The Need for Integrated Project Delivery

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.

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Topics: PMO

There’s an old saying that something is only as good as its weakest link—a physical chain being the foundation of that saying. But it applies just as well to organizational supply chains, or to the way that projects get delivered in an organization. We all know stories of projects that have failed because of a single mistake: just one disengaged stakeholder, a misunderstanding by a team member, a single missed risk. These are all examples of the continued relevance of that old saying.

But beyond these individual scenarios, I believe many organizations have these weak links built into how projects get delivered. And if the weaknesses are organizational or systemic, then it should be up to the PMO to address those issues—to strengthen the links in the project delivery chain to prevent breakages from occurring. That doesn’t always happen.

I see many PMOs focusing their time on helping project managers and teams, on supporting the portfolio management process, communicating with stakeholders and so on, and these are all vital aspects of project delivery. But those elements also tend to be links in the chain that are already fairly strong, even if there is still some room for improvement.

To enable the biggest improvement, I believe PMOs need to focus on some of those weaker links.

Identifying the weak links
Every organization is different, so by…

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