PMI Global Congress Atlanta Wrapup

I just returned from the PMI Global Congress and I believe it was the best one I have attended (this was my eighth conference). During the Global Congress I attended several different awesome presentations covering a wide array of topics. Each presentation offered valuable information to help me do my job better.

I highly recommend you attend one of PMI's Global Congresses (next year's congress is in Denver, CO). Attending the PMI Congress is a great way for a project manager to earn PDUs (professional development units), which are required to maintain your PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) designation with PMI.

I have been a big supporter of the TenStep family of products and I rely on several of their methodologies to do my job. As usual, Tom Mochal and company from TenStep were at the Congress talking about their new products and training services. Check out Tenstep's website and look over their latest methodology called ProcessStep. Another great project management methodology vendor is Method123. I use and own some of their products and they make great tools and templates.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has been busy over the past year, and during that time they have released a few new project management related standards. They are:

Practice Standard for Project Configuration Management – This standard defines processes and tools to help develop a project configuration management system.

Practice Standard for Earned Value Management – This standard helps the project manager objectively identify where a project is and where it is going. EVM methods cover project scope, schedule, and costs.

Practice Standard for Scheduling – A guide to help the project manager build effective schedules, and additionally help to provide quantifiable processes to determine the maturity of a schedule.

Also, PMI has made updates to existing standards, which are:

Project Manager Competency Development Framework – 2nd edition

Combined Standards Glossary – 3rd edition

Government Extension to the PMBOK Guide – 3rd edition

Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures – 2nd edition

There were many vendors at the show and I heard there may have been over 4000 attendees. PMI membership is growing fast and interest in the project management profession is at an all time high. If you have not yet earned your PMP certification now may be the best time to seriously consider earning this valuable credential.

The PMI Global Congress is a great place to network with other project managers. I met some great people at this year's conference and plan on keeping in touch with all of them. Your best project management learning experiences will usually come from talking with and listening to other project managers.

Until next time.

The Value of a PMO

It takes courage for your organization's senior management to step up and support the concept of a professional Project Management Office (PMO). While forming a PMO shouldn't be taken lightly, the benefits are clearly documented.

According to Gartner Industry Research, "building a Project Management Office (PMO) is a timely competitive tactic". They believe that "organizations, who establish standards for project management, including a PMO with suitable governance, will experience half the major project cost overruns, delays, and cancellations of those that fail to do so". Gartner goes on to say that three basic types of PMOs have emerged.

Per Gartner, "at each end of the PMO spectrum are offices that on the one hand range from a repository, which collects and disseminates project management best practices and methodologies, to an internal consultancy model or enterprise project office, which directly provides project managers to run individual projects". "Between these two ends of the spectrum are variants of a coaching model". "These types of project offices provide expertise and oversight for the business (sometimes providing the Project Managers), in addition to advising on project setup, reporting (for example, via dashboard’ reports), and facilitating post-project reviews and metrics collection".

What Value can a PMO Offer?

Establish and deploy a common set of project management process and templates. These reusable components save time by allowing projects to start-up more quickly and with less effort.

The PMO builds and maintains the PM methodology and updates it to account for improvements and newly discovered best practices.

The PMO facilitates improved project team communication by having common processes, deliverables, and terminology.

The PMO sets up and supports a common repository so that prior project management deliverables can be candidates for reuse by similar projects. This helps to save start-up time.

The PMO is responsible for PM training. This training helps to build core PM competencies and a common set of experiences. This PMO training helps to reduce overall training costs paid to outside vendors.

The PMO coaches project managers to help keep projects from getting into trouble. At risk projects can be assisted by the PMO to mitigate further issues and risks.

The PMO serves as a tracking mechanism for basic project status information and provides a common project visibility report to management.

The PMO tracks organization-wide metrics on the state of project management, projects delivery, and the value being provided to the business by project management in general, and the PMO specifically.

The PMO is the overall PM advocate to the organization. This could include educating and selling management on the value of using consistent PM processes, or as a liaison to other business centers to provide project management training and support.

One fact is clear from the research I have conducted, a PMO is critical when it comes to supporting sound project management practices. The larger the project the more project management (PM) can help to bring about success. It is readily accepted that good Project Management processes support:

* Reduced Cycle Time and Delivery Costs
* Improved quality of project deliverables
* Early identification of project issues, budget, scope and risks
* Reuse of knowledge and the ability to leverage that knowledge on future projects
* Improved accuracy of project estimates
* Improved perceptions of the project management organization by our partners
* Improved people and resource management
* Reduced time to get up to speed on new projects

Questions or comments? Post directly on this blog, or e-mail me at sfseay(at)yahoo.com