It may not always be apparent but the goals of the Project Management Office (PMO) and agile teams are well aligned. Both groups want to get to the same destination: namely successful projects and happy stakeholders. However, things often come adrift as soon as the best direction to travel in to get there is discussed. The PMO might expect lots of planning and some documentation to confirm everyone understands the approach. An agile project team might want to build some proof-of-concept models to test feasibility and get confirmation of understanding. So, very quickly the two groups can disengage and have difficulty generating alignment again.

This is one reason agile teams don’t always see the Project Management Office (PMO) as a source of assistance. All too often a traditional PMO can Present Multiple Obstacles, but it does not have to be that way.

First let’s examine what PMO’s are supposed to do. The old roles of: “Rules”, “Tools” & “Schools” goes some way to describing their functions, but a more complete set of offerings was provided in the 2010 PMI Project Management Journal article “Identifying Forces Driving PMO Changes”. These are:

1. Monitor and control project performance
2. Develop and implement standard methodologies, processes, and tools
3. Develop the competency of project personnel, with training and mentoring
4. Multiproject management, including program and portfolio management, coordination and allocation of resources between projects
5. Strategic management, including participation in strategic planning and benefits management
6. Organizational learning, including the management of lessons learned, audits, and monitoring of PMO performance
7. Management of customer interfaces
8. Recruit, select, and evaluate project managers
9. Execute specialized tasks for project managers (e.g. preparation of schedulers)

1. Monitor and control project performance – Help teams track their velocity. Assist with tracking team and sponsor satisfaction ratings. Look out for and alert teams of dangerous velocity trends, check backlog size, and offer reviews of iteration and release plans.

2. Develop and implement standards – Provide templates for user stories, test cases, cumulative flow diagrams, etc. Provide agile PM tools, educate supporting groups on iterative development concepts.

3. Develop personnel with training and mentoring – Provide agile training courses, coaches, and mentors to help project mangers transition to agile projects and upgrade their skills. Send people to local agile events.

4. Multiproject management – Coordinate between agile teams, communicate between projects including items such as outlining progress, issues and retrospective findings. Help manage Release Trains at the program level and Investment Themes at the portfolio level using frameworks like the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

5. Strategic management – Identify projects with opportunities for early ROI or competitive advantage.

6. Facilitate organizational learning – Gather project velocity profiles, capture, store and index retrospective findings. Include perceived PMO cost vs. value in project metrics.

7. Manage Stakeholders – Provide Product Owner training, guidance on acceptance testing and how to evaluate and give feedback on systems. Champion the importance of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to projects.

8. Recruit, select, and evaluate project managers – Develop guidelines for interviewing agile project managers.

9. Execute specialized tasks for project managers – train and provide retrospective facilitators, create agreements with agile project trouble shooters, provide mentors and coaches.

Understanding the role of a PMO and translating the goals into an agile setting helps create alignment rather than conflict between the groups. These items may sound a tall order for your average old-school PMO. However PMO’s are under pressure to remain current and demonstrate their value in a climate of fast moving projects, cost cutting and increased scrutiny.

In the September 2009 PMI Community Post magazine Jack Duggal published an article called “Teaching PMOs to DANCE” that dealt with the issue that many of today’s projects are moving quicker than PMO’s can respond. Many PMO’s struggle assisting projects that DANCE:

Dynamic and changing

Ambiguous and uncertain

Non-linear and unpredictable

Complex

Emergent nature of projects that causes instability

The agile community calls projects like these “a good fit for agile” and this is the synergy. When we can explain agile approaches are not just non-conformist, ill-planned projects, but instead a proven approach for these tricky new project types then a win-win is possible for both camps.

Jack Duggal also gave a presentation at the 2011 PMI Global Congress entitled “Reinventing the PMO” which was quite agile manifesto like. Jack outlined a need for PMO’s to shift:

1. From Delivery of Projects to Benefits Realization and Business Value
No longer is delivery of on-time, on-budget projects considered successful. It is necessary but not enough. PMOs need to cultivate a mindset to shift to a benefits and outcomes focus and establish measures to ensure benefits realization and achievement of business value.

2. From Delivery to Adoption and Usability
Typically, PMOs are focused on improving execution capabilities. Projects are implemented well, but often the outputs and deliverables are not used or adopted. With a shift to an adoption and usability mindset, PMOs can promote and plan for adoption throughout the project lifecycle to ensure intended realization of projects’ benefits and value.

3. From Diffused and Disjointed Focus to Holistic and Balanced Adaptive Approach
Often PMOs are pulled to address the current pain or fix the problem of the day. This results in a diffused and disjointed PMO focus and limits the ability of the PMO to provide a balanced approach.

4. From Change Management to Change Leadership
Change management in the PMO realm has focused on configuration management and procedural changes. Evolving PMOs understand the need for organizational and behavioural change and get involved in change-readiness assessments and preparation. PMOs can play a key role in understanding, leveraging and leading change.

So, rather than PMO’s being unsupportive of agile, I have found most to be very co-operative when alignment with agile helps them address challenging projects, deliver value and stay current. Also as project managers experienced in agile take roles in the PMO I think this transition will accelerate. With some education and buy-in a good PMO can Provide Many Opportunities for agile teams.

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Some rifts are occurring in AgileLand - a world supposedly driven by cooperation, trust and appreciative inquiry! Debate is arising about first generation agile methods (XP, Scrum) and newer upstarts like Kanban and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Perhaps because market shifts carry training and consulting revenue with them, but a few people don’t seem very happy, as evidenced by some recent blog posts.

Ken Schwaber’s UnSAFe at Any Speed article describe SAFe as a RUP based dinosaur focussing on processes and tools rather than individuals and Interactions. Ian Mitchel summarises the Scrum vs SAFe debate well in his piece Method Wars and speaks to his own SAFe experiences.

David Anderson wrote a post on how Kanban is Anti SAFe in the way the two methods approach adaptation for an organization. He describes SAFe as a collection of (somewhat outdated) software development best practices that you engage an expert or team of experts to tailor for your organization. Kanban on the other hand is based on the idea that knowledge workers know more about their domain than their supervisors or outside experts do and should therefore be the people selecting and tailoring the approach.  So, instead of using experts to select and tailor process, the team does this work as part of the innovation culture fostered by Kanban.

Alan Shalloway describes Why Net Objectives Supports SAFe; they are a SAFe Silver partner organization, and believe it offers a proven, documented approach to scaling agility that is underpinned by sound lean and agile principles.

When I read these different accounts I find myself agreeing up to a point with each perspective. I don’t go quite as far in my beliefs as each author, but if I was talking to the authors I’d probably just nod and bite my tongue for the small portion I feel they are pushing too far. So does that make me a hypocrite, or an easily persuaded novice?

Feeling a little uncomfortable, but not caring enough to worry about it too much since I’d rather be solving business problems rather than debating religious wars that rarely deliver much value, I found an explanation from an unlikely source. A friend had sent me a link to a DiSC Leadership profile tool, it asks a series of questions about your preferences in a leadership role and generates a nice report on your Leadership style.

My assessment indicated a “D” Dominance preference for Getting Results, Taking Action and Offering Challenge.

 The tool lists some good tendencies of having a strong drive to:

• Achieve results
• Overcome  obstacles
• Get things moving
• Work towards challenging goals
• Convincing others

The assessment also pointed out some potential negative traits including:

• Problems following strict rules and protocols
• Performing routine tasks
• Getting bogged down in inefficient procedure or meetings
• Things that slow down your pace
• Dealing with people who don’t meet your standards

Generally I am not a big fan of personality profiles, perhaps I hope to be not as stereotyped or easy to categorize as they suggest. I like to think people are unique and multifaceted, but this DiSC Leadership assessment summarized my tendencies very well and helped me understand why I feel the way I do about agile, Kanban, SAFe and even the PMBOK Guide.

Basically I am more results driven and will employ and adapt whatever tools and processes I think will help me achieve those results. As I have said before, if abandoning agile principles and instead wearing silly hats got my projects done better, I would be all for it. Instead however building motivated, empowered teams and championing smart behaviour from all stakeholders through servant leadership and savvy project management is the best I have so far.

So, when I look at the SAFe framework I don’t see too many problems, but instead tend to employ the elements I think suitable to solve my current project’s issues. Due to my “Problems following strict rules and protocols” I probably would not engage SAFe consultants to guide its implementation, but instead discuss the framework with the team and gain consensus for elements to incrementally trial. Being told “That’s not how we do it” or “The PMO has a different standard” tend to fall into my blind spot of “Getting bogged down in inefficient procedure or meetings”, “Things that slow down your pace”, and “Dealing with people who don’t meet your standards” etc.

I do see that these are weaknesses I should work on, but I am hired to get results and deliver value. When this occurs without breaking too many rules or upsetting too many people I call it a good day. I see bending rules and flexible interpretations of process as an enabler of value delivery. For example, in the recent upgrade from the PMBOK v4 Guide to the PMBOK v5 Guide some new “Subsidiary Management Plans” were introduced, but I see this as a boost for adaptability not more control or rigor to follow.

The new PMBOK v5 Guide processes:

• 5.1 Plan Scope Management
• 6.1 Plan Schedule Management
• 7.1 Plan Cost Management
• 13.2 Plan Stakeholder Management

These could be interpreted as more Draconian control of how we manage scope, schedule, etc. However I see them as my opportunity to tailor the process and define a more lightweight, adaptive approach.

Since the goal of “5.1 Plan Scope Management” is to “… describe how the project scope will be defined, developed, monitored, controlled, and verified” here is my opportunity to explain that we will be using  a vision statement and prioritized feature list instead of a WBS to better support reprioritization and accommodate changes.

Likewise, the new process “6.1 Plan Schedule Management” is a great place to explain the use of release plans, iteration plans and story maps. In my half-full world, these new processes are there to help us be more agile or whatever we need to be (perhaps more structured for your project) in order to be successful - they support tailoring and specialization.

So, where does this all leave us? Well, I found a way to justify my methodology indifference and explain my disregard for rules or process. Maybe your DiSC profile can help explain your feelings towards these recent methodology debates. Likely if you are more of a DiSC "CS" style you would have a different view and very strong opinions about their importance.  Please let me know what you think.