The PMO…Santa Style

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.

  Benefits Realization   PMO   Strategy  

My Christmas articles have become a bit of a tradition, and I have to be honest, they are rather fun to write. However, I do feel the pressure to try and come up with something a little different each year, and this year I set myself up for failure early--last year’s article was written as a poem, and I’m not going to be able to top that! So with a warning that the next few minutes of your life are likely to be a significant disappointment, here’s a fly on the wall perspective of Santa’s PMO.

“Strategic alignment, that’s what it’s all about you know. We have to make sure that the projects we execute align with the overall strategy of the organization.”

So announced the head of the PMO for Santa Claus Inc. as the 2015 Christmas portfolio was launched. His audience, the elves, reindeer and various other helpers that made up the PMO staff and project managers looked--at best--bemused, and more often than not downright confused. After all, this was Santa Claus Inc., the strategy was the same every year--make the children happy on December 25^th by delivering the items on their wish lists on time. They had been doing the same thing for years, fairly successfully as far as they were concerned, and no one had ever prattled on about alignment before.

This new PMO leader had come from “down south”--he had been a …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.