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AtekPC Project Management Office Summary of the Case In this case study (F. Warren McFarlan, 2007), we focus on the Project Management Office (PMO) challenges in a company named AtekPC. The company AtekPC, founded in 1984 and supported by 2100 full time and 200 part time staff members, manufactures PC. The business f this company is facing challenges due to industrial changes in the PC market induced by a significant competition from the mobile devices. While the sales figure of AtekPC in the year 2006 was 1.9 Billion USD, it is certain that the company now needs to deliver more complex projects to keep up with an industry level driven by cost cutting and efficiency enhancements. A Strategic Planning Office, created to respond to the changing business landscapes, established a Project Management Office (PMO) for the IT department of the organization. The principal goal of the PMO was to standardize IT project management practices, tools and mechanics. AtekPC, being a functional organization, manages its IT projects by the development staffs - Lead Analysts. The projects are executed in a culture of rapid responses to the client’s requests. With the changes in industry and businesses in the time of higher competition, a more definitive and structured approach of the project management was required. The main goal of the PMO was to establish its values to the organization by implementing a set of common project practices for the IT projects. The PMO was started with project level and enterprise level focuses. The project level activities were focused on consulting, mentoring and training. The enterprise level duties were oriented towards portfolio management, PM standards, methods and tools. The PMO had limitations associated with a shortage of staffs in that team. The PMO was a team with four members including a PMO director and three PM consultants. The PMO started with a set of minimal responsibilities of establishing project management practices, frameworks, tools and processes. Other enterprise level activities, such as, portfolio management and knowledge archiving were not included in the functions of the PMO. The senior management simply allowed the PMO to prove its effectiveness before granting full authorities to that team. The PMO organization structure, as that comes with two flavors, namely, PMO Heavy and PMO Light, was primarily following a PMO Light structure in which the PMO members worked with the functional or internal IT project managers to establish and practice the PM guidelines. There was a partition of opinions regarding adaptation of light vs heavy versions without a definitive decision. The PMO, in its implementation stage, encountered conflicts with the organization culture as the employees started to treat it merely as an administrative overhead that potentially slows them down to get their projects done. That perception was mainly due to two facts. First, the organization was not oriented with disciplined and structured project management methodologies. Secondly, there was a lack of project management knowledge across the organization. The market environment promoted the business changes and the changes in business prompted the company to adopt project management processes through a PMO. But that

did not guarantee an effective governance of the PMO. There was no measurable or quantitative governance implemented into the PMO. The entire process of governance was focused on qualitative information on whether or not the projects were being done effectively and fast. The implementation of the PMO, although motivated by business reasons, was slow and open ended mainly due to its mismatch with organizational culture.

Answers to the Questions 1. What is the purpose and mission of a PMO? In a project management realm, PMO serves as a node in an organization that sets up the project management standards, tools, and practices for all projects and creates a knowledge archives to feed into the organizational entities to manage their projects. It should also provide efficiency metrics to the Portfolio Management and create an effective resource requirement picture to execute its projects under a consistent and repeatable framework. For AtekPC, the PMO’s principal purpose was to empower the IT project teams with project management structures and tools to enhance their efficiencies through consulting and mentoring. The mission was to prove its effectiveness to the organization for a more comprehensive implementation of the PMO. While the initial mission and purpose of the PMO was focused on the IT projects, its enterprise level purposes were being built slowly to choose and prioritize appropriate projects for the business needs. Due to limited resources in the PMO, it was only set to serve the company at the project level and not at the enterprise level. The PMO was also having a mission to establish a proper authority for its performance once it proves its effectiveness.

2. What are the main challenges and obstacles in implementing a PMO? There were three main challenges and obstacles in implementing a PMO in AtekPC. Firstly, the organizational culture at that company was not so adaptive to a disciplined and structured PM practices. As a result, the employees started to perceive the PMO as an administrative overhead to their works rather than a supportive vehicle providing uniformity and smoothness in project management practices across the teams. Secondly, a lack of resources in the project management office made its functioning harder and limited to just project focused activities for the IT department. This resource limitation constrained the PMO to function in a light mode where its members were simply providing consulting services to the functional project teams. Thirdly, the PMO could not get supports from the entire senior leadership due to their skepticism on its effectiveness for this company. There was, in fact, a substantial knowledge barrier in the organization that imposed challenge to implement a PMO. 3. What structures and governance mechanisms are critical to effective PMO implementation?

PMO Light and PMO Heavy are the two versions of PMO considered for AtekPC. In a PMO Light framework, the PMO members work with the functional and internal project managers to implement project management practices and tools across the projects. The main advantage of this version is that it poses less conflict with the organizational culture. PMO Heavy, on the contrary, requires an authority for the PMO whose members would lead the Project Management efforts in the organization. The main benefit of this methodology is that it is capable of implementing a set of uniform and repeatable processes and tools for all projects in the organization. The main demerit of this version of PMO is that it can cause a friction with the organization culture. Based on the experience in the AtekPC, a structure in between heavy and light may be effective for a dynamic yet traditional organization under a market transition. The PMO governance requires quantitative and measurable metrics focused on its effectiveness. But, for AtekPC, the governance structure was lacking in quantitative measures. It was just focused on gathering the information on how effective was the PMO to drive the projects effectively with adequate speed. For AtekPC, the PMO was an element in the IT organization which did not allow effective governance.

4. How much PM is enough PM? How much PMO support is enough PMO support? An organization, depending on its culture and structure, can adapt an appropriate scale of PM. The appropriate scale should focus on the effectiveness of the project management in fulfilling the strategic goals of the company. AtekPC was facing severe market challenges that required it to change its business processes and to get involved in more complex projects. Under such a scenario, a simple yet effective PM structure would help them achieving their goals without disrupting its successful organizational cultural aspects. In order to make PM successful, PMO support is essential. The PMO support can be implemented in the project and enterprise contexts. At the same time, it can be organized in a light or heavy way in a company. An enough PMO support should make sure that the complexities in the projects and their interdependencies are easily addressed through standardization and predictability of the processes and tools. So, a light version may work for the organization, like, AtekPC for a short term. However, to integrate the projects with organization’s strategies, the PMO should really be at an enterprise level even for a company like AtekPC. An enterprise level PMO should act as a vehicle to connect the business directions with the functional projects. That will help the company to prioritize its projects and allocate proper resources.

Bibliography F. Warren McFarlan, M. K. (2007). The AtekPC Project Managemnt Office. Harvard Business School.