How Important is Adoption for a PMO?

daptiv@barokas.com — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 22:00:00 +0100

What makes a successful PMO? A great deal of hard work? Definitely. But there are some other ingredients in that “special sauce” that enables a PMO to succeed. Let’s explore.

Principles of Scoring Models

daptiv@barokas.com — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:00:00 +0100

When I was running the IT-PMO at PeopleSoft we faced an interesting dilemma. As we finished work on the integration of JD Edwards there was a ton of unmet demand for IT work from all corners of the enterprise. This ranged from tweaks to the purchasing system to an all-new global training environment. We quickly realized even our ability to analyze the demand would be swamped by the incoming flood of work.

This year the Daptiv team attended Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2012 in Orlando for the world’s biggest industry conference focused on IT leaders with over 8,000 senior IT executives (including 2,000 CIOs). Here are some of our takeaways from the Gartner sessions at the event:

PMOs and project managers are faced with failing projects more often than they would [...]

What is a successful Project Management Office?

daptiv@barokas.com — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 22:00:00 +0100

This is a question that has been posed many times and answered many times. Yet, we continue to see PMOs failing very often. Does it mean that the answers that have been presented are incorrect? Not necessarily. In fact, most answers surrounding metrics and value are relevant but don't address the question of "fit". [...]

Excerpts from our Conversation with Forum One

daptiv@barokas.com — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:00:00 +0100

In an informative Q&A session with Daptiv, Joe Pringle Managing Director Project Delivery, Forum One sheds light into how Daptiv PPM helped his company gain better visibility into planning, scheduling and executing projects seamlessly across the organization. Pringle is responsible for overseeing operations and project performance, inc [...]

Effective Approaches to Project Prioritization

daptiv@barokas.com — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 22:00:00 +0100

‘The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities’- Stephen R. Covey

Like most of us, I have a tendency to attend to tasks that interest me the most [...]

It’s Time to Learn and Interact at Daptiv’s PMO Success Webinar Success Series

daptiv@barokas.com — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 22:00:00 +0100

Early this week we announced the launch of our upcoming PMO Success Webinars for 2012, aimed at offering real-world guidance on how to build and run a successful Project Management Office. This free educational series will provide insights and perspectives from PMO Directors and Consultants at organizations running successful PMOs as well [...]

Building and Maintaining a Lean and Effective IT Governance Board

daptiv@barokas.com — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 22:00:00 +0100

Lean.org characterizes Lean as:

“Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less t [...]

Elements of a Lean PMO

daptiv@barokas.com — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 22:00:00 +0100

People and organizations all over the world continue to embrace and adopt "Lean Management Principles" in their work. What started with Edward Deming in the 1950s and later found its way into the Toyota Production System has now made inroads into software development. You will notice that IT organizations and software development teams often [...]

Improving PPM Maturity: Resource Leveling

daptiv@barokas.com — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 22:00:00 +0100

A quick trip to Wikipedia yields the following definition for resource leveling: ‘a project management technique used to examine unbalance use of resources (usually people or equipment) over time, and for resolving over-allocations or conflicts.' In other words, through resource leveling we can ensure that the project schedule is reasonable a [...]

Obama Embraces IT Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

daptiv@barokas.com — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 22:00:00 +0100

Although the Clinger-Cohen act was passed in 1996 that mandated a capital planning and investment control process, PPM as it's found in the private sector is only just making its way to the federal government. As a recent memorandum from the Executive Office of the President notes, &lsqu [...]

Mobile Devices in the Enterprise

daptiv@barokas.com — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0100

I was talking with my mom the other day about some of the differences between what I experience in the workplace now and what my dad experienced while I was growing up. It struck me that one of the biggest changes has been in the boundary between "work-time" and "off-time." When my dad, who was a manager at a large communications technology company, was away from his desk, he was truly away from his desk - and all of his normal work-related activities waite [...]

Has PMO become a bad acronym?

daptiv@barokas.com — Sun, 08 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0100

What's in a name? As far as PMOs are concerned, it matters quite a bit. Standard parlance maintains that PMO stands for Project Management Office. Back in the days when the PMO literally ran a single project or program, the name was fine. But over time the PMO has evolved. Its scope of work has increased manifolds- first, it performs its core resp [...]

Are You Ready for a PMO?

daptiv@barokas.com — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 22:00:00 +0100

A quick Internet search yields lots of great information about the benefits of a Project Management Office (PMO): common processes, improved project selection and oversight, and best practices for everything under the sun that might be related to a PMO. There's also a lot of good guidance about what you need to do to get started. But before you run off to create your charter, your business case and the presentation materials, you may want to consider if your organization is actually r [...]

The Top 10 Metrics to Track PMO Performance

daptiv@barokas.com — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0100

The role of the PMO has become more critical than ever in supporting strategic business priorities. As PMOs become more successful, they also need to be more accountable and prove their value. In this blog post we outline our top 10 metrics to track PMO performance. Although a PMO may not be able to track all these metrics immediately, as a PMO grows and matures, it should be able to track the majority of these metrics on a quarterly performance scorecard.

If this week is any indication, 2012 is shaping up to be the Year of the PMO.

A recent survey from project management firm PM Solutions found that PMOs are becoming more influential and entrenched than ever. The “State of the PMO 2012” survey reached out to more than 500 project managers across a number of industries and saw that, i [...]

From the Trenches: Q&A with Ken Feyder, Director, Information Services PMO for Coach

daptiv@barokas.com — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:00:00 +0100

Daptiv recently sat down with Coach's Ken Feyder about how the company's PMO is using Daptiv PPM to support its enterprise IT initiatives.

Q: Ken, tell us a little bit about Coach and your role at the company.

A: Coach designs and produces fine accessories and gifts for women and men, including handbags, small leather goods, business cases, weekend and travel accessories, footwear, watches, outerwear, scarves, sunwear, jewelry, fragrance and related accessories. The compan [...]

Optimal Decision-Making: Effectively Communicating Information

daptiv@barokas.com — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:00:00 +0100

In the last couple of posts, we've written about the challenges of providing information for decision-making. From collecting data to converting the data to information that tells a story, it's all about making sure that we're providing decision-makers, including ourselves, with what is necessary to make solid, fact-based decisions. But there is one more variable we need to consider: what is the best way to communicate that information?

The channels used f [...]

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