8 Introduction
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
and professional associations focus on improving “project management
maturity”—deploying external standards and best practices, implement-
ing new project management software, or conducting formal training pro-
grams. All of these approaches may be useful, yet they either downplay or
ignore altogether the knowledge, wisdom, and experience that are already
resident in the organization and can be cost- e ectively applied to improv-
ing performance within and between projects. What’s missing from these
approaches is a systematic method of facilitating learning from project ex-
perience so that the organization can focus its own talents and capabilities
on solving and preventing problems and improving performance—and
doing so in a way that works for the organization’s unique culture and
needs rather than imposing outside standards that require large amounts
of training or consulting dollars to be e ectively deployed.
PROJECT AND PROGRAM MANAGEMENT OFFICES
Many project organizations have also implemented a project or program
management o ce to improve project performance. While a PMO can be
a highly e ective mechanism for facilitating performance improvement,
most PMOs consider learning opportunities to be those situations in which
a team or project manager didn’t follow the established procedures. Devia-
tions from the methodology often become the only learning experiences
that the PMO recognizes. Because of this, PMOs are often perceived as
an extra layer of management that simply creates bureaucracy and more
rules that bog down projects. The result is often a contentious relation-
ship between teams and the PMO, one that creates rigidity and political
wrangling that limits performance gains, inhibits innovation and learning,
and saps morale.
While many PMOs, they can also play an invaluable role in facilitating
learning and performance improvement if they are structured and oper-
ated in an adaptive way. Chapter 2 provides a road map for PMOs that
want to become more e ective in this role.
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