PMOs Should Harness ALL Projects, Not Just IT
Strategy+Business’ article on the experience of the NBA’s CIO mused about what makes a CIO a strategic leader in a business (image source: www.cuttergallery.com by John Marsh). Surprisingly, they did not stress how a Project Management Office (PMO) can help harness and focus ALL projects (IT and non-IT) in a business. The focus on how to somehow broaden the CIO’s role always mystifies me and tends to leave out non-IT project control. I’m a fan of enhancing other executive’s understanding of IT and then getting better collaboration among all executives on ALL projects in a business through PMO and governance functions.
The basic message they promulgate is: get your house in order, do a project inventory, get some high-profile project successes, create a governance process, and then be innovative. Seemingly good advice, but because they are so IT-centric they miss how governance processes can apply to the whole organization. Their advice on the governance process reveals this narrow line of IT-only thinking:
“Fix the governance process. Effective IT governance is critical to developing a smooth-running IT operation. If the lines of authority and responsibility regarding spending, project approval, and strategic initiatives aren’t clear, no CIO can be strategic or successful. The CIO will have no clear sense of where he or she stands, and no confidence regarding how to move ahead on projects critical to the success of the enterprise.”
What do YOU think? Does a focus on IT project control, without enterprise project control, help an organization? Should the CIO assume a more strategic position within a company? Does it depend on the company and the percentage of company projects that are IT projects?
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POSTED IN: Best of the Best Practices, PMOs and Portfolio Management
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