PMO Watch #1
May 9, 2008 @ How to manage a camel - project management and recruitment from lindsayascott
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I’m going to be keeping an eye out for interesting snippets in relation to PMOs. At Arras we have a specialist team who recruit solely in the PMO space and its been interesting to see the ebb and flow of PMO roles over the last 6 years. It’s surprising how many organisations have been turned on to the benefits of a PMO but unsurprisingly alot of these roles are still within the admin or control PMO functions. Classifications for PMOs makes it much easier for people to quickly pitch what they do - for example CITI came up with four types; admin, control, guidance and partner. See the presentation from the last conference from John Zachar from CITI.
So over 6 years there hasn’t been much change in the types of PMOs an organisation wants - or is it a case of not knowing what you don’t know, shouldn’t an organisation ideally have a PMO function that covers the four areas? I’ll have an admin PMO to sort out the paperwork and plug project data and figures; I’ll have a control one for making sure we are doing what we said we would do; I’ll have a guidance one for keeping everyone on the straight and narrow today whilst looking at what we need to be doing in the future and I’ll have a partner at a corporate level to make sure it all ties together at a strategic and board level. An organisation could have its cake and eat it - but it might cost!
I’ll let you know if we come across a 4PMO organisation (hmmm maybe I should trademark that!)
Anyway apart from the PPSOSIG link above, another PMO snippet this week that I like; “GreenPM” from an article by AllPM (Judy also has a new blog called the power of acknowledgement - see the blogroll). The article talks about how the PMO could also get involved in the green revolution (GreenPMO??) :
“PMOs currently act as the advocate for project management to the organization. Although GreenPM is in its infancy, it seems that there is a logical next step for PMOs to advocate and align environment-related items into its project management methodologies. The PMO can apply “greenthink” by incorporating environment-related factors into the products and services that the PMO is responsible for. For example, a PMO usually owns the project management methodology, but can also have responsibility for other processes such as portfolio management, business planning, development lifecycle and other organizational methodologies. These processes can be modified to determine when green thinking may be applicable. The PMO should not write processes that mandate environmental costs at the expense of providing business value. Instead, the emphasis should be placed on understanding when environmental factors should be considered.”
I like the idea…. I can almost hear the project team banter too… no more copies of meeting minutes thanks I’m doing my bit for the environment… we could plant a tree for each successful milestone we hit (visions of barren forests!) etc etc
But joking aside I’d like to know if anyone already incorporates the environmental factors in to their PIDs, risk plans etc etc and actually there is nothing new here in “GreenPM”
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