Only a third of IT PMOs will ever work, and the rest of 'em won't. For the mathematically challenged, such as myself, that means that two-thirds of all IT project management offices (or program management offices, or whatever you want to call them) will fail. Nothing scientific in these numbers, mind you, and I didn't do an extensive survey. This is just what I've seen myself, and you're going to have to take it (or not) on faith.

In my line of business, I see lots and lots of PMOs - in fact, I'd say that they've become almost fashionable in the last couple of years; you can't seem to turn around without someone setting up, re-energizing or re-engineering an IT PMO. There's even a conference or two dedicated exclusively to IT PMOs; one recently wrapped up in Savannah, Ga. And I'll bet some expert in Savannah told the attendees: "Two-thirds of PMOs will fail, present company excepted, of course."

Introduction

Portfolio Management must be at the heart of any effort to improve project management results. A Project Management Office (PMO) without an excellent portfolio management process is like a body with a diseased heart. Sooner rather than later, the body demands more resources than the heart can give and the body succumbs.

Why do I advise executives in this way? There are two reasons. First, many organizations (around 100% of the ones that I consult with), have activated far too many projects. The result is that many projects do not complete when the executives badly need the results. Secondly, even when some projects do finish on time, they fail to meet the organization's goals.

Implementing Enterprise Project Management (epm), carries a range of pre-requisites and implications. Over the next few minutes, we'll look at how to deal with the most challenging aspects of an epm implementation: changing user behaviour! First, we need to look at what epm really is. When we talk about epm, we usually think of a small number of very distinctive goals:

First of all, most people believe that epm includes the ability to report and/or analyze all of the organization's projects simultaneously. There are some implications to this, of course. The first is that all data are being maintained in a single system and within a single centralized repository. When we talk about epm, we are almost always referring to an integrated environment where people expect to be able to get their project management questions answered regardless of which project or projects we are referring to.

Introduction & Objectives

A company's goals, its strategy and its projects are as intertwined as the lives and emotions of a husband and wife. This white paper is a guide to senior management on how to dramatically increase their chance of meeting their organization's change goals through Project Portfolio Management. Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is a set of processes to choose, activate, expedite and monitor projects with correct scope to meet organization improvement goals. If performed successfully, PPM will meet its key objective of measurably improving the return on investment (ROI) from an organization's projects.

So you've decided on implementing enterprise project management. Now, you've got to make a plan for how to move ahead with your deployment. We'll look at some of the key elements of creating a project plan for an enterprise project deployment.