Don’t ignore your IT project warning signs. Stoneseed’s 100-day PMO Plan transforms reactive firefighting into winter-ready governance, quality control and monitoring.
Picture this. It’s a crisp January morning, frost covering your windscreen, and you’re about to set off on a critical journey. You turn the ignition and immediately notice the engine warning light glowing ominously on your dashboard – you don’t shrug it off with “I’m sure it’ll be fine” and careen down the motorway at 70mph; you investigate, you call a mechanic, you take action before a minor issue becomes a catastrophic breakdown.
Yet when it comes to IT projects, many organisations ignore warning signs all the time, sailing blithely into the winter months, metaphorically speaking, without checking if their project vehicle – and the PMO behind it – is actually roadworthy.
New section: From Warning Lights to Workshop
Your car’s dashboard exists for one reason – to tell you when something needs attention before it’s too late. IT projects have dashboards too: governance structures, quality metrics, milestone reviews and PMO reports, but unlike your car, these warning lights are often dismissed, misread, or simply ignored until the entire project grinds to a halt.
Roadside assistance is essential when you’re already stranded on the hard shoulder, but if your car keeps failing its MOT, you don’t live on the hard shoulder – you book it in for a full winter-ready service and sort the underlying problems. That is exactly what Stoneseed’s 100-day PMO Plan does for your IT portfolio: it moves you from one-off emergency fixes to a structured programme that rebuilds the way your projects are governed, assured and monitored.
Governance – Your Project’s Winter Tyres
You wouldn’t head into icy conditions on worn summer tyres, yet countless projects enter critical delivery phases without proper governance structures in place. No steering committee, no clear decision-making framework, no escalation paths – governance isn’t bureaucracy for the sake of it, it is your project’s grip on the road.
In the first part of Stoneseed’s 100 Day Plan, the focus is on that grip: clarifying ownership, establishing or refreshing steering groups, defining escalation routes and making sure the PMO has a clear mandate so decisions take days, not weeks. Think of days 1–30 as fitting proper winter tyres and getting the steering aligned, so you stop skidding into the ditch of scope creep, budget overrun or stakeholder confusion whenever conditions get slippery.
Warning signs you’re ignoring:
- Decisions taking weeks instead of days
- Stakeholders surprised by project status
- No clear owner for critical risks
- “We’ll figure that out later” becoming a regular phrase If you wouldn’t drive through a snowstorm on bald tyres, why would you run a multi‑million‑pound project without a PMO‑backed governance model that can be stood up or strengthened within 100 days?
Quality Control – The Anti-Freeze in Your System
If you don’t put anti‑freeze in your car’s cooling system before winter hits, the water can freeze and crack your engine block; the repair bill is eye‑watering. Quality control in project management works the same way – it prevents small issues from freezing into project‑killing problems, but too often, quality checks are seen as “nice to have” or “something to implement when we have time”.
In the middle phase of the 100 Day Plan, Stoneseed focuses on flushing out risky “quick fixes”, tightening change control and embedding consistent quality gates, backed by the PMO’s templates and processes. Days 31–60 are like draining old coolant and refilling with fresh anti‑freeze before the first frost – standardising how changes are requested, assessed, approved and tested so you don’t discover cracks when you’re already at full speed.
Warning signs you’re ignoring:
- Testing is being squeezed or skipped
- Quick fixes bypassing proper change control
- Documentation trailing weeks behind development
- Quality gates becoming “quality suggestions”
You wouldn’t scrimp on anti‑freeze to save a few quid, so why compromise on PMO‑led quality control when a defined 100 day programme can hard‑wire it into how every project runs?
Monitoring – The Temperature Gauge You Need
Your car’s temperature gauge doesn’t wait until the engine has completely overheated to tell you there’s a problem; it gives you early warnings, a flickering needle, a creeping climb – time to pull over and prevent catastrophic damage. Your project – and your PMO – need the same real‑time monitoring, not a monthly status report that arrives three weeks late or a RAG status permanently stuck on amber because no one wants to admit things are actually red.
The final stretch of the 100 Day Plan is about visibility: putting in place portfolio‑level reporting, resource and demand tracking, risk and issue oversight and clear KPIs so the PMO becomes your working temperature gauge, not a “nice dashboard” no one trusts. By day 100, you have real‑time visibility of project health, risks and issues, with PMO‑curated insights that allow you to act early instead of reacting when the engine has already blown.
Warning signs you’re ignoring:
- Team members quietly stressed, but saying nothing
- Key milestones being replanned repeatedly
- Dependencies that “should be fine” but no one’s checking
- Budget forecasts that somehow never quite add up
PMaaS + 100 Days – Your Roadside Assistance and Full Service
When your car breaks down on the motorway in winter, you call for help – a professional who knows what they’re doing and can get you back on the road safely. The same principle applies to projects: you need expert project leadership, quickly, when the warning lights are already blinking furiously.
Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) gives you that specialist mechanic on speed dial, but Stoneseed’s 100 Day PMO Plan means that mechanic doesn’t just clear the fault code, drive you home and disappear. Instead, over an agreed 100 day window, Stoneseed works with you to assess your current PMO, prioritise your biggest “winter risks”, implement refreshed governance, quality and monitoring practices, and leave you with a world‑class PMO capability – not a temporary patch.
Call to Action – Time to Book the Service
Take a moment to look at your project dashboard – really look at it.
- Do you have clear governance structures with engaged senior stakeholders?
- Are quality control processes actually being followed, not just documented?
- Do you have real‑time visibility of project health, risks and issues?
- Can you honestly say your team and PMO have the capacity and capability to deliver?
If your IT project dashboard is lighting up like a Christmas tree, it’s tempting to clear the codes and carry on. Instead, it’s time to book your portfolio in for a 100 day PMO service: Stoneseed’s proven 100 Day Plan, underpinned by PMaaS, can move you from reactive firefighting to a winter‑ready, world‑class PMO in a single quarter.
You wouldn’t ignore your car’s warning lights; don’t ignore your projects’ either – let’s talk about how a defined 100 day plan can keep them safely on the road this winter and beyond
