PMO Maturity Model with respect to Project Issues: Value add from PMO

Most senior management expect the PMO to be aware of risks in projects based on (1) their interactions with project teams (2) cross project experiences



The 3 levels of maturity of a PMO are

1. Initial: The PMO is still getting to be aware of the programs/structure and processes. Further, the rapport with the program manager will determine the extent of the risk awareness

2. Reporting: The processes have been established. Techniques to effectively capture risk and resolve are commonly accepted by program teams and PMO. The project leaders are also confident of the methodology and the PMO is aware of the risks known to the project teams

3. Value added : The PMO has been well established and is working over a range of projects. Cross functional project experience enables the PMO to foresee risks in the program not self evident to the project teams.

Every organizations leadership wants PMOs to ramp up as fast as possible to Maturity level 3.

Gaming your way through college!

Alan Feng teaches a course on star craft at UC Berkeley

How many thoughts per day and what goes to reduce them

I read three things this weekend that got me thinking - (1) Smarter people do think faster , (2)More than 55000 thoughts pass our mind daily and(3) 90+% of the thought is repetitive.

Just correlating this with my busiest times, they had the fewest thoughts - especially when I was programming Eulers problems

PMO survey and the PDCA

The PDCA (Plan do check act) cycle is a great tool in deploying any process. Simply put, the PMOs critical role is deploying project management best practices for value delivery. In this context, 

• Plan - Training and competence building + staffing / resource planning for programs (This includes involvement of PMO in strategic planning)
• Do - Support for greater functions and projects
• Check - Metrics and tracking
• Act - Continuous improvement

As PMOs mature (Over 3~5 years) , the check and act become more critical and important. For nascent PMOs, the first 2 are important. I think, this has come out very well in this excellent survey - PMO survey and webcast

Job rotation and Innovation

I have always beleived that more than 3 years in a role gets you to a state in which you can walk around with a coffee cup any day of the week you decide. Its also true, that only way to retain energy and innovate - This article How to keep innovating is just about what I keep echoing

Video uploads and an interesting Flickr clock

Flckr now introduces Video. I think their clock animation is a very cool way to get introduced to video 

Compared to YouTube which makes secure sharing a nightmare , I found Vimeo good, easy to use and secure.

Buridans ass and developing a human infrastructure for performance

Buridans ass is a classic where there is a thirsty and hungry donkey and lack of random events(a nudge of the donkey)  could be standing equidistant from both Food and Water.

In real-life there are 2 learnings from this - 

1. The difficult thing is to create ways by which you establish a means to measure and reward setting up the infrastructure for performance (getting food and water and the thirst donkey) in its place. Otherwise , there is always a winner take all of a new person who could potntially reap the benefits of the predecessor by nudging the donkey for performance

2. Innovation is the nudge. Most of us are in the process of hunting for food and water (incentives) with a process of linear thinking. The nudge creates the move to food or water in a different way since the world is full of opportunity anyway.

Credits: Fooled by randomness for leading me to Buridans ass