Conducting a PMO Health Check (Part 2)

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.

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Topics: PMO

To help you in performing a PMO health check, the approach in Part 1 of this series has been laid out in a worksheet (partially seen below). It can be used “as is” or tailored to your liking.

To further assist in the health check process, this series continues with an examination of the rationale as to why each statement within each dimension is deemed to represent a healthy practice. Up first, we look at the statements in Section 1 of the PMO Health Check Worksheet: Project Portfolio Management.

PMO Health Check: Project Portfolio Management Segment

1. There are multiple portfolios (strategic, maintenance, etc.) with teams dedicated to each portfolio.

Creating multiple portfolios based on scale or categories can help avoid having one category of projects—for example, maintenance (short duration and low effort) projects—get pushed aside as all resources are focused on the larger strategic initiatives.

Conversely, often the urgency of maintenance projects can pull resources from more strategic ones. By splitting up the portfolios and dedicating teams to each, progress can continue on multiple fronts. This keeps user morale more positive as improvements continue to flow while large projects more forward. This also helps expose project teams to different types of projects as they can be rotated from short projects to large ones as they …

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