Shoehorning Agile

The project management office, or PMO, is an important factor in the success of a project that is started with agile. A PMO is usually present when an organization has numerous large project portfolios that they’re currently managing. The PMO is a huge deciding factor in whether an agile project can ever get out of its beginning phases. The PMO has this kind of power in a larger organization, and they are usually invested in more traditional project management. A PMO’s reports will typically need to be changed to represent an agile project. Convincing the PMO of this can prove to be a daunting challenge.

A PMO’s project standards are usually based around traditional project management, and the many PMOs see that their role is to defend these standards. For example, instead of a list of project milestones which would be used in traditional project management, the work is prioritized by using the product backlog. This is something that would need to be brought up to the PMO director and explained to show how it functions within the project’s life cycle. The backlog can be changed depending on what is currently the highest valued item. The backlog isn’t always closely tied with a project budget and some directors can be frustrated with this.

The agile project cannot be broken up into milestones. The PMO might not ask for a plan but they will want one. For example, their past work often included a Gantt chart to easily show how the project’s work was being divided. Because of this, one strategy is to include the PMO in the agile training. They can be part of running and maintaining the training, and being involved in agile this way could even make them one of the biggest advocates for changing to agile.

A team’s project manager usually has a closer relationship with the PMO. Due to this they can try to act as an intermediary between the PMO’s expectations and the agile project. Most importantly, spend time early on in project development to cultivate a positive relationship with the PMO. The PMO is a major factor in how an organization accepts agile, and can help in keeping things from becoming a huge challenge.

Source:

"Agile at Work: Building Your Agile Team." Lynda.com - from LinkedIn, www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Welcome/175073/379413-4.html. Accessed 5 Nov. 2017.

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