PMO Agility, Independent of Agile

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   PMO  

PMOs are under pressure to evolve, and the good news for managers of agile projects is that future PMOs are looking more agile.

I met up with Jack Duggal, PMI SeminarsWorld Instructor for the popular “Building and Transforming the Next Generation PMO” seminar and Managing Principal of Projectize Group, to learn more about his view for the next generation PMO--and it sounds quite agile. He described how many of today’s PMOs struggle to assist projects that “DANCE”, a term he uses to describe projects that are:

Dynamic and changing
Ambiguous and uncertain
Non-linear and unpredictable
Complex
Emergent nature of projects that causes instability

To me, these characteristics sounded like the classic uncertainty and high-change environments agile projects thrive in. Another description sometimes used to describe these projects is “VUCA”, which stands for projects that exhibit:

Volatility                                                                     
Uncertainty &…

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