Currently I'm working in a PMO into the IT area. When the PMO was created, most projects followe Waterfall principles, so our standars and reommendations were bases in such type of projects. However, lately the projects have evolved into an Agile way, so we should need to change our point of view of the PMO. Although we've analyzed several ways to convert the PMO, I should appreciate the point of view of expertise project managers as guidance to perform this change succesfully. Saving Changes...
A true agile transformation may require a review & revamp of the charter for your PMO. Scott Ambler has written a few blog articles in the Disciplined Agile blog in this community about this. I've seen PMO's going two directions with agile - some help to lead the transformation actively supporting practitioners and advocating for the right behavioral and structural changes across the organization whereas others become an impediment and are unable to shift their approach to governance and reporting.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Retrain your PMs as agile coaches. Focus on getting business customer buy-in to agile transformation and encouraging product management rather than project management. You can gauge success by how many projects you can effectively eliminate through increased organizational agility and product ownership. Saving Changes...
Sorry - you can't "retrain" a PM to be an agile coach unless they have sufficient depth & breadth of actual agile coaching experience to succeed in such a different role.
Agile coaches might share some stances with PMs such as guiding or teaching, but coaching (which is the default stance for an agile coach) is not a native stance for most PMs...
Kiron
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1 reply by Mayte Mata Sivera
Sep 07, 2021 1:37 PM
Mayte Mata Sivera
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Agree, I was working in an organization that offer me to be a scrum master or agile coach and I said no. You can not retain a PM...
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
I will write just based on my personal experience along the years. Just to comment, not more than that, one of my duties (including my actual world place) was to work on creating PMO from zero. In my actual work place, we are running programs where you have agile based projects and non-agile based projects. The first thing to be successful is to understand that Agile and Lean are approaches that you can use with any life cycle (waterfall, iterative, incremental, iterative-incremental, etc) and any method based on any life cycle. I mean, when you create all related to project management my recommendation is thinking with focus on architecture. If you take a pyramid, in the base are the approaches (agile, lean, etc) on top the life cycles (waterfall, iterative, etc) on top methods/frameworks based on those life cycles (V, Spiral, Scrum, etc). Then, for each initiative, after making an initial evaluation, you can take what best fits for the initiative including the techniques, tools, etc, There is not an Agile PMO or a Tranditional PMO or things like that you read and heard outside there. Obviously, then you have to consider the needed skills mainly if you will create them inside the organization or you will acquire them form outside. Saving Changes...
Dear Enrique,
Changes encouragement starts by understanding why the current processes are not working. First, I recommend mapping primarily the stakeholder's more influencers, and decision-makers to later go forward with the rest. Jointly assess the current approach (waterfall) results and quantify the leaked value for the projects. Try to prepare a retrospective session with the most influential members of the team (technical, business, finance, portfolio, PMO, sponsor) to compare outcomes from the last projects.
Change awareness arises when the developing team and business group sit together to watch in a dashboard the outcomes and compare the achievement level of the KPI. The best way to gain mindful learning is by experimenting, measuring, and assessing results. So, it is necessary to perform a brainstorming session to understand what, why, and how to improve.
Usually, the meeting results bring innovative approaches and designs of new processes adapted to the capabilities of the organization. That is going to pass from an agile approach, hybrid to a minimal waterfall.
Remember that agile is not the only way to face a project. It depends on your context, organizational culture, and many others factor. Indeed if there are no conditions, forcing a methodology will means losing time.
Projects are to manage resources, making decisions, and those decisions are leading by people. So, start by embracing an agile and hybrid mindset before dictating a new approach. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Enrique,
my experience is similar to Sergio's in that there are PMOs labeled as agile but most are just plain PMOs as per definition (PMBoK Guide ed6 or 7). Or now even called a VDO (value delivery orrganization). Most organizations have a portfolio of traditional projects and maybe agile initiatives and teams, which might be ongoing, so the PMO if chartered for the whole operations will have to support any value delivery system.
I am implementing PMOs since 1995 and my last one was created to support both agile teams and non-agile projects (which might have used agile-labeled concepts like Kanban anyway). We did regular health checks for all large projects and the agile/Scrum projects came out with excellent audit results.
If there is an agile transformation going on, which per se is a program, it might use a PMO to support the program, so I am also with Kiron for those situations.
I'd like to thank your comments. I've got a general idea about what we need to turn our PMO into an Agile perspective but without forgetting the traditional point of view as we have still projects management following it. I believe that we should turn into an hybrid model in which both concepts could be considered. Saving Changes...
Sorry - you can't "retrain" a PM to be an agile coach unless they have sufficient depth & breadth of actual agile coaching experience to succeed in such a different role.
Agile coaches might share some stances with PMs such as guiding or teaching, but coaching (which is the default stance for an agile coach) is not a native stance for most PMs...
Kiron
Agree, I was working in an organization that offer me to be a scrum master or agile coach and I said no. You can not retain a PM... Saving Changes...
I fully agree. That's the main concern about our situation currently in the PMO.
Thanks to eveybody. I really appreciate your contribution and get different points of view about this situation. Saving Changes...
