We're analysts in a newly established Project Management Office (PMO) in our organization. Our main function is to provide project oversight for high risk projects. One of our first projects was to conduct an assessment of a mission critical project and report to the project team and the Director. In the course of the assessment, we found that the project was badly mismanaged (ex: no project charter/plan, no customer requirements, no roles and responsibilities defined, poorly defined business case etc.).
We made several recommendations to improve the project, including doing very basic project management tasks such as defining the scope of the project, defining customer requirements, defining the project goals/objectives, conducting a preliminary risk analysis, holding project kick-off meeting, etc.
So far, the project team has made halfhearted efforts to implement our recommendations. It's been almost a month since they received our report. We have offered to help the project team implement our recommendations, but they are not interested in our help. At this point, we dont' want to run to our Director to "tell" on the project team (eventually, we may have to but for now we prefer not to turn our PMO into the "project police")
Do you have any suggestions on:
1. What can we do to persuade the project team to accept our conclusions that the project is in trouble (the evidence is strong but they're still not buying it) ? 2. How can we gain the cooperation of the project team and eventually persuade them to implement our recommendations ? 3. How can we persuade the project team to practice project management discipline ? They feel strongly that project management discipline is a waste of time and prevents the "real work" from being done.
I am not sure from your posting if the PM's are under another org element or under the PMO. I maintain that the PM functions belong in one office - the PMO. This promotes adherence to standards and practices for successful product delivery Your team's mission was to evaluate, report and follow-up. If the PM also report to the PMO, as your group, then what is at hand is the reporting of team performance and adherance to PMO processes. If the PM's are under another group, then you need to report your follow up observations to the person that gave you the mission. The task for assessing why the recommendations have not been fully implemented lies on the desk of management. You are correct that the PMO should not be a policing unit. The PMO should be organized to promote sound PM standards and practices the result in the successful delivery. See my article Theory of PMO Evolution. Feel free to contact me via e-mail. Saving Changes...
RAJESH K LProject Manager, PMP| Bharat Electronics, Bengaluru, IndiaBengaluru, Karnataka, India
