University ITSM

Kelley Anderson of Carnegie Mellon University presented a session titled “Development of a Project Management Office. The presentation gave insight into the current status of project management at Carnegie Mellon by discussing the critical decisions that were made over the past year. For example, should you take a “top down” (portfolio management) approach or a “bottom up” (project management) approach when you have limited FTEs dedicated full time to project management? CMU opted for the top down approach.

The session recapped some lessons learned since the creation of their PMO. Kelley talked about the importance of a using a “common vocabulary”. This is one of my personal favorite soapboxes! How many times have you witnessed coworkers fail to reach a common ground because of a simple miscommunication due to their differing perceptions of the words they use? Although they may be on the “same page”, miscommunications due to the lack of a common vocabulary can prevent building consensus. At Wake Forest, we have created a glossary of technical and commonly used words in the IS department as a reference. This is especially helpful for the TLAs we use... (Three Letter Acronyms) in case you were wondering.

Kelley also discussed the importance of rhetoric in the context of using “non-threatening” words. She gave a funny example of how her husband was opposed to doing a “project plan” when buying a new home, but was open to the idea of “just listing tasks and putting timeframes on them”. Developing soft skills to pick up on subtleties such as in this example are extremely valuable to a project manager!

Another point that was stressed is that project management is a behavior change. Again, I wholy agree with this assertion. It takes time and experience to become an accomplished project manager. In my personal experience, it is mostly related to accurately assessing realistic time frames as opposed to wishful thinking. Experience also hopefully makes us better at providing cost estimates and improves our ability for gauging complexity of project task.

In conclusion, this was an interesting presentation. Mostly, it was just entertaining to hear how people found solutions to issues that are so universal! To see the slideshow, go to http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/DevelopmentofaProjectMana/4....