106 Roles
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
were consistently incorporated into new projects. Debra explained how
people rotating into and out of roles confounded her e orts to ensure that
past learning was brought forward:
And that’s the one thing that I’m constantly dealing with now, is the
change of roles and responsibilities within the business as well as the ap-
plication development area, keeping track of who’s who and, “Who else
do I need to bring up to speed? Who else do I need to convince? Who else
do I need to have see the light?” Because that constantly changes.
Similarly, June explained the problematic impact of organizational
changes and the shifting roles and responsibilities that result:
But as a PMO, you’ve got people coming into and out of jobs all the
time, coming from one role to another role, and are at di erent levels
of maturity within the role that they play. If you only focus on the set-
back schedules, the milestones, and the templates, you’ll fail, because
you have to be adaptive to the organizational constraints.
Fear of Publicly Airing Mistakes. Some of the PMO leaders (35 percent)
pointed to project members’ fears of publicly airing mistakes as a barrier
to learning from past project experiences. Debra pointed to fears of air-
ing mistakes publicly as a reason why she often was not invited to project
teams’ lessons- learned sessions:
That’s why I’m not always invited to them because it’s kind of like,
you know, “We don’t need to air our dirty laundry.” They do create
the lessons learned, and they are attached (sometimes they’re not).
You know? So if I know a postmortem has gone on, then we’ll double-
check to make sure that the information has been attached. But we
don’t—sometimes there’s sensitivity to it, so we don’t need to add salt
to the wound.
Similarly, Cathy talked about how project teams might not want to
relate their experiences publicly because of the sensitivities involved:
Considering lessons learned, sometimes there are folks that don’t want
to share that information if there was something that happened on
The Project and Program Management Function (PMO) 107
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
the project that, you know, they don’t want to get out. You know?
Like we had that knock- down, drag- out ght and we really don’t want
anybody to know about it. Not that that happened. But do you know
what I mean?
Sarah talked about her experience with a project manager who she
feels was afraid to speak up when problems started occurring on a proj-
ect, leading to larger problems and an eventual “no- go” decision by her
management team:
Unfortunately, it was because the project manager wasn’t as good as
she should be, and she was covering things up. You know, the price
of failure was too much for her to pay, but then, you know, it caught
her at the end. So every week on week, when I’d been asking, not just
about me, but certainly because—we’re talking about the PMO meet-
ing. Week on week, when I was asking, “Are there any issues? Are there
any resourcing constraints?” You know, whatever. It was like, “No, no.
We’re ne. No, we’re ne.”
In reaction to the nding that fear of airing mistakes was a barrier to
cross- project learning, a project manager in the project manager focus
group related her thoughts about this phenomenon and how it can occur
in the project environment:
That’s what I was going to bring up, especially when you have a string
of projects that were, say, green. And then all of a sudden, you’re on
somewhat of a turbulent project, where it’s turning red, there’s a ten-
dency to somewhat dismiss it. Because well, you don’t want to kind of
admit that there’s something wrong. And also your manager, or who-
ever it may be, may tend to distance it because they had such a great
experience prior to this as well. (Project Manager 3)
Re ection Deferred Until End of Project. One- fth of the PMO lead-
ers highlighted the problem of retrospective recall and how conducting
lessons- learned sessions at the end of a project’s life cycle can limit partici-
pants’ ability to learn from past project experiences. Patty discussed this
problem and how it can create a barrier to project members’ learning from
their project experiences:
108 Roles
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
Because sometimes, particularly in project teams that have been out
there for a period of time, it’s hard to do a formal lessons learned at the
end and have them remember everything. . . . I think that if we were
able to crack the nut of getting more real- time feedback of lessons
learned from our teams, it would put us in a better space. I think that
there’s always that lag and delay of what happens to when we nd it,
and where we nd it. It’s always challenging.
Similarly, Mort described how he would change his status meeting ap-
proach so that re ection occurs more often over the course of projects:
When we’re having status meetings, we should be focusing not entirely
on, “Okay. Where are we against these milestones? And what issues
have we raised?” We should also be asking, “What’s going well?” With
our success, make sure we talk about them, to understand the “whys”
behind it and the “hows” where others can hear it.
Lack of Senior Management Support. One- fth of the PMO leaders also
identi ed a lack of senior management support as a barrier to cross- project
learning. In these cases, PMO leaders stated that senior managers often do
not “walk the talk” when it comes to lessons learned, and some did not
even “talk the talk.” For example, Melissa described the “lip service” paid
to learning from the past in her organization:
Oh, the data that we get from postmortems? You know, “Gather that.
And yes, we need to investigate that and make sure that doesn’t happen
on the next one.” You know, “Check into it on the next one.” So there’s
lip service to that. All kinds. “Absolutely that’s the right thing to do.”
But then, when it comes down to it, “Well, that’s just another task, and
we don’t have time for that.”
In response to the question, “In what ways does the organization sup-
port your e orts to learn from project work and share those learnings with
your team and other PMs?” Cathy described how the senior managers in
her organization are often focused on status reporting rather than lessons
learned:
The Project and Program Management Function (PMO) 109
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
You know, it’s hard to say. Because that gets back to the question of, “Are
they looking for the lessons learned?” And they’re really not. What they
are looking for is the status reporting on the projects. They’re looking
to share that information to know where we are, in that regard.
Organizational Members’ Di culty Accessing Past Lessons Learned. One-
fth of the PMO leaders also reported that it was di cult to share lessons
learned with the right people at the right time, even if those lessons were
stored in databases that were accessible via the corporate intranet. Mack
talked about why he perceives databases like this to be limited in value:
So in the past, what happened was, you know, what they do is they do
gather some lessons learned and sometimes they post it in a common
repository. But nobody looks at it and nobody even sees what is in
those lessons learned. As I said earlier many times, documenting and
just even publishing it, nobody is going to look at that.
This was echoed by a project manager in the project manager focus
group, who said:
It’s more left to chance. . . . They will put lessons learned [on an intra-
net site], and I’ve seen that it even translates into revising training, as
needed. But it’s more than a process. It’s more word of mouth. They’re
shared among the PMs.
The Challenges of Brokering
E. Wenger (1998) characterizes brokering as a complex process that’s
fraught with social challenges. As mentioned in Chapter 3, he claims that
brokering requires “enough legitimacy to in uence the development of
a practice, mobilize attention, and address con icting interests. It also re-
quires the ability to link practices by facilitating transactions between them,
and to cause learning by introducing into a practice elements of another”
(pp. 109–110). Because boundaries lack the negotiated understanding of
what de nes competence in a given community of practice, the value of
brokering can be di cult to recognize. As a result, “brokers sometimes
110 Roles
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
interpret the uprootedness associated with brokering in personal terms of
individual adequacy.”
It is not surprising, then, that 55 percent of the PMO leaders reported
insu cient authority over project teams as a major barrier to cross- project
learning. Given their boundary- spanning role across communities, direct
authority may be perceived as a route to achieving the legitimacy required
in order to gain the cooperation and attention of project managers, teams,
and management.
Because of the frequent mention of a lack of direct authority, addi-
tional analysis was performed to determine whether or not there was a
di erence in perception between those who report to “C- level” executives
and those who report further down in the organizational hierarchy. It was
found that approximately the same proportion of participants reporting
to the C level as of those reporting elsewhere expressed a lack of direct au-
thority, suggesting that organizational position does not necessarily make
a di erence in respondents’ perceptions of a lack of authority a ecting
their ability to facilitate cross- project learning. The researcher posits that
it is not necessarily organizational position that creates the required level
of authority, but the perceived legitimacy of the PMO leader, regardless
of where he reports.
According to Wenger, brokering requires the ability to “manage care-
fully the coexistence of membership and non- membership, yielding
enough distance to bring a di erent perspective, but also enough legiti-
macy to be listened to” (p. 110). The two most frequently expressed en-
ablers of cross- project learning—a strong network of good relationships
and support from senior management—can be seen as both contributors
to and by- products of the level of legitimacy required of the PMO leader
if he is to mobilize the activities required to facilitate learning from one
project to the next.
As discussed in Chapter 3, Cervero and Wilson (2001) claim that adult
learning in any context represents a struggle for knowledge and power.
Learning not only is shaped by relations of power, but plays a role in repro-
ducing or changing these relations. Taking this perspective, the negotia-
tion of meaning associated with project lessons learned can also be seen
as a political endeavor, the results of which depend on the relative power
associated with project teams, management, and the PMO.
Project teams can exercise power by excluding the PMO from discus-
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.