WHITMORE LAKE – Many organizations are expending enormous resources working to improve how they do projects. They see a significant opportunity to improve the competitiveness of their organization by improving what most consider dismal performance in projects.

Project Management Organizations are being designed and implemented to lead these organizational efforts to improve project performance. While the success of these PMOs is often questioned, there is no doubt that tremendous room for improvement exists in organizational project practices and that, with experience and knowledge, PMO performance will improve. One needs to know the answer to the “What is organization design” question to make changes in org design. Similarly, to adapt to new PMO design principles, one must better understand them.

Since PMOs are a relatively new phenomenon, it is reasonable that people who continue to ask the question; ?Why aren?t PMOs more successful??, often reach entirely different conclusions. That is the nature of the evolution of thought. The most resonant answer to this question is ?Because our mental models of what matters in projects are inconsistent with our experience of what really happens.?

In 2004 Suboski and Company conducted a study exploring what really matters in project management. In this study project professionals were interviewed using a technique called Appreciative Inquiry (AI), which focuses on what works rather than the much more predominate focus of other inquiries, what does not work. The interviews for this study also focused on experiential conclusions rather than analytical conclusions. Using these techniques we were able to circumvent the application of mental models and go right to what people experienced.

Mental models are representations of the world and how the world works which is different than the world. A map of a city is not the city, and sometimes the map is not consistent with what actually exists in the city. I live on a road that is misnamed on most maps. If I look up my address on Mapquest, it shows that I live 15 miles from where I actually live. In other words, if I am at the corner looking at the street sign while I have my WiFi laptop with Mapquest zoomed in on my street, the names are not the same. Which do I trust? While maps are simplifications that allow us to navigate much more widely than we would be able to without a map, in some situations we can become ?lost? when our map does not match reality.

What we found from our 2004 study was somewhat surprising. While we anticipated that our mental maps of project management were inconsistent with the actual practice of projects, we were quite surprised with how complete the mismatch was. Prior to the study we did extensive research into the skills and practices people claimed contributed to project success. In essence we searched for the mental models with which people generally operated. We found that the community intelligence on the subject was weighted heavily towards things, mechanics and process. Our study found that what mattered most were skills and practices that had to do with mood, relationships of human beings and flexibility.

Those that participated in the study also reported surprise. They widely reported that they gained significant insight from the experience. They were surprised by what people reported as being most important and found that they became different, more effective observers of what matters most in projects.

We became curious to see what most influences people that are designing PMOs, the maps or the reality. We began to speculate about what sort of practices PMOs would focus on if you accepted the conclusions of our 2004 study as fact. In other words, if a team?s mood is essential to project success, what organizational practices would be put in place to produce effective moods? In our exploration, we have yet to find a PMO that influences mood in a positive way.

Actually, the organizational practices PMOs employ often seem to work to undermine the mood of people in projects. If, as we learned from our 2004 study, project performance could improve by empowering people, do PMOs intentionally work to empower people? Again, the current standard appears to be the opposite ? PMOs often work methodically and rigorously to diminish the authority and autonomy of individual Project participants.

While we do not claim that the conclusions of our 2004 study are facts, it is uncanny how orthogonal our results are from the practices of PMOs. Given that the results of this study are consistent with the results of many other Organization Development surveys and resonate with most people we encounter, we are confident that the results may not be exact, but they are directionally sound.

The domain of the PMO is still relatively immature. Many people are theorizing, practicing, and studying to improve the situation. There is still room for some wonder and speculation about appropriate design principles for building effective PMOs. To this end we have begun another study exploring which existing organizational practices contribute most to project success. This study extends our earlier work in that the 2004 study focused on a Project Manager?s (PM) personal practices whereas this study explores which organizational assets, not personal PM assets, help the PM to achieve success.

We anticipate that the results from this study will provide those that are designing PMOs with invaluable insights into what really works rather than what theoretically works. It will also provide those that participate with us an opportunity to explore the disconnect between their mental models and the real world. As we continue to evolve our capacity to perform projects we feel that an awareness of the dissonance between what we think and what we experience will drive the greatest advances in this art of producing projects.

The author, Kevin Suboski, has been studying linguistics, biology, chaos theory, project management and philosophy for 20 years. His company has been engaged in project management consulting since 1994. Prior to the formulation of Suboski and Company, Kevin spent 9 years acting within projects. To find out more about the current PMO AI study, click on Suboski.Com