Simplifying Project Management - Identifying Common Issues

This is the first in a series of articles we plan to publish on common PMO problems and simplicity based solutions that have worked well for us over the years.

Our experience with PMOs over the decades of experience we have as a practice is a pretty solid bell curve. A few great organizations, a few poor ones, most solidly in the middle. We’ve started breaking down some of the root causes that keep a PMO stuck in the middle of the pack. We have found a few things they have in common, whether they are a one person PMO or enterprise group with 50+ project managers

A lack of clear PMO purpose (The What and the Why) - The PMO and the project managers that work there have a general idea of the value they bring to an organization but the specifics are nebulous. Does the PMO manage all the projects or just selected ones? What are the criteria for assigning a PM? Do they help the organization prioritize projects or do they just get assigned a book of work? Add a host of other possible dimensions of responsibility like budgeting, resource management, etc., and you can imagine the inconsistency and lack of satisfaction this causes from project to project.

A lack of mentoring - One of the consistent building blocks of great PMOs are excellent leaders. A focus on mentoring is one of the things that makes a leader great. I’m not going to try to sell you on the value of mentoring your team consistently, either you get it or you don’t. Some of the middle of the road PMOs we worked with had great people in charge, mentoring was just not their priority. Our survey respondents reported that overall, less than 50% of the PMO leaders they worked under consistently mentored them. I had the good fortune to start in the best PMO I’ve ever worked with (Ingrid Guenther, Wendy Sherrock, La Dawn Beardsley , Kim C.!) The day I started in that role they laid out not only how we managed our projects but also how we measured our proficiency as project managers over time. Imagine what your people could accomplish if you could hand them a path to success in your organization on Day 1.

A lack of consistency focused oversight - I jokingly refer to myself as a “feral” PM, most of what I know I had to take the time to learn myself, along the way. I spent a lot of time working in PMOs that offered little to no guidance on how a project should be delivered. Myself, and the other PMs in those organizations, would just do the best we could with the knowledge we had gained along each of our individual PM journeys. This worked fine, projects were completed, but our business stakeholders never knew exactly what they were going to get from PM to PM. This inconsistency can lead to a lack of engagement with the PMO overall and to the stakeholders actively trying to influence which PM they would be assigned for their projects. In our survey we found <33% of PMOs actively oversee the consistency of project process and artifacts, even when a defined method was present.

An overabundance of process/artifacts - Over and over again we have seen PMOs falter under the weight of their own process, especially small and mid-size PMOs. Stage gates with formal reviews, for example, seem like a great idea until you have to apply them to a four person project team, or have to simultaneously manage them across the 6-10 projects as a single PM. Great PMOs rigorously review the purpose and benefit of every process and artifact they require against the time cost of implementing that process. Combine an overabundance of process with a lack of oversight and you end up with inconsistent and cumbersome project delivery.

We believe the answer, for the small and medium size businesses we work with, is a radical simplification of how PMOs are built, how projects are managed, and how in-house project managers are mentored. Over the next few weeks I, with the help of my team, will be writing about our experiences with these common factors both good and bad, what has worked well to tackle these problems in our experience, and some ideas you may find useful.

If there are any common problems you have faced, let us know in the comments, we look forward to the discussion.