Back in the 1970s a major American car manufacturer had an advertising campaign for one of their cars that included the assertion that their car, when compared to others in its category, had “more road-hugging weight!” I and my car enthusiast friends would often mock this assertion – anyone with a sense of the need to optimize a car’s power-to-weight ratio would instantly recognize that “selling point” as pretty lame – but, after all these years, I’m not sure we were mocking the right people.
Consider the mindset of the people who wrote the actual ad copy. They must have known more than the average car buyer about which car specifications would be considered attractive, and yet they included the more-weight data point as if it wasn’t a detriment. The more I (over-) think about it, the stranger it gets. I have to wonder if they considered going with “better ride,” which often accompanies heavier car chassis, or even “safer in a collision,” which is also associated with heft. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t know who put those ads together, or approved them for airing. My speculation, though, is that they knew going in that the “more road-hugging weight” assertion would not be attractive to consumers with an advanced knowledge about cars, and were, therefore, attempting to attract those people who would hear such a statement and consider it a preferable feature. They may have also been under the belief that those people who considered “more road-hugging weight” to be a positive thing outnumbered those who would instantly recognize it as a negative, at least among the population of those who made the ultimate decision in car purchases. The whole thing essentially begs for a clear-headed person, familiar with the actual goal of an automobile (to reliably, efficiently, and effectively transport people and cargo from Point A to Point B) to step up and say something.
Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…
Ah, yes, that perennial need for a clear-headed person to step up at critical times. This need is obviously not confined to advertising campaigns for 1970s-era cars. It is, in fact, ubiquitous, but this is a blog dedicated to Project Management, so I’ll confine my discussion to that arena by starting with the question, What is the point of a Project/Program Management Office (PMO)? Since I’ve posed this question to GTIM Nation previously, you only get go-to-the-head-of-the-class recognition if you are both a newbie AND answered “to provide PM-centric information to decision makers that is accurate, timely, and relevant.” In those cases where the PMO also serves as the organizational node for PMs, it also has to have a lot of meetings.
I’m not going to debate it – that’s the right answer, the warp and woof, the raison d’être
of the PMO. Of course, I’m fully aware that there are those who would disagree with this assertion, typically by maintaining that the PMO is also responsible for:
- Changing culture,
- Providing a thorough risk management (no initial caps) capability,
- Enhancing communications with “stakeholders,”
- Performing Six Sigma analyses.
- Maximizing the procurement process,
- Optimizing the recruiting approach,
- Training,
…or, perhaps most odious of all,
- Maximize shareholder wealth.
I take sharp exception to each of these claims, on the basis that these hangers-on to legitimate PM science fail to directly contribute to PM’s ultimate goal, to select those strategies and technical approaches that maximize the odds of bringing in the project on-time, on-budget. For those of you who are curious whether or not there’s a litmus test for what I consider a legit PMO purpose or not, it would be this: is it quantifiable?
The accuracy and timeliness of PM information can be gauged. Not so whether or not an organization’s culture is advancing with respect to its embrace of PM precepts. The risk managers (no initial caps) consistently flunk the relevancy test, as do the Six Sigma aficionados. Procurement and recruiting – which, incidentally, fall under the Asset Management umbrella – should work efficiently and effectively, but those standards of efficiency and effectiveness are entirely subjective.
Now consider how much effort is put into selling the PM community writ large that each of these specialties should have a place at the table when it comes to establishing an overarching codex of PM practices and principals. All they would need to do is to conduct a valid study that showed, in whatever quasi-controlled experimental setting, that the PMO that spent time and energy pursuing, say, an advanced Communications Management capability was consistently bringing in its portfolio on-time, on budget, due to the adoption of CM techniques. I’ve never seen such a study even attempted.
It's almost as if all they have left to back their claims of their specialty’s PM relevancy is to assert the management science equivalent of “more road-hugging weight.”
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