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in re ecting and improving in ways that make substantial cross- project
improvement possible.
STEP 4: TRANSFER IMPROVEMENTS TO
NEW AND EXISTING PROJECTS
After the retrospective session ends, much of the work begins for the PMO
or the program manager. In collaboration with group members, she does
the following:
䡲
Document and follow- up on the action items from the retro spective.
䡲
Re ne and augment methodologies, tools, and templates.
䡲
Coordinate additional cross- project improvement sessions as required.
䡲
Transfer improvements to new and existing projects.
As noted in Chapter 4, PMO leaders and their teams should attempt to
communicate “process knowledge”—knowledge about how a team can
go about solving speci c problems. Process knowledge enables a broader
number of people to use the resulting insights, whereas project deliver-
ables alone are often project- speci c and may lack broader utility.
If key stakeholders were involved in the previous steps and feel that
their time was well spent, encouraging the use of the improved practices
on future projects may not be di cult. That’s because project managers
have already been involved in developing improvements for problems that
matter to them. They will have utilized valid information to make free
and informed choices about how to improve future project work, leading
to greater levels of internal commitment and broader adoption. Those in-
volved with developing the process improvements can themselves become
evangelists for their transfer to other projects.
CONCLUSION
Cross- project improvements enable organizations with many concurrent
projects to spread innovations across teams, creating a multiplier e ect
that leads to improvement in multiple projects simultaneously. Consistent
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with the principles of multi- level learning, cross- project improvements
help project organizations deliver faster, improve customer satisfaction,
reduce waste, and empower teams to learn and improve. As a knowl-
edge broker, the PMO facilitates continuous improvement by incorporat-
ing cross- project innovations into the group’s processes, methodologies,
tools, templates, and systems so that future projects can bene t from the
resulting insights.
In the next chapter, we cover how the multi- level learning coach and
the PMO leader work with senior managers to facilitate alignment be-
tween the organization’s strategy and the project portfolio as a whole.
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