The Agile PMO: The Benefits of Using Agile Principles Beyond Project Management

James Terry is New York City-based technology consultant and delivery practice leader with 20 years’ experience of successfully managing large, complex business technology projects to completion. He has provided IT strategy and thought leadership to senior executives in multiple business sectors and has won awards for innovation. James has written whitepapers on strategies and best practices for a more effective and efficient project management practice. He can be reached at jamesterry@zoho.com.

Twenty-five years ago, the rapid growth of enterprise technology solutions ushered in a new approach on how best to implement and manage projects. Unfortunately, initial implementations often required mid-stream changes and turned out to be far more complicated than originally thought. As a result, project success and—more importantly—customer expectations were rarely met.

In an effort to stem the bleeding, organizations such as the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) developed standards and methodologies to ensure the successful delivery of IT projects. While project performance improved over the years, it wasn’t until the advent and acceptance of agile (approach and methodology) that a marked improvement in project success was seen.

However, the benefits of agile have yet to expand beyond individual projects, and most project portfolio managers and PMOs continue to rely on traditional performance metrics to measure overall success. This article explores the benefits of using agile principles to track project performance with greater accuracy and quicker, actionable information that will prevent projects from failing with little or no warning.

Measuring Project Success
Each year, PMI publishes Pulse of the Profession®, a global survey of project management practitioners. In the 2017 …

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Published at Thu, 10 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000