Lean-Agile PMO: From Process Police to Adaptive Governance

According to Jim Highsmith of The Economist, “An overwhelming majority of executives (88%) cite organizational agility as key to global success (…) Yet most companies admit they are not flexible enough to compete successfully.” Despite adopting Agile practices, many organizations struggle to achieve the predictable delivery, consistent speed, and agility required to compete in the modern marketplace.

What’s Agile Without Agility?

Executives are often quick to blame unpredictable delivery on inaccurate estimates, poor planning, and project delivery problems. They’ll say things like:

Our teams can’t manage projects
Despite Agile adoption, we are terrible at project delivery
We can’t estimate
We need more project management training

Poor adoption by a handful of teams might be the result of a lack of training or tools — but if the majority of teams are struggling, it begs the question: Are teams to blame, or are they falling victim to a broken system?

A Broken System

Many organizations “adopt Agile” without properly evolving their portfolio and project management practices. Teams are asked to “be Agile” in systems that are anything but, with:

No effective work-intake process
Weak management that says “yes” to everyone
Defining projects that are way too large
Inappropriate use of “projects”
No real workflow management system

Agility and speed are a result of a consistent, sustainable flow of value through the organization.

Organizations and the teams within them cannot achieve business flow without a disciplined approach to project management — which often requires a drastic shift in the way organizations operate. This is where a Lean-Agile PMO comes in.

The Role of the Lean-Agile PMO

As Lean-Agile principles are fundamentally changing the way organizations operate, the role of PMO is evolving as well. No longer do project managers need to play the role of process police, chaining their teams to inflexible processes through spreadsheets, project specifications, and status reports.

Instead, a Lean-Agile PMO can work to further enterprise Agile adoption, providing the support teams need to fully embrace Lean-Agile practices, and enabling greater agility and more predictable delivery across the enterprise.

In this webinar, Sanjiv and Roland share how an evolved PMO can bring discipline to project prioritization, use Lean-Agile techniques to track project portfolios, and provide the support teams need to fully embrace Lean-Agile practices.

What You’ll Learn

In this webinar, Sanjiv Augustine and Roland Cuellar at LitheSpeed explain the vital role a Lean-Agile PMO plays in providing adaptive governance across the enterprise to improve project delivery. You’ll learn how a Lean-Agile PMO:

Provides an organizational structure that is conducive for agile delivery
Creates the direction for agile teams to deliver for the organization
Enables Agile teams to execute in a coordinated way

Watch the Recording

Watch this recording to discover how a Lean-Agile PMO enables mature process adoption through the careful application of metrics, tools, and high-level standardization.