Robbins-Gioia Expands Offerings, Builds Enterprise Project Management Office Solution.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

ALEXANDRIA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 16, 2002

Robbins-Gioia LLC, the leading provider of project management consulting services, today announced the release of a new packaged offering to assess and build Enterprise Project Management Offices (EPMOs) for both government and commercial clients.

The offering scales to address the specific needs of a range of organizations in varying circumstances. The offering can be employed in three primary ways.

First, for organizations that have built an enterprise project management infrastructure over time, the most limited version of the offering can be employed. This "assessment" version of the offering takes stock of the current organization, compares and benchmarks it against best practices, and develops a plan for filling any gaps or making modifications.

The second version of the offering is ideal for organizations of 750 employees or fewer, where a single enterprise project management structure will be sufficient to manage all initiatives.

The third and most comprehensive version of the offering is ideal for large enterprises, where pockets of project management discipline are in place but have not been linked together into a true enterprise project management office.

With the explosion of portfolio management tools and processes to help organizations determine which projects are most likely to yield results, and the increasing level of maturity in project management in general, there is real need for solid enterprise-level project management practices.

According to Eric Gioia, Robbins-Gioia's executive vice president, "We're filling a gap in the marketplace that helps clients consistently manage their initiatives so that the data collected at the ground level in ongoing projects allows for rapid and precise decision-making in the boardroom. This is an area that is desperately needed in business today--and our level of experience in this area is simply unrivalled."

The new offering brings together Robbins-Gioia's more than 22 years of core expertise in project and program management to bridge the gap between on-the-ground project management practices and new project-oriented decision-making models.

"In many organizations, project management is relegated to a tracking function," comments Gioia. "And although project management professionals capture and analyze real data about the performance of the organization, that data simply doesn't get used in high-level decisions. What we've attempted to do here is build an enterprise solution to this problem by creating a repeatable process that gets enterprise project management institutionalized quickly and effectively in an organization."

In a related announcement, Robbins-Gioia today released the results of a recent survey on the impact of an EPMO on the organization it serves. The survey highlighted the increasing usefulness of increasingly sophisticated project management structures.

Organizations with EPMOs and PMOs reported higher levels of effective project management and lower levels of ineffective project management, as well as increased ability to accept and embrace change. In addition, the respondents with a project management infrastructure were more focused on the key business objectives of their organization than organizations without an infrastructure.

While the majority of all respondents identified containing costs, managing risk, and gaining investor confidence as their most critical issues, organizations with an EPMO gave higher priority to all three areas than their counterparts without EPMOs or PMOs. Thirty percent of respondents with an EPMO noted that their organizations manage projects "very well" vs. 14 percent of organizations without.

Additionally, 42 percent of respondents with an EPMO have a process in place and follow it vs. 21 percent of respondents without.

About Robbins-Gioia

Robbins-Gioia has been dedicated to delivering project management consulting solutions to government agencies and Fortune 500 companies for 20 years.

Robbins-Gioia combines thought leadership, disciplined processes, industry-based knowledge, and integrated tools to help customers optimize their business processes, accelerate change, and establish time, cost, and quality improvements to transform their businesses. For more information, please call Robbins-Gioia, LLC at 800-663-7138, or visit the web site at www.robbinsgioia.com.