Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The process vs. experience paradigm: Establishing the PMO and managing the change

Establishing the PMO ,especially a process for product introduction is a challenge. Any established company trying to establish a new process is "running the trains and laying the tracks" at the same time.
Any process that does not match with intuition (experience based) is discounted as a poor process. Similarly, any new process that does not throw new insights is also discounted as a heavy process for doing something intuitively or from experience. Hence, establishing benefit of a new process is balancing the fine line.
We have also heard common complaints that there is no spirit in the templates and deliverable. People are churning the wheels without the spirit - so what is the "spirit". There are also numerous form vs. content debates
A proposed methodology is
1. Fill the forms/templates/deliverable
2. Check with common sense, get feedback on the content from experts
3. Create a conclusion from the deliverable
4. Highlight issues and closure plans, force learning's from the team (and incorporate in process)

The benefit of the process is only if we can ramp-up learning and standardize across programs to get the benefits of experience standardized.

Every one of these steps must be orchestrated for key programs by the PMO. Hence, while PMO strives for training members on the deliverables, it is crucial to drive debate on the content and signoff on outputs.

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