Stirring the POT

Guest author: beardall.blog

Project Chatter Podcast kindly invited me to bring my blogging hat along for a chat. I will revisit some old episodes (not you), and cross-reference themes or comments from more recent guests on the show. Accordingly, this week I want to talk PMO…

House of PMO, put on a show (#S4E88)

Project Chatter invited us to peer through the letter box into the House of PMO. We were all invited in. And from the comfort of their living room ~ stationary cupboard, Lindsay and Eileen expertly talked us through what projects look like from within the Project Management Office.

Also included in this blog are revisits to Professor Marco, plus some BG era (before guests) Project Chatter. References:-

#S1E01, Val and Dale “The attitude towards PMO“

#S1E02, Val and Dale “talkin’ about PMO“

#S1E08, Val and Dale “PMO career progress pt 2 of 2“

#S1E17, Val “AIPM Presentation ‘Disrupting PMO” (bonus episode)

#S1E18, Professor Marco Frisenda “Project Planning and Global PMOs“

#S2E39, Professor Marco Frisenda “The Good and the Bad of PMO’s“

The PMO career is a good career

Lindsay and Eileen both masterfully present life from within the PMO arena. A space to see projects and programmes. A place to inform and influence an individual project and/or all projects at corporate (or enterprise) level. As a career, if compared to a Project Manager, the PMO has wider sphere of interest. Or as Eileen succinctly concludes, “it’s a broader role”.

This podcast is a great advertisement for those pondering a career in this increasingly professionally recognised project space. It is a career in its own right. Equally suitable as a platform from which to move into other project and management roles; or a haven for various projects people ready to move on. (see also Val and Dale explore a PMO career #S1E08).

Outside, looking in

An early confession: on LinkedIn you will find me regularly question “why is Project Management discussion so focused on PMO“. It is a challenge based upon a perspective others share. My world view is construction. I arrived here via risk, internal control, assurance – insurance and senior debt lending due diligence – and more latterly a recent MSc in Project Management. I am part of the P (project). Advising or liaising with the M (management). Looking over the divide at the O (Office, over there).

It is my forever frustration that the discussions around construction project management becomes immediately filtered by the team colours we each have to wear. At the contractor level, the PMO may be facing the other way on the pitch, communicating at a distance via a contract of design, construction, service, or trade.

What is a PMO?

Val kicks us off by asking for a “baseline”. The true project professional’s first question – define what you mean and from where we are to measure. Eileen offers two key areas of the function of a PMO, citing the P3O school of thought (she being the lead author 2013):

• firstly, enable decision-making
• secondly, provide project support

Next, how do different PMOs compare?

P3O – portfolio | programme | project Office

Eileen and P3O now gifts me a question. When in dialogue with people who talk in the language of the PMO – what level of PMO interest do you mean?

POO alone or together in a POT

A liberty on my part with the phrasing, but go to 00:09:18, the acronyms were meant and the metaphor is not completely out of context. The lone officer is a Project Office of One POO; then we have a Project Office of Two POT and so on, (i.e., PO1, PO2, …, POn…). Eileen explains that many a PMO will have need to operate through the POO on occasion…and the lone officer role can demand a significant array of task demands from senior places.

To know what you need, know what is intended to be

This is my rephrasing of an important point. It is aimed at those who say I need help; I need information, but without offering any context at all when seeking to set up a PMO.

Professor Marco make these points in the context of project set-up, priorities, need, and delineation between parties [00:10:50 in #S2E39]. House of PMO address this same point [00:10:45 #S4E88] by asking what is a project vs what is business as usual. Formalising and defining what a project is (and is not) so the support functions or service functions of the PMO (i.e., support to decisions; wider project support) then define the flavour of the PMO in place.

What comes first, PMO, process, or frame?

I would observe this is akin to the challenge academic literature faces from within its own walls. The challenge of whether Project Management itself is an operational and functional subject, or one that can elevate itself suitably towards the higher tables of strategic thinking.

Why not seek a wider view?

Outside assistance may also help here, particularly if operating out of the norms of the business or the PMO function. Plenty of the podcast guests over the four series of Project Chatter operate in this space. Perspectives coming from many places. Which I am sure you already know, if you regularly tune in.

The bigger question

For me, this is all therefore part of a wider set of concerns we all share. The PMO discussion part of wider challenge of the globalising of information; upskilling to enable its manipulation; modernising how it is gathered, checked, analysed and circulated, and thereafter used. Right now we need to address how to remove the filters we all sit between.

A PMO to who, and within what?

A PMO could be well placed to be such a storage repository, place of analytics, and the distribution hub. The wider discussion of #S2E39 becomes much more focused upon conflicting motivations between the various parties holding such information, and whether this is allowing the wider perspectives beyond each to benefit the project as a whole (see 00:12:00 #S2E39). Starting from the set-up and through the procurement stage these conflicts appear early and stay even after cracks start to show. Also refer here to Val’s list of data driven ways PMO could do more (#S1E17)

Top-down | bottom-up | middle-out

Another key challenge is leadership. These questions are first answerable at the highest levels of strategic interest – meaning the clarity of vision by leadership (#S1E13; #S2E41; #S2E46;)- to which Project Controls should themselves also be aligned. Leadership from the top-down, information from the ground-up, but maybe connected from the middle-out (#S1E21)

Interfaces everywhere

Val and then Dale each introduce some additional interfaces of note, [00:13:02; 00:17:11, #S4E88]. I subcategorise them below and add a few more:-

PMO | Project Controls | Commercial | Finance | Assurance | Leadership | Communications

Internal context is key

How each of these interfaces sit together is necessarily nuanced. Even if your projects are internally focused within an organisation, they are vastly different in context. By example here is a range of intended changes projects may reflect:

• organisational change
• mergers and acquisitions
• restructuring, investment, diversification or divestment (i.e., top line growth, or bottom line cost)
• processing, people, location, supply chain refinement, outsourcing, near-shoring, off-shoring
• new products, marketing, customer service, research and development
• training, reskilling, automating
• core service delivery or core service buying

Power and Influence – the culture

All such nuance will require different cooperating parts working together. Company hierarchy, geographical spread, resource centralisation, will all necessarily influence what sits where. The dreaded silos of influence and empire builds within, will also be pulling the invisible strings somewhere. The clarity of mission, the regional autonomy vs centralised dictates, or unwieldly confusion and politics between all. Added together this becomes the aggregation of culture, the greatest influences are not always the lead.

Again therefore – what is a PMO – to you?

00:31:35 Dale asks how do we get the best out of the PMO? To which the split answers between Eileen and Lindsay are: know what you want from the PMO; know how to develop the skills needed by the people. Who can argue with either of these answers? From an internal controls perspective the need for and parameters of; the capability within; and the effective of, a PMO are all closely tied to these two facts. I would argue that the clarity of what this demands is then back to this leadership challenge. Starting with their accountability for ensuring vision and framework of controls are aligned.

Who is therefore feeding or listening to the PMO?

I cross-refer way back to Dale and Val’s first podcast proper (#S101) – a great question – why bother reporting at all? If decisions are already made. If data is not to be believed. When the metrics being reported are little more than touch points or sign-posts without interest in the real story within. What function do these conduits of information exchange actually serve? Leadership directing us toward the culture we create and how we behave (#S1E13)

Holistic perspective

That is why the wider context is also key. It informs perspective by presenting others. It avoids the potential for confusion at differing scales of interest. Using the same terms but talking at different levels of interest – psychologist John Verveake terms this modal confusion. For example, I still talk of construction as a project, not a project phase. The tier two and more granular supply chain may have their own contract terms (and their own agenda) defining their project. Indeed if you follow my Blog I am arguing it is possible to talk in terms of projects | within projects but that that requires awareness of various levels of time and scale.

Interface or centre space?

My view is projects of construction become distanced between employer and contractor. The contracts of construction that interface or divide. Just as we each operate under contracts of employment however, there are wider control environments within which we can all work. So why is the question of the PMO placement so rarely more central here too?

Do we need a PMO? The prior question for me is do we need to share more information, and better share interest in the means chosen to facilitate visibility and control. Contracts do not have to govern interfaces of control, they can work with them rather than be them.

Thanks, Project Chatter

For teaching me more about PMOs. A wander through your archives also time well spent.

When the penny finally drops that them and us culture is not suited to the bigger endeavours it will be because we all understand each other better. We can then find more trust, and more common ground, accounting for each others needs and wanting all to succeed. This shared centre-piece – this conduit – giving the project one identity, one set of motivations, one aim, one pulse. Maybe we should all be middle-out focused. And why not channel that through a PMO?

My question for next time (#S4E90) and Americo Pinto of the PMO Global Alliance therefore is: how can we persuade more project initiators to share the PMO on a project, for the benefit of all project actors, and therefore the project itself? Why not share the project controls and the data? If we can have critical controls serving all sides, the less sides we necessarily need to have. The more time we can spend all looking out.

Thanks, House of PMO

The House of PMO offered us a decent coffee hour. I left their home enthused, and have signed up to their newsletter. Should I change my answer to their pro-forma question, “which type of PMO do you represent“? In my haste I answered, n/a…

Crossed-rails

One final reference back to Project Chatter Podcast episodes. Everyone should listen to the CrossRail episode (#S3E64). There is much learning and insight here. Including a challenge to the fundamentals – as Prof. Marco argued the season before. The better questions we should ask when megaprojects are set-up. The outcomes prioritised. The metrics selected. The tone and the attentions that dictates. The control environment seemed robust, collaborative, and effective. What a centre-piece PMO could look like. We just needed the right plan.