While many projects may not have to adopt the elements of the Federal Incident Command System, some are set up to resolve a certain time-bound resolution of organizational priorities and can reap the benefits.
Every project has an issues log. But what about the PMO? Does your PMO manage issues and maintain an issues log? Do you look for trends across the issues of different projects and take proactive steps to address them? Do you attempt to prevent issues through good communication? In this article, we look at a model for PMO-level issue management and suggest ways that it can improve the quality of projects that your PMO is responsible for.
If governance is designed to ensure that project execution occurs appropriately, then who ensures that governance occurs appropriately? To try and avoid conflict, an organization needs to ensure that governance committees operate with a series of guidelines.
An application has been bolted together piece by piece, and it’s threatening to break any day. It’s now been handed to the PMO with the mandate to try and modernize it--and make it a tool for today that can truly act as a hub for other tools without alienating the current user base. So what does the PMO do? Read about a voyage into (potential) salvation.
One of the primary roles of the PMO is to provide a framework for ensuring proper governance over projects. Here we look at some of the obstacles and challenges facing the PMO governance function--and some tips for overcoming them.
Whatever the approach, mandate or processes adopted by each organization, you as the PM should be aware of the following best practices and ensure that they are adopted in one way or the other to guarantee your project’s financial transparency.
The idea of project rescue isn’t new, but it has become more prominent in recent years. It’s the idea of parachuting a new PM onto a failing project in order to quickly turn things around. Can your PMO grow from a project rescue experience?
When systems are operational in nature and not being implemented or changed, the organization changes from project management to just plain management. The PMO should not get lost in this transition.
CI programs within PMOs aren’t doomed to failure from the outset; they just need to be well managed. If an organization does not improve the way that it executes projects, then it will simply repeat the same mistakes over and over. In addition, as the organization evolves, if the PMO’s processes and methodology remain unchanged, then they will become less and less effective.
Successfully implementing and managing a peer review program can be a challenging task. PMs sometimes feel threatened, discussions can get defensive and comments can be taken (or delivered) personally. So how do you implement peer review successfully with a PMO?
One manager's clients asked him to assist with improving the effectiveness of their PMO. They made it clear that the office was only responsible for the professional services arm of the business--and they weren’t prepared to discuss extending the scope of the PMO to include the product development team. Read on for more on this unique situation...
Have you considered an administrative support role for your PMO? Administrative functions within a PMO can work well and deliver tremendous efficiencies, but to work properly they require a very distinct environment.
Olympic-sized projects mean more potential communication problems with stakeholders who control workers in your project. Adopting a combination of routine and targeted tactics can keep the project humming.
Are you putting your PMO in the position to make the right decisions every time? While the PMO has many functions, one of the most important is to facilitate decision-making--either by senior project stakeholders or within their own teams as escalation points for project managers. In this article, we look at how to ensure that we are as effective as possible in that process.
Project managers need to support one another--does your PMO support that? A lot of organizations recognize the need to have project managers share best practices and ideas across the PMO, but very few do it well. Here's some advice for adopting the right model.
Large organizational change associated with projects causes a generally predictable pattern of workforce response. Your savvy of this response can help you get your job done. Read on for more about early Control phase interactions during organizational changes.
There are many ways to do the dashboard badly, and a few ways to get it right. Here, we explore some of the important aspects of a dashboard--and perhaps more importantly the controls and processes that need to be in place to support it and ensure that the content is accurate and meaningful.
The project management office has a different role in the operational team than in project teams. In general, there are two major reasons for having a PMO as part of the operational team--and it's up to the PMO to ensure that it is supporting operations instead of hindering them.
While working for a small firm, a new PM was asked to go to a major company to help them integrate their IT PMOs...leading to the worst three months of his career. As his two-part article concludes, we find out if if there was truly a light at the end of the tunnel--or just a train coming the other way.
While working for a small firm, a new PM was asked to go to a major company to help them integrate their IT PMOs...leading to the worst three months of his career. In this two-part article, he guides you through his experience: what he did, what he took from it and how he would do things differently.
How many people in your organization know what the PMO actually does? Here, we look at the work that the PMO can do to help a key group of people understand how the PMO operates: project stakeholders.
More and more, companies are looking at project management from an organization-wide perspective, but they are making assumptions about the current state of project execution within those organizations. How hard can it be to identify the projects underway and the teams managing them? It shouldn't be too difficult to inventory the project portfolio...right?
Successful business execution is dependent upon having timely and accurate financial information. But too often, little thought is put into how to present the data in a meaningful way. From a project or portfolio perspective, what does a C-Level executive expect to see from the PMO for actionable decision-making?
There are many ways you can poison your PMO and ensure that it doesn’t see tomorrow’s sunrise. In our last article, we looked at some leading PMO killers such as failing to identify an identity, ignoring your stakeholders and making things complicated. In the conclusion of this two-part series, we look at five additional deadly deeds.
PMOs: A panacea for some, a disaster for others. If like many others you anticipate a bad ending, you've come to the right place. Want some sure-fire approaches for disaster? Here are some tips on killing your PMO. (Optimists can go ahead and do the opposite...)
An IT project can’t do it on its own; it takes customer involvement to keep things moving. So what can your PMO learn from a visit to the car wash?
As we enter 2011, it's time for a refresher--it's the perfect time to explore the cross section of views and perspectives about PMOs. It's the perfect time to see what others are thinking regarding the state of PMOs, and this article will focus on starting a PMO, avoiding PMO failure, trends and the future of the PMO.
|
"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm.... that's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov |
|