The Good Ol’ Blues Brothers Boys PMO

 

One of my favorite scenes from the comedy classic movie The Blues Brothers (1980) involves the newly-reconstituted band playing a gig at Bob’s Country Bunker at a time slot intended for The Good Ol’ Boys band. Neither Bob’s Country Bunker management nor the rest of the Blues Brothers band are aware that Jake is hijacking the Good Ol’ Boys’ slot, and the Blues Brothers band, after introducing themselves as the “Good Ol’ Blues Brothers Boys band,” begins their set with the song Gimme Some Lovin’. Since this song is not normally associated with the country-western genre, the patrons begin to boo and throw beer bottles against the chicken wire that has been erected to protect the stage.

“We better figure out something these people like, and fast,” counsels Elwood.

“Hey, I’ve got it” replies Murph Dunn. “Remember the theme from Rawhide?”

As the band begins playing the Theme From Rawhide, the patrons at Bob’s immediately begin to show their approval, clapping, hollering, and dancing on the tables. By continuing the set with other songs in the country-western genre, the crowd continues to approve of the entertainment, and the gig ends successfully for the band (well, except that they end up drinking more than the value of the appearance). A couple of interesting tidbits about those two songs: Gimme Some Lovin’ was first released by the Spencer Davis Group in 1966, and charted in the top ten in several different countries[i], while the Theme From Rawhide was recorded by Frankie Lane in 1958[ii]. While it served as the theme song from the television series Rawhide, and reached the Number 6 slot in the United Kingdom[iii], it did not receive the same level of critical acclaim as Gimme Some Lovin’, which made Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest songs[iv]. In other words, the assumption that Gimme Some Lovin’ would nominally receive more approval from a generic set of people than Theme From Rawhide appears perfectly rational; however, since their audience was certainly not a generic collection of people, the Blues Brothers Band had to make a quick change to their intended program in order to consider the gig to be a success.

Meanwhile, Back In The Project Management World…

GTIM Nation knows of my prior usages of the axiom Quality, Availability, Affordability: pick any two. I continue to believe, not only in its relevance, but that this truism is significantly underrated in the formulation of technical approaches to discovering and pursuing managerial problems. It’s been my observation that this undervaluation is particularly present in the founding or maintaining of the Project Management Office, or PMO. Which two of the three aspects of your organization’s product or service presentation must have a direct impact on which PMO strategy is best suited for that environment, to wit:

• The organization that has gotten ahead by offering affordable goods or services without their customers having to be on some sort of waiting list will likely not be interested in a PMO that insists, by encoding into policy or procedure, on robust Work Package/Control Account development, coupled to an exhaustive risk management (no initial caps) program, and overlayed with a Baseline Change Control Board that only meets once per month.
• Similarly, the organization whose market share depends on high-quality goods and services that are comparatively affordable, but require long lead-times, can afford to have a PMO that’s relatively smaller than the others in the same market, since the likelihood of the PMO being surprised with a sudden, marked increase in programmatic load is relatively small.
• This third configuration, of the organization that offers high-quality goods or services that are relatively available, but not as affordable, is the only one of the three where a high level of PM expertise driving a complex and robust PM discipline and information system creation and maintenance is likely to be appropriate.

But here is where the environment for having the band strike up Gimme Some Lovin’ when the macro-organization wants Theme From Rawhide is likely to manifest, since organizations large enough to dedicate the resources to create and maintain a PMO in the first place will often present as if the high-level-of-expertise crowd should come in and implement a robust PM strategy as being the optimal one. It could very well be that the macro-organization is seeking only a basic, easily-implemented cost and schedule performance measurement system in order to get a handle on the behavior of the project portfolio.

And I think it would be a good idea for the PMO Director to ascertain if that’s the environment she’s in, prior to the beer bottles hitting the chicken wire.

[i] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimme_Some_Lovin%27 on November 11, 2024, 14:01 MST.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Retrieved from https://www.songfacts.com/facts/frankie-laine/rawhide on November 11, 2024, 18:53 MST.

[iv] Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimme_Some_Lovin%27 on November 11, 2024, 14:11 MST.