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Project Management: Right-Sizing Governance

It’s taken more than a half century, but the practice of enterprise project management seems to finally be getting a little respect. Nearly 700 business technology professionals took the time to weigh in on our InformationWeek Analytics Enterprise Project Management Survey, and 70% of those have adopted formal project management methodologies, such as those from PMI. Sixty-one percent hold PMP certifications.

“It seems that project management is finally evolving to become more focused on being collaborative, leading and inspiring teams, and ensuring the people angle is taken into account to ensure quicker adoption of changes,” says Lynn Batara, director of the enterprise project and portfolio office at Franklin Templeton Investments. Still, Batara does see a need for more emphasis on the strategic side of project management, like portfolio management and alignment with corporate strategies, enterprise resource and risk management, and benefits realization. In our experience, organizations tend to have a good handle on how to manage large, expensive projects. Where we fall short is in keeping track of the multitude of smaller projects that, in aggregate, account for a significant chunk of resources. And, you may be surprised at respondents’ No. 1 tool for project management.

Establishing a dedicated project management office can be an expensive proposition. The bottom line is that PMOs are more of an evolutionary than revolutionary concept at most organizations. In this report, we’ll compare the notion that “there can be only one” PMO to the field data, and discuss the evolution of PMOs at real organizations. Project management best practices were born in defense, engineering, pharmaceuticals and construction firms, and these are typically organizations where project management is at a high level of maturity. Companies that create complex software or consumer technology are more recent additions to the project management fraternity. These IT groups generally benefit from project management expertise. But at organizations with no broad project management background, IT (otherwise known as “just a cost center”) often has trouble getting even the most basic of project management practices accepted by end users. We’ll share some techniques for getting buy-in. R1341010

Survey Name: InformationWeek Analytics Enterprise Project Management Survey
Survey Date: June 2010
Region: North America
Number of Respondents: 684