Do traditional PMOs promote mediocrity? Could an Agile PMO do better?

First of all, thank you for boldly speaking one of the truths about Agile that few dare mention. Indeed, not all companies have the A-Team working in their IT department, and since there are a lot more Pinkies in the world than there are Brains, it stands to reason that many companies that embrace Agile simply do not have the intellectual resources to derive the full benefits.
While we're on the subject of failing to realize full benefits, I'd also like to point out that Agile was created specifically for software development, and while consulting firms would want you to believe that it can be applied to all kinds of stuff (because hey, they have to eat, too), it really can't. Riding the latest buzzword is just what they do, it doesn't make it sensible - reminds me of the time when they preached that everything and their mother could be six-sigma'd. Yeah, right.

But enough ranting about the antics of the carpet sellers. To answer the topic's questions, my opinion is "no" and "no", respectively. I don't believe PMOs promote mediocrity. At the very least, I know that I don't get up in the morning wanting to suck, nor to tell my people that it's okay for them to suck. Don't get me wrong, mediocrity is being promoted without a doubt, just not by the PMO. As mentioned earlier, the simple gaussian distribution of intelligence among the population means that there are a lot more average minds than true talents. In turn, Peter's Principle tells us that eventually, these average minds get pulled out of their depth and into managerial positions, where they are completely overwhelmed. And we all know that employees look up to their leaders and tend to emulate them. So what happens when an average employee emulates his average manager fumbling over his average problems? That's right: mediocrity. The PMO, or any other office for that matter, doesn't promote mediocrity - people do.

As for my second "no", I don't believe an Agile PMO could do better. For one thing, as I tried to demonstrate in the previous paragraph, it is a people problem and not an organization problem, so "traditional" or "agile" really doesn't make a difference. Furthermore, as mentioned recently in David Blumhorst's blog The Business Driven PMO here on gantthead, "According to research performed by industry analysts such as Project Management Institute (PMI), the Gartner Group, and Forrester Research, 25% of all PMOs closed within one year and 50% closed within two years". My point? Simple: before thinking about whether an "Agile" PMO could do better, maybe we should ask ourselves if the "traditional" PMO can't do better first. Why is an alarmingly large number of PMOs closing down so quickly after inception? PMOs aren't mushrooms, they just don't grow spontaneously inside companies after a rainy day - which means that someone, at some point, and with enough authority to make it happen, thought that it would be a good idea to implement a PMO. But what for? A post by Carol Long, recently published on the PMHut, warns against the dangers of jargon. Is PMO a buzzword? Is everybody, especially the people that matter in the company, clear on what PMO means and what functions it should serve? It is sometimes painfully obvious that it's not, that the word "PMO" was thrown around as the panacea to all problems, much like the word "Agile" these days, and with the same results: failure due to the sloppy execution of a good idea.

Sorry about the BWOT there, but there is much to be said on this subject. Thanks for initiating the discussion.

Posted: Sep 24, 2012 9:46 AM

Great article. Timely and brave. The observations cited no doubt exist in many organizations; agreed. And important to raise. But I agree with Julien. Effective PMOs do not promote mediocrity. To the contrary, they promote excellence and continuous improvement with respect to achieving the intended end results for which a PMO of some kind has been set up and exists to serve. And as for the idea of Agile PMO? Well, the only words that I like to see before the letters PMO are "business-driven". When a PMO is driven by business need, employing techniques best suited and most appropriate to the business need, business success is achieved. When a PMO is not business-driven, but rather aligned to someone's idea of what a PMO should be and do, whether steeped in plan-driven bodies of knowledge such as PMBOK, PRINCE2, and the like or steeped in complex adaptive systems (CAS) techniques of which Agile is but one color of the CAS rainbow, that is when the runaway freight train of good intentions takes root and paves the way to "you know where".

Posted: Sep 24, 2012 4:28 PM

I think I may have used the wrong terminology with "promote" as it gives the sense that PMO's start off with that agenda. I've been involved with a few PMO's that in fact started off as a "Center of Excellence" with all the good intentions to promote consistent and timely delivery of projects with well established processes and governance structure that would be explicit to all those involved and straight forward to follow.

What I have found in reality is that it was very difficult, especially if this was a company wide agenda in a large organizations with thousands of employees and multiple divisions, to achieve consistency, timeliness and continuous improvements. Inevitably it came down to trying to get all the portfolio of projects to achieve consistent mediocre results rather then inconsistent inferior results.

So we strove for CMMI level 5 and end up hoping we could maintain level 2 on consistent basis. I've seen a few instances where having strong upper management leadership and buy in really help establish the PMO and move it along, but in most cases seen PMOs barely achieve what they set out to do or to fail pretty badly. I'm not confident this can be achieved by making the PMO more agile, in fact I think it may cause the reverse, but the idealistic side of me thinks if it is done with the right model, people and circumstance that it could achieve spectacular results.

It's great to use a forum like this to hash this out and discuss the hard PM topics! :)

Posted: Sep 25, 2012 10:48 PM

Very well said Julien. Lots of valid points touched.

At the end of the day, it is always the people doing the job that counts. It does not matter what you call it (PMO or Centre of Excellence), it is the execution of the idea that makes the difference. Think about PMO as a department or a company by itself serving its customers (in this case the business). Many companies started off to serve the customers (although some turned bad later to focus on serving the board of directors). No company wants to fail its customers or chase them away. However, not many companies are able to sustain that simple objective. Why? I would bet that is due to the failure in the execution again, of course by some mediocrates. The irony I have observed is, most companies started off with just a bunch of average PMs managing projects and found that this bunch of PMs could not cope well, then decided to set up a PMO, and of course, being run by the same bunch of average PMs. Now, if the PMs could not even run their projects well, would you then expect them to turn smart overnight and able to run a PMO well? Of course this will not happen. If we keep thinking along the line that PMO is an elixir for all corporate wounds, then we are doomed to fail. Before we can even think or hope that a PMO will help the business, we first need to make sure it is well-managed by itself. PMO is not an end in itself, but a means to an end.

Another key point to note is that, to ensure PMO is successful, just like any corporate endeavor, we need to have very clear direction and milestones (you can't achieve everything overnight), and most importantly the support from the sponsor and authority to see it through.

Posted: Sep 26, 2012 3:07 PM

Please note that mediocre actually has two definitions: "average" and "below average." Using the first defintion, the intent of a PMO is to create mediocrity, it is intended to standarize on average results.

Creating consistency is a good thing, but one must abandon hope of repeatedly being above average. By attempting to be above average, one must accept higher levels of risk to provide lower costs and shorter schedules. The probem is higher levels of risk mean lower likelihood of meeting the target.

The intent of a PMO is consistency. This means accepting average outcomes but foregoing both the occassional ahead of schedule project and the now typical behnid schedule project. Embrace mediocrity!

Posted: Oct 13, 2012 5:48 PM

Thanks for sharing

Posted: Jul 15, 2017 3:34 PM