The Organizationally Aligned PMO Strategy

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Governance   PMO   Strategy  

When you mention PMO Organizational Alignment, you are greeted with yawns, intellectual intrigue or genuine interest. Those who yawn are bored with the topic or just don't care. The intellectuals are typically fascinated with the concept but have no idea how to achieve it. Those who exhibit genuine interest are either trying to achieve it—or at least understand why PMOA is so critical for sustainable success.

To improve the odds of getting the latter response, it pays to have a solid strategy for the PMO in hand. But before venturing into the PMO strategy development process, a definition should be reviewed. A good place to begin is with the definition of “strategy." I prefer the definition that Peter Drucker offered at a CIO conference in Arizona many years back. It went something like this: Strategy is the getting to where you want to go from where you are standing.

I love the elegant simplicity of that definition. So thinking strategically would be thinking in terms of getting to your desired destination. This then raises the question: What is strategic planning? Wikipedia defines it this way:

“Strategic Planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy.”

So basically, strategic planning is the process of determining what…

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