal change for good.

Professionalism - How professional is your PMO leader is his or her approach to their work. How does the PMO leader demonstrate their knowledge, expertise and understanding of, for example, the commercial needs and constraints of the business or the technical aspects of project and programme management? What commitment does the PMO leader demonstrate to developing skills and a capability for themselves, the PMO members and the wider organization?

Anil's Ways of Working are used as Best Practice within Ericsson, All his leadership indices are >90%. His push for Add on sales Culture have secured add on business worth X MUSD from his team to Ericsson India and Cost savings culture resulting in XX USD in last 36 months. This was the need of the hour to bring in more sales and reduce the expenses by Cost savings.

 He was subservient in utilizing modern technologies for projects where geographical distribution was main case. Using of internal Communication Techniques like VoIP, Teleconferencing, Video Conferencing, Centra Session for Group participation and Knowledge sharing, indulging individual team member's concurrence for Knowledge sharing. Most of Financial KPI's have been exceeded agreed targets and many new Business opportunities have been created by team members, which was showcase the business mindset which Anil have been able to create within PM Community

He himself earned "Hall of Fame" for highest count in knowledge sharing, for overall operational development, was quality driver and got Champions Trophy in 2010, was BSC driver in 2008/2009. He deployed 100% adherence to IPM/Dialog/HR guidelines or any other internal deadlines to his team. All the above definitely signalize his professionalism.

He always ensured secured budgets for competence development. All the team members were given equal amount of time. There is a culture of spending good time on all individuals for working out long terms career progress. So many team members have earned certification, promotions and moved in/out, while maintaining best employee survey results and least attrition, clearly shows focus on developing right skills.

Anil's top tip for overall PMO success is:

'Define framework for long term objectives, align it with company vision, take the team along while setting targets, show/promote progress and benefits, take feedback and ensure it continues to suit most and finally just live the vision without worrying about little disruptions that try to digress you from the bigger cause'.