Lean and Agile PMO Best Practices (Continued)

Best Practice 2: Apply Lean Principles and Tools

Lean principles and tools provide the PMO with a powerful mechanism for reducing cycle time, eliminating waste, and accelerating the delivery of project portfolio value.

Lean principles have been put to work in the automotive industry since the 1970s, when Japanese automakers demonstrated the benefits that can be achieved through their application to manufacturing and production as well as to engineering and product development. Lean principles enabled Japanese automakers to reduce their engineering effort by half, and enabled them to shorten product development time by a third.

Best Practice 3: Conduct Regular Multi-Level Regular Retrospectives

Conducting post-project reviews and identifying “lessons learned” simply doesn’t work. By the time projects come to an end, people lack motivation to develop workable, practical breakthroughs. By that time, nothing can be done to change their outcomes.

Moreover, selective recall makes it practically impossible to remember what happened. PMO leaders need to adopt multi-level learning practices that make frequent retrospectives a regular part of the project lifecycle methodology while projects, programs and strategies are “in-flight”.

Retrospectives focus on developing concrete action items that can be utilized in the next iteration or phase. Teams review their intended outcomes, their actual outcomes, the root causes of those outcomes, and develop solutions that reduce cycle time, improve customer satisfaction, and eliminate waste.

Effective retrospectives utilize lean problem solving principles and tools. And they focus on multi-level learning to improve the overall system rather than its individual components. Regular retrospectives should be conducted at each of the following levels:

• Projects – to continually improve delivery as projects progress
• Processes - to eliminate waste, spread best practices, and embed improvements into cross-project methodologies, tools and practices
• Portfolios – to accelerate the delivery of value to customers and stakeholders.

Best Practice 4: Utilize an Objective, Neutral Retrospective Facilitator

A skilled facilitator from outside the team can help the group members at each level avoid “blamestorming” and focus on the processes by which they achieved their outcomes rather than focusing on the performance of specific individuals, departments or groups. Great retrospective facilitators create an atmosphere that is less conducive to defensiveness and blame. They ask tough questions, and they help teams focus on problem-solving in ways that lead to concrete action items.

Best Practice 5: Focus on Accumulating "Social Capital"

As knowledge brokers among multiple communities of practice, PMO leaders must maintain enough distance from each community to be able to offer balanced perspectives, yet they continue reading...