PMO Leadership: Repeat errors? Shame on us!

Great post and great points about process problems. They are easy for me to accept, being a Certified Process Master and embracer of the process approach to work. Though many others will completely agree with your post, I am afraid few will have the capability to take your sage advice. Addressing process problems requires good process management governance and methodology. I have found process management to be the most neglected discipline in IT environments today. Most organizations don't even have Process Owners. Good luck fixing a process if you don't know who is accountable for ensuring it is fixed. And process ownership is only the tip of the iceberg. The ability to design, implement, manage and ultimately institutionalize processes is incredibly difficult. Few organizations are capable of mastering the science and art of this essential capability.


Steve Romero, IT Governance Evangelist
http://community.ca.com/blogs/theitgovernanceevangelist/


Posted: Jul 7, 2008 3:02 PM

Mark:
Certainly, project management is not for everyone and if it was easy; we'd all be doing it. Interesting article, but I have a differing viewpoint on your commentary on project management and business processes.

First of all it just begs the following questions:
Projectized or Matrix Organization? Mature or Immature Project Management Methodology? Centralized or Decentralized PMO? Accidental Project Managers or mature, professional Credentialed PMs? Business Analysts or no Business Analysts? Adopted System Development Lifecycle(s) or lack of documented SDLC''''s? Custom Off the Shelf Software or Software Developed Inhouse or Outsourced? Virtual team, Colocated onsite or Diverse teams from various regions around the country?

Most PMO''s I''ve worked in collaborate with internal and external stakeholders, vendor partners and internal staff from various divisions. Business processes are owned by the functional areas and it has been my experience that a PM who takes on this responsibility must partner with the business to affect reengineering of those processes if required. Business Analysts are essential in this role and unfortunately, it seems your observations are where the PM gets stuck with this role. Mature PM's will defer this to the business/business analyst or rise to the occassion; less mature will be challenged.

Retrospectives are widely used by organizations like Intel and are adopted across the organization. and can provide essential feedback for PMs to use on projects. Inhouse training programs such as those developed at Hewlett Packard have helped PMs to learn from other PMs around the globe. A PMO and its resources can only be as effective as the tools, tips and techniques it adopts and evangelizes. Coaching, mentoring and training for Project Managers is essential to continuous learning and development. Most of all Leadership is the key for any successful PMO. A organization with a mature project management methodology would build in quality and implement the rigor of change management necessary so lessons learned are applied to affect process and defect improvement as well as gathering of metrics throughout the project.

A Project Manager has a clear role and only through continuous improvement will a PM be able to be 1.) Improve and be successful in the use of tools, tips and techniques 2.) Lead high performing teams for the organization and 3.) deliver successful projects.

Posted: Jul 9, 2008 8:59 PM

Hi Naomi,

Great post..! I quite agree with you. :)

But I was referring to the PMO processes (those things in the PMO owned by us) and the PMO and project management related execution difficulties and errors in our own backyard - not the processes owned by others such as the lines of business and functional areas, etc. Hence, in that context and in the environment that we own, I would like to advocate the mantra, "Have a process defect once, shame on the process; have the same defect again (and again and again), shame on us." The net is - we can ignore our mistakes and incur them time and time again or we can learn by our mistakes and find ways to do better. I prefer the latter camp - and I am quite sure that you and Steve are already in it - and leading it..!

Thanks again for your post - I hope we hear and learn from others.

Posted: Jul 10, 2008 12:04 AM

Mark:
Thanks for the clarification. It sounds like Steve and I have been in and out of similar organizations that are working harder and not smarter.

In this context; I wholeheartedly agree with you but you have to wonder if the errors continue is the processing really working or broken. I have not run into many PMO's who have got this problem/opportunity solved yet. It is a struggle with too few resources, way to many projects, methodologies that don't match the culture and not enough well trained PMs and Business Analysts.

Hopefully, someone can share a story or two on how they have solved this problem and how their PMO is modeling all the right stuff.:)



Posted: Jul 10, 2008 1:54 AM

Hi Naomi,

You're right. I tend to view "getting things right" in the PMO as a journey, not a destination. And, I am seeing more and more PMOs take on and have results with this kind of mindset. For example:

• At a manufacturing industry PMO, the new PMO Manager's first order of business was to identify the key PMO processes and name process owners for each process (much like what Steve Romero advocates regarding process ownership). Not surprisingly, these PMO process owners quickly identified ways to improve, communicate, and "institutionalize" their assigned processes.


• At an insurance industry PMO, the PMO Manager proposed to his boss, the CIO, that he wanted to put in place incentive compensation for Continuous Improvement for each project manager in the PMO. The incentive compensation was in the form of an annual bonus that was earned by the project manager base upon a qualitative assessment of that project manager's submission of ideas (in the form of a short standardized proposal) for improvement. Additional compensation is also possible based upon completion of the improvement project and an assessment of the CIO and his peer executives on the potential benefits to be realized. In short order, the PMO transitioned from a "Community of Practice" style PMO to a high performance "Gearbox".


• At a pharmaceutical industry firm, the CEO announced a 5 year initiative to double the size of the company (in terms of revenues) while at the same time holding the employee headcount to the same level. To achieve this ambitious goal, the CEO launched a Process Improvement program and challenged each business unit and functional area to define, use, and improve their key processes. The PMO led in this initiative in both defining their own key processes for the PMO as well as supporting the business units and functional areas in their Processes Improvement initiatives.


• And at a transportation industry firm, when the PMO Manager found out that a line of business "informal" project manager had requested IT for help and advice in managing their business area "informal" projects and the IT manager responded by giving the business unit individual Microsoft Project to install, learn, and use, and the business unit "informal" project manager struggled for weeks learning how to use Microsoft Project only to produce a Gantt Chart that was of minimal incremental help in the scheme of his needs, etc, etc, etc, the PMO Manager recognized this (lack of support for "informal" project managers) as a process defect and as something the PMO should address. Soon after, the PMO Manager implemented a streamlined PM process and recommended toolset and helpful examples for the "informal" project managers to use in their "informal" projects. And by the way, it was recommended (via project setup guidelines) that the "informal" project managers not use Microsoft Project or any other scheduling package unless the needs of the project really called for it.

These are the kinds of continuous improvement stories and examples that organizations that are committed to "getting things right" have on an on-going basis. Why is it that some organizations cozy up to this kind of mindset and other organizations resist it altogether..? I hope we hear and learn from others on this..!

Posted: Jul 10, 2008 10:00 AM