The mindset of the anti-Agile PMO

 

I was directed to this interesting Q&A panel discussion on Agile Portfolio Management by Rally Software that is archived on YouTube:

This post from Scott Dunn of Software Development and Human Capital highlights a section from the talk that is a great quote from Dave West, VP Research Director at Forrester Research:

"It's interesting, what we at Forrester have observed across the industry this particular kind of  maniacal kind of addition to the program management kind of practice. PMO's have grown in size and stature in organizations and become incredibly…big, in terms of their execution. One thing that it illustrates is that complexity does not solve complexity.  As organizations wrestle with increasingly diverse portfolio, time-to-market pressures, one thing that they want to do is add more complexity. "When in doubt, add more governance!","When in doubt, add more people to manage the people that are managing the people!" "When in doubt, get more Gannt charts!" And I think that we've found that that does not work. I think it's clear that breakthrough companies or companies that are definitely driving the industry around change and innovation are not solving those problems with complexity."

Despite the fact that Frederick Brooks wrote about the absurdity of this notion in his infamous book The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering nearly 40 years ago, this idea still perpetuates itself!

It's time to start incorporating the Lean and Agile mindset to the PMO!