The Project and Program Management Function (PMO) 105
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So if I were the queen of the world, then I would ask for more re ec-
tive time, time to actually decompress and—What’s the word? And
bring about a learning environment which is, “Yeah, just give us a little
more time to get our breath before we move on to the next one,” be-
cause that’s how you learn the lesson. You know? Okay. Yes. The PMO
can bring everybody together, and we can talk about the lessons, and I
can document them, and then I can circulate them. But if that’s while
you’re already one- third of the way into the next project, how the hell
am I supposed to apply them as quickly as we’re doing the projects?
Time pressures are also cited as a reason why project members may not
want to take the time to follow PMO processes related to lessons learned.
Darla, the PMO leader in the organization that requires documented les-
sons learned in order to maintain an internationally recognized quality
certi cation, talked about the “pushback” she sometimes receives on these
requirements:
They’re pretty hard-core here about requiring so much documenta-
tion, so much follow-up, so many metrics. Some of them make sense
for some projects and some of them don’t make any sense for some
projects, so I think there’s a lot of pushback in getting that done. You
know, when you didn’t have to do it before and you suddenly do, it is
a lot of extra work.
The perceived burdens of “extra process” were also highlighted by a
project manager who said the following in response to the interviewer’s
question, “What do you think PMO leaders perceive to be their respon-
sibilities related to the transfer of lessons learned?”:
I think that their perception of a PMO is the governance, more gover-
nance, and setting the rules, setting templates, and they’re almost mak-
ing these templates and rules as a goal by itself. I think this is where you
get, not all of it, but many of the perceptions.
People Rotating Into and Out of Roles. Just under half of the PMO leaders
(45 percent) also stated that people moving into and out of project- related
roles at all levels, including project managers, team members, and senior
decision makers, impeded their ability to ensure that past lessons learned