Why PMO's Get a Bad Rap
By Juliann Knott, PMP - Senior Project Manager
You want to paint a picture: Did you get the "paint by numbers"
with a predefined picture and stay within the lines or do you start with a
creative stroke of red paint on a white canvas?
All too often we see PMO's that are built without following the
same practices we would use to begin a project. Instead, they are built from a
prescribed method without consideration for the problem being solved. This is
where the trouble begins and the "bad rap" is attached to the PMO.
Let's look
at some reasons why PMO's get a bad rap and what you can do to build a
successful PMO for your organization.
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Refresh: Why Projects Fail
It is likely that each of
us will be faced with turning around a distressed project at least once in our
career. Let's take a look at a few of the obvious and not so obvious reasons why projects fail. The following list is an excerpt from Karen McIsaac's upcoming presentation, "Rescue 911: Why Projects Fail and How You Can Be a Hero" for the Project Management Institute's Professional Development Day.
1. Lack
of planning - Resources, timeline,
milestones, risks, assumptions, constraints.
2. Lack
of Leadership - PM must be a leader,
have flexibility and build relationships and not just have the technical
project management skills.
3. Not
planning for quality - If you don't
identify what is to represent quality, how will you know you have it? You may
have a project that met the budget and timelines but also had rework or poor
quality - not a success.
4. Not
assessing and planning for risk - How
do you build a contingency for risk if you don't know it or the significance of
it? The project implementation may have been successful however, there was
negative impact.
5. Not
having a project infrastructure - Processes,
standard meeting routines, roles/responsibilities, governance and approval
processes, change control processes, communication plan, project organization
chart, etc. If this simple early organization is not done, what is confidence level
for organizing the project?
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Answer: Know the Lingo
Stakeholders are
individuals or cross-functional areas of an organization that are project
participants or will be impacted by a project. Stakeholders can include anyone
from the project sponsor to customer service representative. Individuals that
are stakeholders may also be a part of the project steering committee. It is
critical that all stakeholders be identified and included in project communications
planning, including contact lists, status reports, etc.
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