Lean and Agile PMO Best Practices

While a PMO can be a highly effective mechanism for facilitating performance improvement, most PMOs consider improvement opportunities to be those situations in which a team or project manager didn’t follow established procedures. Deviations from the methodology often become the primary focus for continuous improvement.

Because of this, many PMOs are often perceived as an extra layer of management that simply creates bureaucracy and more rules that bog down projects. The result is often a contentious relationship between project teams and the PMO.

Below are five best practices for moving towards the lean and agile PMO. These principles are based on recent research and cutting edge practices in use at some of the best organizations in the world.

Best Practice 1: PMOs Need to be Effective Knowledge Brokers

PMOs can play an invaluable role in generating substantial performance improvements that reduce delivery cycle times, eliminate waste, and transfer innovations from one project to the next.

The functions of a PMO are important. Project teams disband, and professionals are constantly moving in and out of various roles. Without a PMO, the organization risks losing the knowledge gained by project teams, resulting in redundant work, repetition of mistakes, and considerably higher costs on future projects.

Effective PMOs are able to “take learning back to the system” and embed the resulting knowledge into the way the organization functions on an ongoing basis. They provide the mechanisms for building learning, knowledge, and adaptation into systems and routines that go beyond the tenure of specific individuals working in the project environment at any one time.

As shown in the diagram below, lean continuous improvement consists of a three-stage process. Each stage needs to be performed effectively in order for the next to occur. Continually managing all three stages effectively can lead to substantial improvement across the project portfolio.

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 continue reading...