Most companies have established project management
offices (PMOs) to help them enforce standard IT processes during
IT/business projects, according to a report by Forrester
Research.
But many PMOs spend too much time on compiling reports for
senior management and not enough on ensuring that projects are
delivered on time and within scope.
That could explain why nearly a fifth of all new IT project
implementations are delivered three or more months late.
"It's no surprise that the presence of a PMO didn't have much
effect on project failure rates," said Tom Pohlmann, an analyst at
Forrester and the author of the report, "How companies govern their
IT spending".
The study is based on telephone interviews with 704 North
American IT decision-makers between late April and June.
Sixty-seven per cent of the respondents said their organisations
have one or more PMOs - either inside or outside the IT department.
Last year's figure was 53%. The problem, said Pohlmann, is that too
many PMOs serve as "process cops and report compilers" for
executive teams and often "lose sight of what they're supposed to
be doing - to make sure projects are running effectively."
Dan Garrow, senior vice president of information systems
and chief information officer at Mohegan Sun, a hotel and casino in
the US, agreed with the report's findings.
"We have a PMO which has frequently been referred to as the 'PMO
Police', " he said. The IT department "working hard to overcome
that perception," in part by trying to enlist senior management
support of PMO concepts.
In addition, IT departments have to be more rigid about which IT
projects they're willing to take on, said Garrow. "IS departments
are so ingrained with the idea of being a service organisation that
to say no to a customer is almost taboo."
Garrow advocated calling on executive management "to assist and,
in many cases, say no on behalf of the IS function so they can
maintain the customer relationship with user departments".
For purposes of this study, Forrester classified a project as a
"failure" if it was delivered one to three months late and affected
at least 3,000 end users. According to survey respondents, 19% of
their enterprise application initiatives were delivered at least
three months late, and another 17% were between one and three
months overdue.
Pohlmann did not expect any dramatic improvements in IT project
delivery rates because of what he attributed to IT management
apathy. "I think there is improvement that can be achieved, but not
from a project management methodology standpoint, because those
have been around for years."
Instead, he said business units have to remain much more
involved with IT departments on project requirements throughout the
entire lifecycle of the project.
Don Christian, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, believed
Forrester's decision to use a one- to three-month project delay as
part of the criteria was too harsh.
"Our experiences have found that one- to three-month delays on
projects might be palatable if they end up meeting their original
business benefits," he said.
However, Christian agreed with Pohlmann's assessment that PMOs
tended to focus too much on reporting and administration. An
effectively run PMO, said Christian, "needs to have a domain of
expertise to evaluate not only what's going on with a particular
project, but also to evaluate the market for insights into whether
staff has the right skill sets to deliver projects, organisational
behaviours".
Scott Carcillo, vice president of enterprise IT services at
hosted services provider Digex, agreed that business alignment is
central to the success of IT/business projects.
However, if IT is talking about "the business" and business
people are talking about "the IT project", there's a disconnecton,
even if it is subtle, said Carcillo.
Thomas Hoffman writes for Computerworld