Don’t let project management turn you into a loner!

Aside from occasionally feeling like the Rodney Dangerfields of the business world, project managers can also suffer from a sense of isolation.

On larger projects, there are likely to be multiple team members from the same department working on deliverables within the scope of one project whereas it is rare to have multiple project managers working on the same project concurrently.  In companies that have PMOs there might be some opportunities for birds-of-a-feather interaction, but it can get even more lonely in functional organizations where project managers are scattered across multiple departments or even worse where there may only be one or two project managers in the entire company.

As we know from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, human beings need to feel a sense of belonging within a social group once their physiological and safety needs have been met.  While each project team is a social group, the project manager may not find the peer-level support and interaction that they crave.  Over a prolonged period of time, this can result in reduced job satisfaction and even the potential for an individual to question whether they have picked the right career path.

To combat this situation, here are a few ideas.

If you are in an organization that has multiple project managers, meet with other project managers to discuss the idea of a project “buddy system” whereby each project manager will commit to spending an hour or two a week with another project manager, understanding the current state and challenges on their project and providing guidance, advice and support.  This approach is easier to implement within an established PMO, but a virtual community of practice can also be created in companies where a PMO does not exist.

Join the local chapter of your project management association (and join a project management association if you haven’t done so yet!) and participate in their regular events.  Not only is this a good way to network and continue your professional development, but it might provide you with the opportunity to mentor (or be mentored) a fellow project manager.  Venting about organizational project management maturity issues can be cathartic (so long as it doesn’t become chronic) and you will likely find a more understanding audience in such circles than in your company.

You could take this involvement one step further and actively volunteer with the chapter – you would be applying your project management skills to a worthy cause and I’m willing to be that you would most likely get more recognition and appreciation for your efforts than you might receive in your normal job.

Actively participate in project management online discussion forums – LinkedIn and PMI are a couple of good options.  While you may feel that you have nothing to contribute, once you start following discussion threads, you’ll be surprised how much you know and are able to share.  Many of these forums are very active and you might find yourself spending some time each day with your virtual support network.

While managing a project can sometimes make you feel like you are marooned don’t let that prevent you from building support “bridges” to nearby or faraway islands!

Breaking the project management capability improvement vicious cycle

Multiple surveys have supported the assertion that PMOs whose primary purpose is to support project delivery by providing competent project managers are usually staffed at or below demand levels.

This can be challenging for PMO leaders who are also tasked with raising the overall project management maturity of the organization as they will find themselves torn between portfolio oversight and supporting their staff or focusing on capability improvement change initiatives.  Delegation to their staff is certainly one option, but a common symptom of lower organizational project management maturity is that project managers are required to do a lot more heavy lifting to keep their projects on track leaving them insufficient time to also work on valuable, but less critical improvement initiatives.

Without committing efforts towards improving the organization’s PM maturity, the longer the PMO will remain in the survival mode of having its staff struggling to keep projects on track.

Here are some options to break this vicious cycle.

• Strategic outsourcing: We tend to think of bringing in consultants external staff to lead or facilitate process improvement initiatives, but this may be backwards thinking.  Why not get approval for outside assistance to manage one or more active projects such that a full-time PMO team member can be freed up to focus on one or two high value improvement projects?
• Seek assistance from the leaders of tomorrow: University and colleges are a great source of motivated, creative talent that is willing to work for short durations at low or no cost.  Sure, you may not wish to have them directly manage a high risk strategic project, but coop students or volunteers are a good way to support (i.e. free up capacity) project managers by taking over project administration tasks and some may even be able to to run with the planning or development activities for simpler process improvement initiatives.
• Lead by example: Assuming you have exhausted possibilities with the preceding options, develop a prioritized improvements roadmap based on a realistic estimation of your personal resource capacity and commit to investing at least a few hours each week to this work.

If managing a PMO feels like running on a hamster wheel that is taking you nowhere, the simplest solution may be to give yourself some perspective by stepping off.

 

 

Do PMOs still add value in organizations that are at a high degree of project management maturity?

A LinkedIn question from this week on the topic of PMOs in the future made me think about the benefits of having a PMO once a company has reached a high degree of project management maturity.  This is not as fantastic a vision as you might think – after all, PMI’s tag line is Making Project Management Indispensable For Business Results and it is not outside the realm of possibility that many organizations will (at some point in the future) have project management institutionalized as an organizational competency instead of a skill shared by a select few.

When such a time arrives (See, I can take a “glass is half full” position at least once every year!), will there still be a need for a PMO?  After all, if project management skills become as natural to staff as operational competencies, do we still have a need for a group focused on the discipline?

Absolutely!

The first analogy I would make is to quality.  Even those companies that have reached stratospheric altitudes of quality and have embedded this competency into all aspects of their organization would still have a staffed quality department.

Here are some of the benefits that a PMO can provide to higher maturity companies:

• Guardians of the methodology – even in a high maturity organization, if there is no PMO, who is responsible for the ongoing evolution of PM methodologies and the tools which support them?
• Consultation & facilitation – even the most skilled PM can benefit from an unbiased external observer when faced with tricky decisions.  PMOs can aspire to be “neutral territory” by providing consultative services to project teams such as delivery assurance reviews or risk identification & assessment facilitation.
• Support for portfolio governance - If the organization has embraced project portfolio management practices (which is highly likely if it is at a high degree of maturity), the PMO can facilitate governance practices such as intake reviews or prioritization discussions.
• Consistent, strategic reporting – No tool can (yet) replace the benefits that a centralized staffed process can bring to portfolio-level reporting.  The benefits go beyond the communication of project status to looking at trends, systemic risks and issues and key lessons and reminders that can be shared organization-wide.

No matter how good a professional golfer is, they will usually benefit from a coach to help them maintain their performance and to improve.  An effective PMO will still be a valuable coach to your  organization no matter how low your project management handicap goes!