Agile Practices to Improve Project Management Organization (PMO) Effectiveness

Despite individual Agile project successes, many project management organizations (PMO) are not prepared to accommodate Agile projects into their existing landscape, particularly in the areas of metrics and reporting. The PMO’s top-down budgeting and planning processes do not align with the short delivery cycles, customer-driven prioritization, and continuous evaluation of requirements that characterize Agile projects. Not only must organizations address this friction between the PMO and Agile IT projects, they should take advantage of Agile projects’ experiences and adapt into a 21st century management organization.

Project managers must consistently communicate to and report on projects across business units and development methodologies. Given the breadth of projects within a CIO’s control, it is not surprising that the PMO is often heavy-handed, imposing a strict approach to metrics and guidance across all projects. Typically, PMO metrics are not consistent with the work of Agile teams, so the teams are unable to communicate project management data on which the organization can act.

This paper explores two important phases in the transition to Agile project management:

1. Providing a context in which Agile projects can co-exist with traditional projects, under the auspices of a centralized PMO, and simultaneously add value.
2. Leveraging Agile practices to improve the PMO’s effectiveness across all projects. 

About the author

Liz Barnett is the Principal Analyst at EZ Insight, Inc., an analyst and consulting firm focused on software development. She is also founder of the Agile Journal, and was Editor in Chief for its first two years. Previously, Liz spent 10 years as a Vice President and Research Analyst at Forrester Research.