Clearing the Baffles: A PMO Update

Any past steely-eyed killers of the deep (or those who studied "The Hunt for Red October" waaay too closely) will recognize this term as a submarine maneuver term for making a rapid temporary deviation in course. This is done to check that nothing is behind you that you couldn't hear, because the noise from your own prop creates a blind spot directly aft on sonar. When the Soviets did it, it was referred to as a "Crazy Ivan" because of the notoriously abrupt and deadly nature of their undersea U-turn. Now that the Iranians have announced they are building their own class of subs, I suppose the term will morph into an "Angry Ayatollah" or something.

Anyway, the point of the title is that this entry is to clear out some contacts that have been trailing in my wake lately, so pardon the lack of cohesive thought that is about to spill forth.

PMO 2.0 Whitepaper

The reason for my sparse postings is that we have been studiously working on consolidating the current 4-part PMO 2.0 whitepaper series into a single concise body of work. Collapsing 40+ pages written over a two-year span into a document less than half that size, while at the same time not losing the essence of the concept and updating the content may well be the thing that finally gets me a sparsely decorated padded room. Anyway, we should have it on the street in the coming weeks.

Real ITSM

Rob England, the IT Skeptic (see my blog roll to your right), sent me a copy of his very hilarious and quite skeptical book, "Introduction to Real ITSM." It is a brilliant parody that exposes how convoluted service management methodologies and their related organizations have become. Enter the enchanted world of deathcycles, "wetware" (that would be you), and the Wright Cycle (guess-do-crash-fix). Even the footnotes are funny. However, much like dirty jokes written by contractors on the wall just before they are covered up by cabinets, there is some cryptic graffiti underneath the scarred and stained veneer of this book that offers some pragmatic wisdom if you think hard enough about it. I strongly advise against that though — just enjoy it, even if now and then you feel a bit of a sting. You will come out the other side a more grounded practitioner.

Stage Gate Certification

Did you notice the addition of the Stage Gate Ready symbol proudly displayed on our home page? As part of our official entry into Product Portfolio Management, Carrie Nauyalis, our PdPM and PPM Product Manager, along with Jason White, our Vice President of North American Solution Consulting, spent some intense days at Stage-Gate walking through and demonstrating how our capabilities satisfied their very detailed and long list of certification requirements. More info on what we are doing in the Product Portfolio Management area another time.

GITMO

As I write this, I'm sure the Marine Commandant at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is breathing a sigh of relief, as Tropical Storm Gustav, which had been making a bee-line track straight for them, turned abruptly south. I distinctly remember spending Thanksgiving 1976 at the NCO club there, drinking Tequila Sunrises and looking out over the mine field. OK, I know that this is getting pretty far afield, but for some reason I have been thinking about what a mess those guys would have had from a direct hit, and I am hoping that by writing about it, I will exorcise the thought (I am after all, clearing baffles). By the way, Jack was right; you want him on that wall and you really can't handle the truth.

Coming Events

Can you believe August is over and the kids are back in school? HEY! That means the New Jersey PMO 2.0 Leadership Forum is next week! If you are in the NYC area, and want to attend, now would be the time to register.

Following closely is our Planview Horizons North American User Conference the first week of October. If you are a customer, you really do not want to miss this year — lots of great presentations and events lined up. I know we say that about all of these, but really, this one is going to be greater than our usual great.

A month later is the PMI PMO Symposium in San Antonio hosted by our PMO SIG; we are a sponsor and I am planning on attending. Stop and say hello if you come down for this.

Follow Up — CPDE Course

I had a good discussion Monday with Donna Knapp at the ITSM Academy about the Certified Process Design Engineer class (see my post dated 8/19/08; No I'm not putting in a bunch of links, it's all right down below this one — use the scroll wheel, for goodness sake, you need the exercise). I think this course is going to continue to evolve into a pretty neat offering that has a lot more balance and wider appeal than originally planned; reserve a seat now.