Notes from GTC West-Gopal Kapur

The instructor was Gopal Kapur from the Center for Project Management. www.center4pm.com. He’s a great speaker so if you ever have a chance to listen to him, take it.

A. One of the analogies was good…PMO as air traffic control. Here’s a quote as he expands the analogy:

Announcement in an airport lounge: Attention all passengers, all flights are delayed today, possibly cancelled. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Some of the pilots and cabin crew are still in transit. We do not have the right staff to service the planes. There is no one in the air traffic control tower,
and we cannot give you any gate arrival or departure information. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Have a nice day.

This got a big laugh from all of us as possibly somewhat reflective of some of our IT and PM experiences.

He further outlined the analogy: Can the organization answer questions about its projects? How many are underway? What is their status? What is our capacity for projects? Imagine if the airport could not answer those types of questions about planes.

It drives home how important a PMO (or something that replaces the functions of a PMO) is.

B. He talked too about the common statistics about project failures (Cedars-Sinai, FBI, Hershey Foods, HP, Tri-Valley Growers---at least we’re in good company when a project fails). He recommended that execs fund a PMO, "You’re going to waste the money anyway, why not waste some of it on a project office?"

Where is your PMO Charter?

C. He validated that our PMO is in line with others (in a good way). Many of the things he said we are doing, or are planning on doing.

D. I’m not sure our agency is quite ready for this, but he recommended that we include shutdown conditions in the project charter. Shutdown conditions mean that if the project gets to this state (so much over budget/cost/schedule, or requirements, or technical issues), we’re going to quit the project and close it down as it will no longer make business sense. It’s sort of a prenuptial agreement for projects (kinda).

E. He also talked about making the PMO an attractive place to hang out to comfortably relax and share information so that PM’s are eager to come to the PMO. We may need a library for example.