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In the chapter on Project Office in the AMA Handbook of Project Management, Kent Crawford of PM Solutions declares a PMO “is a must for organizations to move from doing an adequate job of managing projects on an individual basis to creating the organizational project management systems that adds value dependably and repeatedly.” Yet, in his paper “A Realistic Portrait of PMOs: the results of an empirical investigation”, Dr. Brian Hobbs of the University of Quebec at Montréal observes that “PMOs are being shutdown or radically redesigned almost as fast as they are being created.”
What is going on here? Are PMOs truly the key to driving successful projects? Or simply unnecessary overhead?
The answer undoubtedly has a lot to do with how the PMO is structured and what it is supposed to achieve. Given the enormous variety of organization entities loosely called “PMOs” it is not apparent that PMOs are themselves being established “dependably and repeatedly”. And Brian Hobbs adds credence to this view by noting that the perceived value of PMOs can be correlated with other variables, among them organizational project management maturity, the proportion of project managers within the PMO structure, and the decision-making authority of the PMO.
But “it depends” is not a particularly satisfying answer to a corporate executive questioning the value of a PMO. More critically, it does nothing to dissuade the executive who is convinced PMOs represent unnecessary or unaffordable costs.
There is of course a tendency for central staff organizations to add bureaucracy and cost, and PMOs are not an exception. Frequently, PMOs are introduced in response to a “crisis”, such as a large project spinning out of control. A decision is made to “implement project management” and a PMO is assembled to make it happen. With the best of intentions, the PMO develops processes to accommodate the most complex project the organization is ever likely to encounter. The mindset is to guarantee the particular crisis “will never happen again”. Then, having established a process to accommodate projects of rare complexity, the PMO declares that “common sense” is to be used in applying the process to simpler projects. The problem is that the optional parts of the process are rarely identified, and the entire organization defaults to meticulous compliance with the entire process. Eventually the memory of the crisis fades away, as does the mythical “highly complex” project, and senior management sees only the costs associated with bureaucratic minutiae driven by the PMO.
A similar cycle often occurs when the PMO implements enterprise project management software. Management is initially enthralled with the colorful screens promising instant information about any project in the portfolio. However, providing such information inevitably requires diligent data entry by everybody assigned to project work, including people assigned for just a few hours a month. Soon, this translates to increased staff and significantly higher costs. Eventually, the reasons for implementing the enterprise project management software are forgotten, and once again, senior management sees only the costs of complying with the PMO’s mandates.
There is no question that PMOs drive repeatability, at least in process and hopefully in results. But at what cost? “Faster, better, cheaper” is no longer the mandate at NASA, but it may represent an excellent goal for most PMOs. Standard, repeatable processes clearly have some benefit. But processes that reduce costs and accelerate schedules? Now that is an idea that could get executives excited!
Ultimately, one of the biggest liabilities of PMOs at this point in their evolution is that consultants promoting their implementation have produced most of the literature. From a marketing perspective, that puts them in the same category as hair-loss treatments and get-rich-quick schemes.
As a discipline, we desperately need testimonials from real customers. And until they are forthcoming, PMOs will continue to be shut down as fast as they are created.
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