If I ask you to close your eyes and imagine a carpenter, you’ll probably see a man with a hammer or a nice serrated saw. For a plumber, water pump pliers would come to mind.
The misleading factor of a PMO tool
In Kenya last year, scientists discovered tools that appear to be 3.3 million years old. Very unusual because the oldest human is about 2.8 million years old. This now shows that these tools were already made by the predecessor of humans, perhaps Lucy herself, who must have lived in Africa about 4 million years ago.
Since prehistoric times, tools have been very interesting. However, these days organisations seem to think that as long as the right tools are used, a project management office (PMO) can be an added value to an organisation. An clerical worker can then operate the tool, and the PMO is ready. Now, all projects will run smoothly!
The solution is a well-designed PMO
During my work at MOJEO, I encounter this thought almost everywhere. When setting up a PMO, the first question is almost always, what PMO tool are we going to use? It can be very convenient to make a tool available to a PMO. But without an understanding of how projects are run within an organization, what maturity level the organization has in terms of managing projects, what bottlenecks are specific to an organization, where the quick wins are, what processes are critical, and what an organization's mid-term strategy is, tools won't be able to help you make the desired improvement.
On the contrary, I would even go as far as to claim that the tools only stop you from creating the desired improvement in the short term. Tools are there to help an expert to carry out his job more easily, tools are not the solution to a problem. The solution needs to come from the expert, if you don’t do that, there’s a good chance that you’ll run into a wall with the PMO soon.
How MOJEO can help you? MOJEO first takes stock of the PMO needs within your organization. Then a concrete plan of action is drawn up to which we will set up the PMO. More information about setting up a PMO? To the PMO page!
