Five Guiding

Principles of a
Successful Center of
Excellence
Contents
What Is a Center of Excellence?...............................................................................................3

Keys to a Successful Center of Excellence.................................................................................6

#1 Standardization..........................................................................................................7

#2 Leveraging Assets......................................................................................................8

#3 Measuring Performance..............................................................................................10

#4 Guidance and Governance..........................................................................................13

#5 Balance and Subject Matter Experts............................................................................14

Get on the Path to Excellence..................................................................................................17

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What Is a Center of Excellence?
At some point in time, most companies find it beneficial to develop This group operates across areas within the practice or
a Center of Excellence (CoE). The priorities of a CoE span several organization, with a focus on:
areas, with different sponsors, and are expected to change over
• Providing thought leadership and direction
time. Nonetheless, the fundamental principles of the CoE group
should be clear and consistent, as these are critical to the CoE’s • Establishing and promoting best practices

continuous success and evolution. • Research and development, to provide appropriate recommendations

• Support and education

A Center of Excellence is a (typically small) team of dedicated
individuals managed from a common central point, separate • Performing other similar functions in specific focus areas considered
from the functional areas that it supports within a practice or critical to the success of the overall organization or practice that the
CoE supports
organization. Sometimes referred to as a competency or capability
center, the CoE is often the team leading the way in exploring and
adopting new technology tools, techniques, or practices.

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In addition to its core focus areas, the CoE can also add value by
contributing to:

• Optimizing the organization or practice by centralizing resources with

high-demand and unique knowledge or skills and streamlining their
contributions across a wide range of areas

• Improving ROI through the identification and development of reusable

assets

• Reducing delivery times, development, and maintenance costs by

increasing efficiencies and leveraging reusable assets

• Identifying and reducing duplication of effort across initiatives within

the practice or enterprise

Developing and maintaining a catalog of reusable assets will add

tremendous, and tangible value, and enable project teams to rely
on proven, predictable results while avoiding common pitfalls.

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Center of Excellence

Technical Development Standard

Performance Indicators

Industry-Proven Practices and Trends

Business Process Optimization

5
Keys to a Successful Center
of Excellence
As a key to success, every Center of Excellence should have a set
of clearly and concisely defined guiding principles that will provide
its direction and focus. We suggest these five areas as a starting
point for establishing and successfully evolving a CoE:

1. Standardization

2. Leveraging assets

3. Measuring performance

4. Guidance and governance

5. Balance and subject matter experts

Let’s take a closer look at each.

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#1 Standardization
At its core, the main purpose of a CoE is to define and develop and products should be reviewed by the CoE team and then
standards and best practices. This includes developing and categorized. General questions the CoE should ask include:
documenting templates, blue prints, and repeatable processes
• Have we solved this issue in the past? If so, how?
and methodologies for all significant work efforts such as:
• What worked or didn’t work? What lessons did we learn?
• Estimating level of effort
• Is there an industry standard that we can use as a baseline for
• Standardizing format of documentation and deliverables comparative purposes?

• Quality assurance
To be successful, members of the CoE need to be steadily in
• Testing and validation tune with the latest industry trends, established practices, and
emerging thought streams. All of the members of the CoE should
• Technical architecture maintenance
be self-starters, who are interested in continuous learning and
• Performance monitoring and optimization
improvement of their skills and expertise.
• Program coding (standards and style)
Lastly, any artifacts produced by the CoE are to be considered living
• General project and resource planning
documents. These documents can and will evolve, change, and in
These best practices should consist of a blend of documented some cases become obsolete and in need of replacement, based on
and generally accepted industry standards, along with the the evolving needs of the industry, as well as the CoE itself acquiring
CoE’s own practical experiences and successes. Prioritizing to new knowledge and experiences.
begin with the most significant and ubiquitous work, all efforts
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#2 Leveraging Assets
The Center of Excellence team should strive to identify all of the • Code: This includes actual program code, models or modules, design
usable assets that exist within the organization and the CoE itself. patterns, algorithms (possibly expressed only in pseudo code),
templates, tools, and utilities developed by the organization. These will
These assets can be physical or intellectual, and typically include:
provide the basis for repeatable, consistent coding practices throughout
the organization.
• Human Assets: These individuals or designated teams possess very
specific or unique skillsets, deep and/or broad experience, and exude • Artifacts: These are documents describing policies, guidelines, advice,
qualities that characterize the organization. Additionally, these people industry best practices, organizational best practices, constraints, and
should have demonstrated an interest in contributing to the CoE’s considerations. Additional artifacts include documented results of past
initiatives, as well as have (or manage) the time and availability to do so. brainstorming, troubleshooting, and post- resolution review sessions.

• Relationships: It is beneficial to include individuals inside or outside

of the organization who have an influence in the industry. These
key relationships may consist of specific customer or stakeholder
contacts, vendor relationships and memberships, partnerships, and
organized groups.

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Some of these assets may be obvious and easy to recognize, while These assets will play a key role in simplifying and improving the
others may only be revealed during actual project work. efforts and processes of the organization that the CoE supports
and will directly affect cost. Because of this, the CoE needs to
These assets – whether intellectual or physical – must then be
have the ability and the authority to continually inspect all current
harvested or developed by the CoE for use within the
and past projects and deliverables, looking for sharable assets that
organization, and if unique and meaningful enough, be branded
can be beneficially leveraged throughout the organization in one
and introduced to the industry at large to generate revenue or more ways.
directly through sales or indirectly by establishing recognition.

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#3 Measuring Performance
As with any successful endeavor, the CoE must develop the ability Measuring performance allows the CoE to set expectations for
to track, measure, and report on the performance of the team’s current and new work, thus providing answers to certain key
initiatives across all areas of its efforts, as well as specific metrics questions such as:
within the organization itself. This is critical to the growth and
• Are our design or resource presumptions reasonable?
evolution of the CoE, since clearly demonstrating success will be a
major factor in buy-in and support from stakeholders throughout • How do we know when things are “good enough” (point of diminishing
returns)?
the organization, particularly upper management.
• What are our areas of confidence (where we may have opportunities to
All measuring relies on having an established baseline against which increase profits or speed-up delivery times)? What are our risk areas
to compare performance. At the start of an initiative, the CoE team (where we may need to pay closer attention to avoid losing time or
increasing cost)?
must immediately identify and establish baselines for the work
efforts being performed or to be performed. These baselines can • How do we demonstrate to our customers or stakeholders that we met
be developed from internal organizational experiences, industry- or exceeded the contracted requirements (SLAs)?

accepted and published standards, or both. For deliverables to • How do our results compare to similar efforts across the organization?
internal stakeholders, the CoE should establish Service Level Across the industry?
Agreements (SLAs), to define clearly and concisely what targets and
thresholds are to be used to define a successful endeavor.

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Measuring performance also allows the CoE to re-engineer
This can also be referred to as a historical timeline and will resolve
weaker or deficient areas through training, research, soliciting
the following basic questions:
expertise from subject matter experts, or other means, thus
leading to an increase in the overall quality of the CoE. By doing • Where did we begin? Who made up the original team and who were our
this, the CoE can market its strengths both internally, by securing sponsors? What were our agenda and priorities?
further funding and support, and externally by driving sales
• What have been our major accomplishments and disappointments,
through the demonstration of its products and publication of its technical or otherwise?
documented successes as industry experts.
• Where are we now? Who currently makes up the team and what
sponsors do we have? What is our current agenda and priorities?
Roadmap
• Where are we going based upon funding, sponsorship, industry
Measuring success factors allows the CoE team to know how it
conditions, success rate, etc.?
has performed in the past, and how it is doing now. Establishing
and maintaining a CoE roadmap is beneficial because it enables • What is our short-, medium-, and long-term plan?

the team to determine a future path and drive efforts towards

accomplishing the goals set forth in the roadmap.

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#4 Guidance and Governance
In order to provide useful input, the CoE should be aware of all The involvement of the CoE needs to stay focused primarily in
significant work efforts in which the organization is currently the areas of project acceleration and risk mitigation by providing
involved, or which it has an interest in pursuing. The level of CoE guidance on proven practices and (when applicable) reusable
involvement with individual organizational work efforts will vary components (sharable assets already identified or opportunities
based upon many factors including: for developing such assets as part of the current work effort).

• The level of complexity of the planned work

Governance
• The level of success that the organization has had with similar work
When it comes to the general approach, structure, and style of
• Resource availability (this is very important) work efforts, the Center of Excellence team should possess the
ability to not only guide and suggest but also to “govern” the work.
Guidance This means that the CoE should be positioned as the authority
It’s important for project managers to understand that CoE entity that will cast the deciding vote on any and all significant
member involvement in organizational work efforts will not include development or methodology decisions.
any actual development activities. Even given the most aggressive
deliverables, the CoE team members cannot be considered for
completing project work.

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#5 Balance and Subject Matter Experts
When establishing a CoE, it’s reasonable to expect that most teams will
not be appropriately balanced when it comes to experience and skill levels.
This results in the under- or overutilization of specific team members
and subsequent decreases in the effectiveness of the team, as well as a
diminishing of the “health and happiness” of the individual team resources.

To stabilize and balance the team’s utilization, effectiveness, and happiness,

team “competency charts” should be established and maintained by
the CoE. These will detail each team member’s functional and technical
experience and skill levels. Competency charts will identify strengths and
weaknesses across the team, identifying which team members are better
suited for specific work at the current time.

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Additionally, it will highlight risks and opportunities in relation to SMEs can be industry experts from within or outside the
current and developing market trends and define the anticipated organization, or could be members of the CoE itself. SMEs will
needs of the organization, the team, and its individual resources. support, service, advise, and consult the organization and the CoE
team as needed. In addition, SMEs will often be asked to review,
Well-maintained competency charts should be considered during
provide constructive feedback on, and approve project work as well
the recruiting process, individual resource career growth plans, and
as to provide guidance and thought leadership and direction. SMEs
project planning and staffing requests. Along with CoE roadmaps,
should focus on technologies or skills that are new or cutting edge
competency charts should also be used to ensure that the team is
to the organization and/or the industry.
composed of the proper mix of resources based upon anticipated
market trends and organizational work needs.

Subject Matter Experts

To maintain an appropriate level of support across all of the
organization’s work efforts, the CoE will need to identify subject
matter experts (SMEs) who can be leveraged where and when
needed, based upon their specific skills and experience, relevant to
project needs.

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Identifying a Subject Matter Expert
The following characteristics are indicators that an individual may
• Actively seeks to remain updated on current and emerging industry
be a potential CoE SME: trends and networks with industry leaders

• Has deep or broad expertise in a specific market, category, business • Identifies opportunities to publicize and market their area of expertise
segment, or discipline
• Has an established and active online presence within their area
• Willing and enthusiastic about the opportunity to share expertise of expertise, including reading and posting to blogs and online
with others publications, fostering online relationships with bloggers and other
online influencers, and developing and maintaining profile pages on
• Routinely catalogues knowledge and expertise for easy access by social networking sites
others
Many current (or potential) SMEs will most likely already exist
• Significantly contributes to the development of new materials such as
white papers, seminars, POV pieces, and other similar content in their
within an organization. But in many cases, they will need to be
area of expertise identified, acknowledged, and nurtured by CoE leaders, in order to
leverage the value and potential of their contributions.

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Get on the Path to Excellence
Specific approaches to implementing an a Center of Excellence will funding to expand the scope of its operations – usually on the merit
vary based upon each organization’s needs, industry, resources, earned from successful accomplishments and contributions to the
and level of maturity within their technical or functional space. organization’s projects, operational or financial performance, and
Some may begin as informal or self-elected bodies comprised reputation within the industry.
of experienced and knowledgeable personnel from within the
organization who may split their time between CoE duties While the road to success of the CoE may look very different across
and other roles within the company, while others may require different organizations, adhering to the fundamental principles
dedicated staff in full-time positions. discussed here is sure to provide the essential building blocks to get
started in the right direction.
Over time, it is certain that the CoE will evolve and become
more formalized, and should receive appropriate authorities and

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