Postscript for the Smaller PMO


The smaller PMO is likely to provide technical support rather than technical or business leadership for this PMO "project recovery" function. The PMO's primary role should be to reduce or remove the causes of troubled projects, thereby minimizing the likelihood of any need for project recovery. It can accomplish this role through regular reviews of project status and by assisting the project manager in identifying any indicators of weak project performance.

The PMO should be proactive — in conjunction with its "methodology development" function (see Chapter 1) and its "standards and metrics" function (see Chapter 3) — in identifying those indicators of weak project performance that best serve the relevant organization. Such indicators can be incorporated into the content of recurring project status and progress reports prepared by project managers. The most prominent indicators include the results of variance measurements for project cost, schedule, and resource utilization. The PMO can also develop other indicators that have significance within its project management environment.

Finally, the PMO can be of service to project managers, not to mention the business interests of the relevant organization, by constructing prescribed remedies that can be applied in response to weak project performance indicators. These remedies represent corrective actions that a project manager can take when specific problems or issues are encountered in the course of project management. For example, standard remedies can be prescribed to bring project variance to within acceptable thresholds, to reduce extensive product development time, or to manage scope creep through the use of more-stringent change-management procedures.

In summary, the smaller PMO should do what it can to facilitate development of project problem indicators, to facilitate routine examination of those indicators, and to prepare the preferred response or corrective actions that can be applied by project managers when problems are identified.




The Complete Project Management Office Handbook
The Complete Project Management Office Handbook, Second Edition (ESI International Project Management Series)
ISBN: 1420046802
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 158

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