Top 10

PMO Worst
Practices:
Pitfalls
to Avoid
and Best
Practices to
Follow
Building and running a PMO doesn’t come without its challenges.
Often times, it feels like gravity is working against you. Thankfully, every
problem has a solution. Here are the top ten PMO pitfalls to avoid and
solutions to turn them around and keep your PMO success climbing.
Getting a project management office (PMO) off the ground isn’t easy. It requires
executive support, process implementation, and general adjustments to
something that’s “new.” Those aren’t small asks, which is why it’s not surprising
that so many PMOs fail to take off.

Changepoint has engaged with thousands of enterprise customers to help

ensure they are successful from the outset and how to avoid common pitfalls
that lead to failure. Based on our experience, we’ve compiled the top ten PMO
worst practices that we’ve seen and advice on how to avoid these.

1. THE PMO PLAYING METHODOLOGY COP

If there is a common refrain to failed PMOs, this is it: The PMO becomes the
“Methodology Police” tasked to enforce methodologies—often ill-fitted ones—
rigorously. At best, this leads to complaints from project managers; at worst
it leads to open revolt and ignoring the methodology entirely. Rather than
becoming an aid and guide to project managers that creates consistency in PM
practices, this PMO has become the PM’s worst enemy. The PMO loses visibility
into the project portfolio, and often fails due to lack of support.

Instead, implement a PMO that maps to the needs of your organization and
helps your teams remain responsive to change. Enforcing processes is part of
the PMO’s responsibility, but the reality is that scope, requirements, objectives,
and more, change. With the right processes and project management tools in
place, project managers can do their jobs more efficiently and effectively. The
PMO doesn’t lose visibility into project status and can instead support the agility
needed to respond to change.

2. IMPLEMENTING A METHODOLOGY WITHOUT A

FRAMEWORK
We have seen many PMOs try to implement a Software Development Life Cycle
(SDLC) across their organization. This is great for some software development
teams, but can be completely inappropriate for infrastructure and process
improvement teams.

A better structure is an overall project management framework, with just the

basic phases and gates and a few key, controlling artifacts (business case,
project schedule, status report, etc.). This is sometimes known as a PDLC
(Project Development Life Cycle), and many different SDLCs can fit under the
framework, tailored to the needs of the project type.

Most organizations are doing more than one kind of project. A PMO best
practice is to define and implement the right project types within your project
portfolio management (PPM) tool to support all of your PMO project needs—not
just one. Make sure your PPM tool can support project-type hierarchies and
type-specific templates to help your teams manage and streamline requests,
demand evaluations, and execution.

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3. NOT IMPLEMENTING A METHODOLOGY
Are we contradicting ourselves? Not really. If the PMO does not implement some
kind of overarching framework, it cannot create an apples-to-apples view of the
projects in the portfolio.

However, a methodology is required to ensure consistency of project execution

and to reduce the risk stemming from inexperienced project managers. For
instance, a rookie PM might not do the proper project planning, assignment of
work, or risk assessments leading to problems down the road and often heroic
efforts to get the project back on track. So, an established methodology is
essential—or perhaps several under an overarching framework. Finally, federal
regulations, especially Sarbanes-Oxley, require methodologies that meet certain
process and change management requirements.

For the bimodal PMO, or organizations running more than one methodology
for different projects, it’s best practice to create standardized metrics that track
progress so that project status can be reported against equally. Even though
waterfall and agile methodologies traditionally score progress differently, it’s not
impossible.

Using percent complete or basic project health indicators helps level-set across
varying methodologies and compare apples-to-apples. That way, your PMO can
use the right execution methods for the right projects, without sacrificing visibility
or the overarching framework your PMO has worked to implement.

4. NOT MATCHING DEMAND TO SUPPLY

In steering committee meetings, the focus is almost always on prioritization.
That’s a good thing, since good prioritization processes result in a good
understanding of project demand. But when it comes to deciding how many of
the top projects can actually be done, discussion too often turns to pure guess
work, e.g. “How overloaded is your department, Tom?” or “If we take on the
top 10, can we handle the load?” Without a metrics-based understanding of
resource capacity, it is impossible to match that wonderfully organized demand
with the actual supply of human resources.

Find a PPM tool that makes it simple to balance supply and demand and assess
resource capacity. Resource management tools that track project and non-
project work are key, and processes that make it easy for the resource manager
and project manager to work together helps your PMO build the optimal teams
that meet project needs. With the right analysis and reporting tools, manage
utilization and better forecast resource demand across the entire enterprise.

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5. NOT LOGGING TIME
This is actually the source of worst practice #4. Without tracking project and
non-project work, it is impossible to know any department’s true capacity.
Planning, from the highest to most detailed level, becomes guesswork. The
absence of accurate and timely data makes it impossible to manage and allocate
resources.

But, there’s another hiccup. Even if you do require your resources to track
time, most processes in place don’t cater to today’s modern workforce. Easier
methods for tracking and submitting time, such as mobile apps that integrate
with your PPM tool, increases the frequency in which time is entered and
improves the quality of the data being used to balance supply and demand.

We recently surveyed(1) more than 800 project management professionals. Of

the respondents, only 11% use a mobile time-tracking app, with the majority
relying on manual processes, such as spreadsheets (28%) or pen and paper
(36%).

In terms of data quality, 77% of managers aren’t fully confident the timesheets
they approve are correct. And they’re not alone. Nearly half (49%) of those
submitting the timesheets aren’t even sure their data is fully accurate either. If
your PMO is relying on manual processes and questionable data, allocating
resources is difficult and makes it impossible to match the right resources with
the right demands.

6. GATHERING UNNECESSARY INFORMATION

PMOs are great at gathering all sorts of statistics. If that information is not used
in the decision-making process, why gather it? It just creates an extra burden on
the project team without generating any useful result. An example is gathering
time data at the detail task level, including sub-day tasks like “Enter time,”
“Respond to email,” and “Attend staff meeting.” These may be useful reminders
as tasks, but for planning purposes all we really need to know is how much time
each resource is spending performing “Admin” tasks.

Figuring out what kind of data your PMO needs to refine processes and make
better decisions is important and a PPM tool that can create reports to compare
the necessary data is a start. A tool that integrates with your other core business
systems, such as CRM and ERP, and imports data turns your PPM system into
more than a portfolio management system—it becomes your single source of
truth.

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7. KEEPING AN AD-HOC PROJECT REQUEST PROCESS
The most common process for dealing with new project requests is to analyze
them one by one and decide if each merits becoming a new project. But what
about the other 100 requests? Where’s the prioritization? Upgrading the OS on
the servers may be important, but is it more important than the new data center
in EMEA? If you evaluate requests in isolation, then the next “important” project
trumps an already in-flight project, until it is trumped by the next “emergency”
project. The result is serious project churn.

The reality is that project requests come in all the time. Instead of trying to
implement request cycles that potentially hinder important initiatives, best
practice is a standardized process for project intake that maps to your PMO’s
project governance. That way, requests are being assessed side-by-side without
literally having to be assessed side-by-side. An ongoing intake process enables
requests to flow into the PMO at any time without pushing start dates. How
many should pass the grade? See number 4: matching demand to supply.

8. LACK OF EXECUTIVE SUPPORT

This one should be obvious, but it happens all the time. The executive team
realizes there’s a problem with projects not executing properly, contending
for too few resources, or just not delivering results. So they authorize a PMO,
and hope it solves the problem. But come time to attend steering committee
meetings, they send lower-level functionaries and don’t give them decision-
making authority. Or, even worse, they over-ride PMO decisions. Then, when
projects are once again performing poorly due to resource contention and
prioritization conflicts, they blame the PMO and disband it.

Executive support is critical to the success of the PMO. Having the decision
makers in the room to address issues and course correct keeps the PMO
moving in the right direction.

9. IMPLEMENTING A TOOL WITHOUT A PROCESS

Another obvious, but often found, problem. Whether you are implementing a
PPM solution or an ERP system, automating bad or non-existent processes
simply makes your problems come at you faster. IT departments are particularly
prone to thinking the tool is the whole solution, but it’s surprising how many
other organizations fall into this same trap. The usual excuse is that the tool
already has best practices embedded, so why not just follow those?

In our experience, every organization is different and requires their own tweak
on “best practices.” Find a PPM solution backed by a team of people ready to
listen to your needs and help you figure out how to best use the tool to solve
your pain points and accomplish goals. Robust out-of-the-box features are
extremely important, as you don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but knowing you
can customize a solution to fit your needs is paramount.

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 10. IMPLEMENTING A PROCESS WITHOUT A TOOL
Standard advice seems to be to get your process act together before automating
with a tool. We’ve seen many PMOs who have followed this advice and run into
problems. Complex processes run on spreadsheets and documents are very
burdensome, and that extra burden can sabotage adoption.

We’ve found it’s far better to implement the process and tool at the same time.
There are a few advantages. First, you can design the new process to take
advantage of the chosen software tool’s strengths. You would have to tweak
them during an implementation anyway, so you might as well do it while you
design the process. Second, users learn the new process in the new tool which
means one learning curve instead of two. Finally, your new process has the best
chance of adoption by streamlining and automating from the start. There is one
serious downfall to beware of though—when something goes wrong, you really
need to diagnose if it is a process or tool issue. Software is a great inanimate
scapegoat, but often not the actual problem.

For more PPM topics, check out the resources below:

Business Agility: Is It The Essential Buyer’s From Insights to PMO Success Guide:
Easy to Pivot? Guide: Project Portfolio Action: Mobile Keeps Are You Ready for a
Find out what stands in Management Businesses Moving Change?
the way of businesses What to know before you Forward Ready to get your PMO
responding to change. buy a new PPM solution. Results of Changepoint’s up to speed with market
survey on time and task demands?
management. Here’s how.

Citations: 1. Changepoint report, From insights to action: Mobile keeps businesses moving forward

About Changepoint
Changepoint is a leading provider of project portfolio management (PPM), enterprise
architecture (EA), and professional services automation (PSA) applications. We help more
than 1,000 global customers transform chaos into order with work management solutions
that prioritize initiatives and get the job done. Whether you’re managing a portfolio of projects,
engagements, or applications, Changepoint solutions help realize benefits faster. With visibility
and control provided by Changepoint’s solutions, smart decisions are easier, innovation is
accelerated, and businesses are better poised to adapt to today’s changing landscape. For more
information, visit: http://www.changepoint.com/.
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