This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Wednesday, July 02, 2003
Why You Need a PMO -- (Like I said, it's today's theme.) This highly recommended piece, from CIO.com, discusses the critical linking role of the PMO in the effort to assure both efficient and effective project management.
On the efficient side, it offers...
Top ways that PMOs make a financial impact
- Provide standard methodology for managing projects
- Have responsibility for process and project reporting and tracking
- Ensure that similar projects are executed in a similar way
- Have the information needed to speed up or slow down a process
- Provide a process for resource allocation and capacity management
- Ensure that projects have direct links to company's strategic and operating plans
And for effectivity...
Top ways that PMOs make a strategic impact
- Link projects directly to company's strategic and operating plans
- Provide standard methodology for managing projects
- Have sponsorship/support from senior management
- Ensure that projects support a business goal or strategy
- Align groups on project process, selection, priority and execution
- Ensure that similar projects are executed in a similar way
The only hesitation I have about the article -- which has nothing to do with the content -- is that it should be in a site or magazine devoted to CEOs as well as, if not instead of, CIOs. Projects -- especially strategic projects -- are more than IT, even in today's techno-centric world. Product development, process improvement, basic research, engineering/plant projects, and tactical restructurings all involve project efforts. They are all linked to the larger strategies of the organization and all require effective and efficient project management to coordinate the diverse sets of customers and resources and customer resources necessary to make them happen. (For that matter, most meaningful IT projects are more than just IT.)
A PMO should not be positioned as an upward extension of a particular functional silo like IT or Engineering which will tend to parochialize and sub-optimize its effect. Rather, a PMO should be a downward extension of top management's Strategic function, integrating (and requiring) leadership from above so that the supporting resources can be given clear priorities in support of where the organization wants to go.
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