The Agile PMO Game Theory

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

  Agile   Lessons Learned   PMO  

A Project Management Office can act as an obstacle to agile projects. This can take the form of asking for inappropriate planning detail by not recognizing the likelihood of changes, or asking for conformance to templates that are not even used on an agile project. For these reasons, PMOs often get a bad reputation on agile teams. But it need not be that way--they can also add tremendous support and be a great help.

First, let’s look at what a PMO actually does--or what they should do, since implementations and services vary. In the September 2010 issue of the Project Management Journal (the PMI’s research publication), there was a nice definition of PMO roles:

1. Monitor and control project performance
2. Develop and implement standard methodologies, processes and tools
3. Develop the competency of project personnel, including training and mentoring
4. Multi-project management, including program and portfolio management, coordination and allocation of resources between projects
5. Strategic management, including participation in strategic planning and benefits management
6. Organizational learning, including the management of lessons learned, audits and monitoring of PMO performance
7. Management of customer interfaces
8. Recruit, select and evaluate project managers
9. Execute specialized tasks for project managers (e.g. …

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