Organizations that take project governance for granted are headed for a fall. There is one area where governance seems to be failing in many organizations, and it's perhaps surprising--the PMO. That is incredibly dangerous, and here’s why...
Major project failure can happen to anyone. What’s important is to make sure that the organization can recover from such a situation, and that requires both advance planning (it’s too late to start planning the recovery when the disaster has already happened) and strong execution. Is your PMO prepared?
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.
Can you start a PMO without being sure whether you will keep it, or do you have to commit up front? Can you treat the PMO itself as a project, and only commit to ongoing funding once the results of an initial set of tasks are known? The answers aren't so easy...
We all know that process improvement is important, but who should deliver it? Whoever owns a process should also be accountable for the improvement of it--and when we are talking about PM processes, that frequently means the PMO.
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.
In the movie The Avengers, a team of super heroes joins forces to combat a threat that human forces cannot defeat. The PMO can learn valuable lessons from this story about how to assemble a powerful team (but please, no smashed buildings!).
As a PMO leader, are you driving change, or is it driving you? In all too many cases, PMOs are reactive--implementing a solution in response to a problem. In this article, we argue for a more proactive approach.
The definition of a project is that it has a beginning and an end, so what are practitioners of project management going to do in an operational environment where the primary goals are to maintain repeatable processes or fulfill ongoing expectations?
How do you determine the type of training that you need for your PMO and project team? Too often, we don't even realize it's needed, much less what it should be. Here we look at some of the things to consider.
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.
Enterprise PMOs are going to continue to grow and evolve--and over time the vast majority of organizations will evolve their PMO models to an EPMO model. However, as we look at the way that companies manage their PMOs today, we can’t help thinking that there is a lot of work ahead.
As environmental concerns and sustainability become bigger issues across all aspects of society, there is an argument for taking a rather longer-term view of product development--the concept of whole lifecycle thinking, ensuring that the costs of the product are considered from birth to retirement. What can project managers do to help develop and implement the concept?
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.
The Olympic rings are five intertwined circles that represent the elaborate and complex Games. Similarly, project managers can bring five rings of discipline together to manage very complex projects. Each of these rings builds upon the other--and they give the project manager a taxonomy by which to manage Olympian efforts
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.
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 can you ensure that your PMO is as strong as it can be as the economy recovers? In this article, we look at how you can use this opportunity to improve your PMO--making it a more significant contributor to your organization than it was before the downturn.
What does the future hold for project management? What trends and concepts will shape project management tools, methods and practices in 2012 and beyond? For one writer, the answer seems clear. Here, we look at the environment that will influence projects, and the three takeaways we should be aware of heading into the new year.
A project management office can operate on a continuum, from providing project management support functions in the form of training, software, standardized policies and procedures to actual direct management and responsibility for achieving the project objectives. Here, we look at some of the key responsibilities and features of a typical PMO.
RFPs are a double-edged sword for many vendors. In the first article, we looked at the challenges with layout and content. In this second installment, we look at the challenges vendors experience in the process from the point they are made aware of the RFP to the submission of the bid.
The number of articles that explain why something doesn’t work--or is wrong, or isn’t working the way it should--is staggering. It's time to take a different approach by focusing on what actually does work. Join us for a look at consciously seeking the positive, a rare but perhaps necessary practice.
It’s time that we face up to a fundamental reality: organizations grapple with making project management work successfully on a consistent basis. Yes, there are exceptions--and some notable ones--but on the whole they simply prove the rule. It's time for a different approach.
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"Be Yourself" is about the worst advice you can give to people. - Mark Twain |
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