PMOs to deliver net zero: what metrics should we master?

Programme management offices (PMOs) are renowned for delivering successful change, bringing certainty throughout the programme life cycle, and driving innovation and efficiencies to transform organisations.

As companies across the globe face ever-increasing calls to help address the potential impacts of climate change, many businesses have embarked on a journey toward a sustainable transformation – devising net zero strategies and goals to make their infrastructure, energy use and behaviours more environmentally friendly.

PMOs’ core strengths – managing information, optimising process, risk and resource, and measuring and assuring progress against targets – mean they can play a key role in supporting organisations to achieve these net zero goals.

But as APM’s PMO Interest Network Conference in July 2024 highlighted, some organisations still don’t understand how a PMO supports strategy, or why they should adopt the function. With a theme of ‘The Big PMO Adoption’, the conference saw the speakers sharing their ambitions for PMOs and suggesting that PMOs – enhanced by emergent AI capabilities and strategic predictive power – are on the cusp of realising their value as a major strategy player.

So, will net zero be a catalyst for a big PMO adoption across business?

What would a product look like?

If we think of the net zero PMO as a product to pitch to organisations, what performance metrics would it need to capture, process, analyse and report to support the delivery of the company’s sustainable goals? We would suggest four systemic levels:

Level 1: net zero corporate and policy metrics

These metrics would use the language of carbon accounting to report on emissions. Applying the recognised definitions of Scope 1 (emissions directly owned and controlled), Scope 2 (those indirectly owned, e.g. from buildings’ energy use) and Scope 3 (those for which we are indirectly responsible, e.g. through the supply chain), the PMO would measure the company’s baseline greenhouse gas responsibilities.

Level 2: enterprise net zero programme metrics

Performance metrics would describe the ‘big ticket’ episodes of the change story. The following example programme outline was used by a professional services enterprise presenting its net zero journey through a series of 12 programmes:

Estates’ rationalisation
Flexible working
Travel policy
Estates’ energy efficiency improvements
Digital technologies – drones
Energy procurement
Supply of gas
Transport procurement
Digital technologies – virtual reality
Travel booking
Digital project execution
Offsetting emissions.

Level 3: enterprise net zero project performance

These metrics detail the individual point interventions that act in support of net zero programme initiatives, enabling their achievement. It’s likely that initiatives don’t contribute in a purely linear, additive way – there will be non-linear relationships between both projects and programmes. A systems dynamics viewpoint would suggest that it is these non-linearities that expose the levers that can amplify net zero initiatives’ impact.

Level 4: net zero readiness metrics

These metrics provide confidence that the organisation’s journey is tenable, possible and likely to succeed. Leading indicator measures and net zero ‘levers’ will be highly specific to each organisation, but will provide the leverage to confirm they are on the right track. These metrics might be of special interest to the organisation’s leadership if its reputation is related to net zero performance. This is the currently unmeasured golden thread – metrics at this level reinforce the behavioural change PMOs stimulate. Individual practitioners can be recognised for their contribution to net zero strategy.

To model this net zero tower of metrics as a whole, companies might need a systemically embedded office – the big PMO adoption.

Designing a dashboard

We identified a need across a range of markets for a programme metrics dictionary. Refined through APM’s PMO Interest Network, it would include a performance dashboard from which programme designers could identify and draw the relevant mix of measures with which to ‘metricate’ their organisation’s journey to net zero by 2050. The dictionary and dashboard would need insights gained from across a range of sectors: including large enterprises, upstream suppliers, downstream customers, standards bodies, universities, legislators and government agencies.

The first step in creating this dictionary and dashboard would be to put forward a test case, using a lean approach to pull together an initial metrics set with the greatest cross-sector applicability. The model would be ‘seeded’ with established, ‘classic’ metrics. Next, these would be tested by a committed core of PMO specialists, with continuous improvement activities to identify or learn about new and extension metrics, to improve the fidelity of the dictionary.

Using the ‘plan-do-check-act’ cycle, we would then identify an opportunity and plan for change:

Plan: recognise an interesting programme and its projects for metrification.
Do: Implement related metrics, with a testing phase where we observe what could happen when the change is implemented.
Check: Review the test, analyse the results and identify the learning.
Act: Take action to add to the dictionary, based on the metrics proposed.

We would progressively publish these metrics and integrate them into an interactive dashboard.