Meet the PPO!

Andy Jordan - July 13, 2009

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

PMO

A few years ago, I had what could best be described as an animated discussion with the head of marketing for the company I was consulting with. They wanted to know why they hadn’t been included in the project that I was managing; I responded that I didn’t realize that they had a role. This caused a rather apoplectic response that marketing was involved in everything! (The conversation went downhill from there…)

Looking back, it was rather naïve on my part, but it’s a lesson that I have remembered. It still strikes me that, in general, organizations don’t do a very good job of promoting their projects. So maybe it’s time for a central function to handle this. Let’s call the concept a Project Promotions Office (or PPO for convenience), but I suspect that it has more to do with marketing or internal communications than it does with the traditional concept of a PMO. The more I think about it, the more I believe that many organizations can benefit from this function, so let’s explore it.

The need for promotion
There are many reasons why projects might need promoting. It may simply be a case of telling the organization about an initiative or preparing certain departments for upcoming change. At the other extreme, it may be a major product announcement that is going to take the world by storm. Fundamentally, there is no …

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Meet the PPO!

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