PMO Tips: Don’t do things for the first time more than once

Don’t do things for the first time more than once. [Did I read that right. That doesn’t make any sense.] My friend, you read it right. And, It doesn’t make any sense, yet it happens time and time again. Recently, I worked with and spent some time with a PMO Manager. And I asked him what the keys of his success and the success of his PMO were? I was expecting to hear things like skill, experience, maybe a new twist on how to use a tool or institutionalize a process. So, what he told me came as a bit of a surprise. You see, when he started the PMO, there were the usual mission statements, goals, objectives, and strategies. But what he focused on most and what he asked his team for help in focusing on with him was to only do things for the first time once. And not a second, third, and fourth time.

As I thought about this and as he cited example after example, his words were really nothing more than a common sense approach to CMM or PMM. But often, that is exactly what is lacking in maturity models, a common sense approach. How many times have we all heard the saying, “don’t re-invent the wheel?” It is incredibly time consuming, frustrating, and simply bad business to repeatedly go about an endeavor or task without the benefit of the prior experiences, good and bad, of others.

Now, you won’t find a "how-to" for this in the PMBOK. There is probably less than fifty words altogether that address lessons learned and corrective action and what to actually do about these things. And for many organizations, OPM3, though a great model and purchasable toolkit kind of product, is likely to be more than many organizations, especially smaller ones, can reasonably take on.

So, whether it is the way you manage a project, use a tool, or interact with others, only do things for the first time once. Take the time required to institutionalize how to go about whatever it was that you just did for the first time, so that others, including yourself, don’t have to do it for the first time again, again, and once again.