Enterprise Navigator

Crazy Ivan: Upcoming PMO Webcast, the Book, EMA-I and More...

Yes, it's time to clear the baffles again. If you aren't familiar with these terms, either see my August 28, 2008 post for an explanation, or simply trust that this entry includes several unrelated topics in an effort to do some early spring cleaning.

First, we want to welcome new readers that we have picked up via several groups on Linked In. If you are just now discovering the Enterprise Navigator, I encourage you to take some time to explore the more than 100 entries we have posted over the last few years. Also, drop by and visit our Resource Center for lots of useful downloads and on-demand Webcasts in our archive.

If you hurry, you can still register to attend the Webcast we are hosting on March 10th featuring Margo Visitacion of Forrester, entitled "The PMO in 2010 and Beyond." This isn't your normal boring remote PowerPoint lecture format -- we've been getting great feedback on the last few Webcasts we have done using a more casual, conversational approach. In fact, registrations are through the roof for this one. Margo and I will be chatting about some of the latest PMO research that she and her colleagues at Forrester have been doing, and then we will put on our pointy hats to do a little prognostication about what the future of the PMO holds. Margo is always insightful and fun to work with, so I hope you can join us.

"Taming Change With Portfolio Management" is winding its way through the publishing process as we get closer to its release date of July 1st. The Advance Reader Copy version will be in our hands in just a few weeks and marketing efforts will really spin up this month. I have to say, the book is shaping up to be better than I ever imagined and we have gotten very positive feedback from early reviewers, so we are anxious to hear what you think of it.

One of the things we know you will really like about this book (besides the content) is that it will be reasonably priced. I don't know about you, but I think long and hard before I turn loose of north of fifty bucks for a business book. We want you to actually own a copy of it, so we have priced it under $30. This means it is also a title that can be carried through your local retailer. Even though it seems most people buy their business books online these days, for those of you who like to browse through a book before committing to it, or do not trust 'the system,' you should also be able to find it wherever better business books are sold.

If you belong to a group or association that is looking for an engaging speaker for your upcoming meetings or symposiums and think the key messages of the book might a good fit, please let me know (PMO @planview.com) and we can discuss getting you slated on our speaking roster.

Speaking of books, Mark Perry tells me his "Business-Driven PMO Set Up" is doing quite well; if you haven't gotten a copy of that yet, I encourage you to do so.

The new Web site for the Enterprise Management Association - International is now fully operational and accepting initial memberships. For those of you who like the idea of being able to say later, "yeah, I was member number 142" or something like that, by all means we would love to have you join right now. For those who want to hear more first, we'll be doing an introductory Webcast later this month to explain EMA-I (we pronounce it 'eeh-ma') to new and prospective members and answer any questions you may have. Keep checking in here or on the EMA-I site for more details on that. We are also looking for corporate sponsors; Planview is proud to be the first founding sponsor, and we encourage others to follow suit; see the sponsor kit available on the Web site.

Finally, did you attend the virtual launch of Planview Enterprise 10.1 last week? Was that cool, or what! Yes, of course all the new software features, but the platform also proved to be well-suited for such an event. Our manager of Web and Creative Services, Kimberly Stone, is getting lots of inquiries and interest about how we are leveraging virtual platforms to host both the 2009 Horizons event, as well as for the new release launch. For those who did register for the launch event, remember that the platform will remain open for several weeks so you can log in and get information.

Agile Redux: How Planview and Our Customers Have Benefited from Agile

Last week I generally discussed how agile planning techniques were being driven by the new normal. This week, we thought you might enjoy getting an inside view of the difference it makes. Rob Reesor, our Vice President of Product Development, shares his thoughts about how we made the shift to adopting Agile development here at Planview and what it has meant for us and our customers.

Guest blog entry by Rob Reesor, Vice President of Product Development

In conversations with Planview customers exploring Agile, most have been interested in hearing case studies, experiences and best practices from their peers. In that spirit, I would like to share a very high level view of Planview's journey to Agile, as well the benefits we've seen.

To provide some context, I have a fairly long history with Agile; in fact, my grad school classmate, Kent Beck, has written several books on eXtreme Programming (XP), one of the most widely practiced agile development methodologies. I had the unique experience of working with Kent in introducing XP to one of my former companies. From my roots at the University of Oregon to Silicon Valley and now Austin, I have spent my career implementing Agile development practices in high tech organizations. My story with Planview began in October 2007, when I joined the company as VP of Product Development, where I was tasked with accelerating product development cycles to be as responsive as possible to customer-driven enhancements and new capabilities. The Planview product development team was just beginning to explore Agile, and I knew from experience this would be an important shift to help meet the goals laid out for my team.

Agile does not happen overnight, and it requires a significant shift in culture and processes backed by commitment from leadership, product management, and development teams. Moving in the direction of Agile, the biggest cultural change was the close working relationship between our developers and product managers on a daily basis. Rather than deliver an extensive requirements document, product managers now put together short user stories for the development team to tackle. In turn, developers are able to deliver working code much faster, quickly change course, and increase speed to market.

Over the last two years, Planview has steadily moved in the direction of Agile, implementing organizational, structural, and process changes to realize the vision. We point to the February 2009 release of Planview Enterprise 10 as a key milestone, because the product was built using Agile processes and the release was managed with Planview Enterprise PPM. The team was able to cover significant ground with major product enhancements, making it one of the most successful product deliveries in Planview history. The iterative approach to product management and Agile application development has yielded Planview and its customers several benefits:

• Better meet customer requirements -- The product development team is empowered to represent the voice of the customer by delivering working code earlier, which means they can react to customer feedback at all stages of the process. Planview's deep customer partnerships have always been a differentiator for the company through programs like the customer Inner Circle, but now we can truly say the product is customer-driven.
• Deliver the right product at the right time -- Adopting Agile has increased the productivity, speed, and agility of our product management process. Planview has been able to lead the market with new functionality and offerings, which is why Planview Enterprise 10 was named by Forrester as the No. 1 current offering for business-driven portfolios in its December 2009 Wave report.
• Drive the portfolio management market -- As an independent vendor with a single market focus, Planview is uniquely positioned to drive the portfolio management market by staying focused, nimble, and innovative. The Agile approach improves our ability to stay on the cutting edge through its value propositions of customer involvement, speed, and productivity.
• Deliver a higher quality product -- The ability to test the product from day one and throughout all stages of development improves quality engineering and assurance, because any minor issues can be proactively identified, isolated and resolved.

Business Management Practices: Out with the Old, In with the New

So here we are, on the threshold of the first year of a new decade.

Wow, that was fast.

Yes folks, that new car smell may have already faded from the 21st century, but the tires and upholstery are still in pretty good shape. Let's change the oil and move on.

As I loudly sang 'Auld Lang Syne' the other night, I found myself nagged by the fact that I still had no idea what that meant.  If you believe everything you read on Wikipedia, the phrase is interchangeable with 'once upon a time,' or alternatively, 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away…' Nevertheless, let us take stock in what the last decade provided us in business management terms, and prognosticate what we have to look forward to.

Retrospect

We began 2000 with an immediate sigh of relief that the technological world did not screech to an abrupt halt and ended 2009 thankful that the world economy didn't either (so far). Perhaps history books will characterize the recession as Y2.1K.

In between, we commoditized and became wholly dependent upon computer technology. We quickly shed our dial-up accounts for broadband. Then we globalized business and as a result, we transferred a massive amount of wealth from one side of the globe to the other.

As the world got flat so did our TV and monitor screens. The personal computing capability that we began the decade with is now in our pockets. We are now virtual, on-demand and real time. We de-regulated, re-regulated, de-regulated some more and are now re-regulating (Remember SOX?).  We also transitioned from data warehousing to performance management. We traded in 1.44 megabyte floppy disks for 256 gigabyte thumb drives, and quit folding maps in favor of GPS. We went from socializing to social media.

In many respects, the last decade saw the rise and fall of project management; the practice was in its heyday though most of the decade, but it too is now increasingly being treated as a commoditized skill set in favor of asking bigger questions, such as "Why are we doing this?" I could have just as easily themed this post as "out with the tactical, in with the strategic," eh?

Circumspect

For all of the technological advances and changes of the last ten years, many of the top business management issues remain remarkably consistent. These include compliance, governance, organizational alignment, prioritization, communications, information and knowledge management, performance management and resource and demand management. In other words, even though the airframe of business is now fly-by-wire, it seems our piloting skills are not quite keeping up.

Prospect

So, what lies before us in this, the coming decade? From a business management and PMO perspective, I predict…

1. Cross-functional business integration will become a key consideration for managing the continued onslaught of change as a seamless series of routine events.
2. This will drive continued end-user transparency between different applications and platforms, ultimately merging them into a single super-system.
3. The PMO as we understand it will be known by another term. It will be institutionalized as an integral part of the corporate organization structure. It will own business integration and manage the associated system(s) and information.
4. Eventually, this function will merge with IS, finance and HR to provide overarching corporate systems information, automation and coordination.

Disclaimer: This assumes the Mayan calendar has been wildly misinterpreted by Hollywood.

If we do not at least partially accomplish these items, then the top business issues in 2020 will include: compliance, governance, organizational alignment, prioritization, communications, information and knowledge management, performance management and resource and demand management. Again.

And surely you'll buy your pint cup!
And surely I'll buy mine!
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Thank You for 20 Amazing Years!

I want to ask you to take a moment and think back to what your life was like in 1989. To help with this, let me jog your memory with some notable artifacts of the era. On TV, the Simpsons, Seinfeld and Baywatch were just getting started; George H. W. Bush took over from Ronald Reagan as the president of the United States. The first GPS Satellites went up into orbit as Nintendo released the Game Boy. The Dow-Jones was at 2600 and the NASDAQ ended the year at 455. We were fascinated as we witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall. Entertainment-wise, Taylor Swift was a born, Rain Man and Driving Miss Daisy took home Oscars, while Milli Vanilli got (and lost) a Grammy and CD sales overtook those of LP albums. The Car and Driver '10 Best' included the Ford Taurus SHO, the Acura Legend and the Saab 9000 Turbo. Technology-wise, Intel released the 486DX processor, Apple introduced the 16 pound Macintosh 'portable' computer and Microsoft had 4,000 employees worldwide.

Me? I was planning refueling outages and overseeing the project portfolio for each one, and writing my first set of best practices, called "A Task Managers Guide to Work Plan Development and Implementation." I was freshly married, skinny, sporting a big bushy Borat mustache, driving a white Corvette and took my fashion cues from Miami Vice- except for the generally uninspiring and over-engineered music, life was pretty good.

Meanwhile, here in Austin, Pat Durbin was busy founding PlanView. The concept was that the software would allow you to plan & schedule your different kinds of work (a.k.a, 'Plans'), and then allow you to analyze them using different portfolio 'Views.' And that's just what it did. It was an old school start-up; no venture capital to be found except what was in his bank account. To that he added a vision, a few good people and a passion to create portfolio management software (long before anyone knew what that was).

I've been fortunate enough to be associated with Planview for most of the last 20 years, but from a few different perspectives. My first involvement with PlanView began as a customer in the mid-90's, when I took over a fresh installation of PlanView version 5.0 (still a client-server platform back then) as part of managing the workload of a few hundred engineering staff. The product was fairly simple -- you get all of your work and resource assignments into a common database so you could see whether or not your work plans were within the capacities of the people assigned. If not, you fixed it. Slowly I began to understand the unique issues associated with managing multi-tasking knowledge workers and appreciate Pat's vision. The idea of efficient resource loading being a primary work management objective was pretty radical back then, but the power and importance of the technique became evident as we steadily became more proactive and increased our production.

Having made some real improvements and fascinated with the challenge of managing knowledge work and workers along the way, it was an easy decision to join the company in 1999 when Pat's son, Jeff suggested the need for a consultant in the Midwest. And here we are a decade later. I know ten years seems like a long time to be with any one organization these days, but we still have several staff around here that predate my arrival; a few from the very beginning.

Perhaps it is this sense of consistency of purpose that best sums up Planview as we celebrate our 20th anniversary. Every new version brings the same exhilaration as it did years ago. In a town that breeds new companies like rabbits, am fond of saying that Planview holds the record as the oldest continuous startup in Austin. Even though the logo has changed, the 'v' is lower case and product is now orders of magnitude beyond its original design, the vision and passion for the products we offer remains remarkably intact, as does our sense of commitment to our customers and each other.

So, as we looked back on two decades and pondered how we should commemorate it, the central theme that emerged was one of gratitude for what we have been given a chance to build and the opportunities that still lie before us. Accordingly, we have decided to mark this milestone with "20 days of Community Giving," running through December 16th. There are other things going as well to celebrate this milestone, but we felt giving back should be a priority.

There you have it -- 20 years of innovation, service and leadership; here's to what we imagine will be many more years to follow.

Time to Start Planning your Binary Day Parties

This post is strictly for fun. Every once in a while, we all need a little fun, right? I thought that I should point out that the first of several Binary Days is rapidly approaching: 01.01.10 (January 1st, 2010). Note that a full moon will be present to welcome in the first Binary Day. Mere coincidence?

But New Years day is only the beginning; after that, seventeen more come in a staccato succession through 2011, including:

01.10.10, 01.11.10, 10.01.10, 10.10.10, 10.11.10, 11.01.10, 11.10.10, 11.11.10, 01.01.11, 01.10.11, 01.11.11, 10.01.11, 10.10.11, 10.11.11, 11.01.11, 11.10.11 and finally, the ever-popular 11.11.11

(Now I realize that if I were Y2K compliant, adding the 20- prefix would ruin my post, so let's just ignore that for now, OK?)

Thinking I might have a winning lottery number or a secret message from another dimension, I strung them together, inserted the proper spacing and mapped the results to ASCII printable characters (thereby saving you the trouble).  The results? An uninspiring , itcW6uy;7sk_ _ _ with three 1's left over.  What interstellar time traveler or ancient Mayan (same?) begins a coded message with a comma?  Perhaps if the dates were re-ordered in European format or converted with Unicode the outcome would be more informative.

Meanwhile, have fun with this, and don't forget to order your party bits and bytes well beforehand. I understand that all government offices and banks will close on these days, and rumor has it that computers will fail to boot up properly. If I were you, I'd just stay home.

Did You Miss Me? The Enterprise Navigator is Sailing Again

Wow, has it really been almost three months since my last post? Please, no more get-well notes; I am perfectly fine and have a good excuse. There is a lot to catch up on, but first, here is what happened.

Remember that insect-shaped drone that flew out of my USB port in the July 20th post about the federal IT dashboard? Apparently, that little fella captured footage of me vigorously interrogating sentences for hours at a time until they divulged their meaning.  Then came the helicopters, with men in black balaclavas rappelling to my rooftop, yada, yada, yada. To make a long story short (worthy of Bond or Bourne, I might add), I was apprehended, detained, arraigned and eventually found guilty of conspiracy to commit literary pandemonium. A three-judge panel of librarians threw the book at me (specifically, a thesaurus), and then I was released.

Then we finished our book.

Yep. Pat Durbin (our founder and CEO) and I recently handed over a sizable manuscript to our editors, titled, Taming Change with Portfolio Management. It is still four or five months away from hitting the bookstores, but after over a year of effort, it felt good to look at twenty-two completed chapters. For those customers who attended our very successful 2009 Horizons event a few weeks ago, perhaps you caught Pat's keynote at Horizons Live or stopped by our booth and downloaded a sample.  For others, you can learn more about the book at our Taming Change Web site. That site will grow into the mothership as we get closer to publication.

Taming Change is a project with a moderately audacious goal; take what is sometimes considered a complex and ambiguous subject and distill it into a clearly defined set of straightforward and practical concepts and practices. Pat and I have worked to articulate our environment of continuous change, the effects this has on organizations, and how you can apply the discipline of portfolio management to proactively control it. Taming Change is an extensive body of work that we hope will transform the way you think about portfolio management. It is time to go beyond considering the technique as a series of fractured point solutions, and recognize it as a unified, comprehensive method for managing change through its lifecycle, from recognition to solution.

Like most endeavors that appear glamorous from the outside (i.e., the excitement of business travel), writing a book such as this is just plain old work once you get down to it. In addition to the long hours of research and writing, there were countless discussions to rationalize our approach and re-write chapters until we felt we had satisfied our objective. Ultimately, you will be the judge of whether or not we succeeded.

So, that's why there have been no posts lately; it got to the point that at the end of each day, I was just flat out of words. There will be much more to come about the book over the next several months.

OK, so what else can you look forward to now that I am back in the saddle? Some big subjects are on my list, including the formation of a new professional association for business leaders that I am very anxious to tell you about, a recent study from Margo Visitacion at Forrester on the Next Generation PMO, hot topics from the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo, and the upcoming PMI 2009 PMO Symposium in Atlanta. We will be there as a sponsor, so please stop by and see us if you are attending. I will be doing a presentation on Sunday just before the reception about 'Transforming the PMO at the Speed of Business' -- don't be surprised if a few of the core Taming Change concepts show up in that session. See you there!

Oh Money, Where Art Thou? Analyzing the New Federal IT Dashboard

Perhaps some of you have already seen it, but for those who have not, I want to turn you on to the US Federal Government dashboard for its portfolio of IT investments. Dare I even say it, every private corporation (and vendor!) could learn a thing or two from this example of what a well thought-out performance dashboard should include. When I am the President of the Republic of Texas, I think I shall emulate it (running office joke…).

So what is there to like about this refreshing glimpse into how a small part of our taxable contributions are being spent? Perhaps the most important thing is that it is very intuitive and clear. If you are smart enough to care and call up the link, then no further training is needed. The graphics are sharp and follow your basic green-yellow-red stoplight approach, graded in terms of cost, schedule and the personal assessment of the respective agency CIO.

Next, it is drillable; once you select a specific agency to home in on, simply click on a slice of a pie or a bar chart to see the individual investments that populate that portion. Call up a specific investment and continue to burrow your way deeper into that particular project -- to a point.

Other things that caught my attention include very good performance, a window that includes a blog on related latest news and its pure web-based format without the need to download any dingle berries -- oh, wait a minute… this tiny insect-shaped drone just flew out of one of my USB ports and it is now just sitting on the wall, watching me. Intently. Oh well; at least it's not Active-X or Quick Time.

So, what are areas for improvement? For one thing, additional transparency. There are 781 total 'major' projects on the dashboard as of this writing, totaling 38.5 billion dollars. Yep, that's major alright. But, the penny-ante stuff is not included in those numbers; the DoD alone has $33.2 billion listed in total IT investments but only $9.6 billion of projects listed. In other words, 71% of their total IT innovation spend is flying under the radar of the dashboard; must be new stealth projects (or mini-drones). It would also be nice to create the portfolio based on different views other than agency -- for example, what do all the combined investments look like categorized as infrastructure, applications, etc. Any duplicate efforts going on?

Also, as we all know, operational spend is every bit as important, and it is not shown. Gee, if the Fed would simply show TCO for all of its IT services, we would have a new industry benchmark to use.

Next, there are a lot of empty fields; things like the contractors not being specified, and in particular, a lot of the CIO assessments are blank. I would give them a pass about it being new, except it's been up a few weeks now. Come on guys, public transparency is a priority now. I'm also a little perplexed by the selected key metrics. Apparently things like risk, quality and most importantly -- benefit are all wrapped up in the CIO assessment; but alas, no additional details of why a given project is ranked red by the CIO are forthcoming.

I noted how the project manager's name is also conspicuously absent -- with some understanding. If you think you catch a load of grief when a project goes south, imagine being the poor soul who would have to endure getting ragged on by 300 million constituents because you are behind schedule.

OK, have fun with it, and try not to think about the fact that the combined lifetime taxes paid by every reader probably wouldn't pay for one single project that is listed. Meanwhile, I have to go get out my .45 caliber Texas flyswatter and give a big howdy to some nano-infested, carbon fiber, 4G dragonfly buzzing around my house -- I just hope the darned thing isn't armed with teensy little hellfire missiles.

Stoutlining -- An Approach for Improved Technical Writing

Today, I want to offer you something that, although a bit outside of my normal areas of focus (and typical finished writing style)

• I hope you find both relevant and useful

Being able to get your point across in written form accurately and succinctly is a critical business skill, whether:

• drafting a mission statement
• writing a project charter
• documenting a personnel review
• creating a curriculum
• or developing a policy manual

If you find this is something that you or your staff can improve upon, read on…

When we first began to develop our PRISMS best practices several years ago, it surprised me to find that so few people possess good writing skills, regardless of their intelligence, spoken eloquence or level of education.

• the biggest roadblock we faced was not finding experts on the target subjects
• but finding experts that could also express the information with competent and efficient written communications
• I came to realize that this was a capability that the majority of business people struggle with
• Effective and efficient writing takes a lot of practice and some disciplined technique

In particular, business and technical writing on complex subjects places a different set of demands on the author compared to other forms:

• writing must be precise; unambiguous and free of literary flourish
• it must present the flow of information in a structured manner
• it must be concise

When it comes to technical writing, I struggle as much as the next person.
The aspects I find most difficult are

• keeping on point
• obsessing over punctuation, usage and form too early in the process
• balancing the amount of content of each topic area and
• properly sequencing information

The technique I created to alleviate these issues is detailed outlining using full declarative statements

• I call it "Stoutlining"
• You are reading an example of this practice right now

Rather than a typical outline of bullet points, you structure a single thought in a clipped but functional sentence form

I find that this approach offers several benefits over simply 'writing away' and constantly wordsmithing the results

• it is fast to develop
• it forces economy of words and thoughts
• it is easy to review (either as an author or by others)
• out-of-sequence statements can be quickly identified and reordered without wreaking havoc on paragraph form and structure
• it reduces the amount of time and effort spend re-writing formal sentences
• punctuation, tense and other stylistic elements are not addressed until the flow of concepts is fully baked

Similarly, when compared to the traditional skeletonized outline,

• which can prove troublesome to recall intentions later
• or be difficult for others to follow
• this technique allows a complete train of thought to be developed
• without getting distracted by constant editing to address readability issues

Once statements are completed, appropriate headings can be added, and individual thoughts can be quickly developed into more cohesive paragraph form. Given that stoutlining is simply an interim writing technique, there are no real rules so it is easy to adopt with a bit of practice. I find it has cut my time per page of finished output in half when compared to simply writing in stream of consciousness.

When the time comes to compose your next literary masterpiece, give this technique a try and see if you find it as useful to your own writing efforts as I have found it to be with my own.

Celebrate! It's Middle Management Appreciation Day

(…we also celebrate this as the 100th posting on the Enterprise Navigator; thanks to all the loyal readers out there for your continued patronage!)

I hereby declare today (whatever day it is you are reading this) as Middle Management Appreciation Day. There isn't one yet -- I checked.

Most everyone else has a day, or sometimes a whole week of recognition, but the much maligned, abused and often ridiculed ranks of the middle manager have been underappreciated and ignored for far too long. It is high time that those stuck between 'an executive and a staff place' receive the acknowledgment and praise that they rightfully deserve before the rest of them are laid off.

There is a special place in my heart for MMs. I've worked with many hundreds of them in a lot of different organizations and have been there myself, so I feel reasonably qualified to elucidate and appreciate their plight. Whether packing the title of a junior vice president, director, senior manager, program manager or assistant deputy undersecretary, those in middle management are the unsung heroes of the organization chart and a critical part of any going concern.

These brave souls are the leaders who must accept executive edicts and turn them into workable solutions, come hell or high water -- frequently setting aside their own, often brilliant initiatives to make way. No matter how aggressive or dubious the challenge, MMs have to muster up some twisted mental logic that first allows them to make sense of the idea, and then convince themselves to get firmly behind it (all in the span of time it takes to walk from one meeting to the next).

As if that alone were not enough, they must also devise a plan for how to do the impossible, strap on an inspirational attitude, and rally their troops to deliver. Middle managers are not allowed to show any hint of incredulity or explain to their boss why their proposal can't be done within the constraints placed upon them -- instead, they are expected to simply nod enthusiastically and 'just find a way.' Yet, the MM must endure endless grousing from their own managers and staff as to why the whole idea is stupid and/or unworkable, while patiently diffusing each argument with coaching skills reminiscent of Ditka, Shula, Lasorda or Bryant.

Some consider MMs to be overpaid bureaucrats, but upon closer examination the real story begins to unfold. Middle managers cringe with disgust every time a politician or pundit uses the term "working class." One thing MMs know for sure is that no one is referring to them -- as if whatever they slave away at twelve hours a day and half the weekend is something other than work. Since they put in five thousand hours a year and hardly ever get to use all of their vacation, the seemingly decent salary is deceptive; once the math is done, the typical MM only makes about twenty-two bucks an hour. Regardless, MM's are the 'tweeners of the earnings brackets; they get no 7-digit salaries, bail-outs, parachutes, preferred stock options, perks, outrageous bonuses, or special income tax credits or shelters -- they just pay for everyone else's.

Of course, many middle managers aspire to making the top executive ranks, so as the family sleeps they are up late working on that MBA or doctorate -- even though the probability of breaking through are about the same as going from making the college team to playing in the pro's. Through it all, most middle managers maintain their poise, are fiercely loyal, politically correct, snappily dressed, rarely complain, take pride of their accomplishments, and are terrified of failure.

So, if you are a middle manager, my hat goes off to you; you are the salt of the corporate world and more important than anyone recognizes. If you are not one, why not give your middle manager a hug -- unless of course they are the HR director. Whether you are an executive, supervising manager or staff, be thankful for your middle manager; they insulate and shield you from all kinds of bad stuff and enable your working world to spin. Bring them a double mocha café latte to the next meeting you have with them, and take extra care not to put a door ding in the Lexus or Infinity next to you in the garage. Most of all, for all you that have MM aspirations, be careful of what you wish for.

Cats n' Dogs: IQPC PMO Summit, PMO Track in a Can, and Gartner Predicts

Just close your eyes, click your heels together and say, "There's No Place Like Home." It's good to be back in the office again after being out most of last week. The wife and I took a relaxing long weekend on Bone Island (a.k.a. Cayo Hueso, or to most — Key West) at the romantic Heron House. Byan Lee, a blind New Orleans blues guitarist and his band was at the Green Parrot, and a good time was had by all. It was also Pirate Week and the Holiday Parade on Saturday, along with KW's unique version of the Nutcracker playing, replete with the Rooster King and little pink shrimp in lieu of snowflake dancers. Lest you think I've gone all cultured on you, you have to appreciate that I am a "ballet dad," so the whole family has been in 'Nutcracker Hell' here for many weeks now, preparing for our own local annual production.

But I digress…

After seeing the wife off to back home, I attended and presented at the IQPC 2008 PMO Summit in Coconut Grove. Travel restrictions and the market turmoil are really starting to show their impact; nonetheless it was a worthwhile and informative event. This years' summit was hosted by Cornelius Fitchner, who also produces the very popular Project Management Podcast. While there, Cornelius graciously invited me to tape a podcast session about the 2008 PMO 2.0 Survey, which will be aired after the survey is released (yeah I know, I keep saying that — an update on that topic in a moment). The event offered an opportunity to network with notables like Bob Benson of the Beta Group and Richard Maltzman from Alacatel-Lucent (who was also at the PMI PMO Symposium in San Antonio last month; see his Scope Crepe blog in my links to the right), as well as catch up with my friend Mark Perry and meet several other attendees and presenters.

Among the themes at this conference were the impact of less-structured project management methodologies like Agile on progress reporting and the PMO, the role of the PMO in staff development, education and training, and how the discipline of portfolio management was enjoying growing adoption levels. Tied closely to this was ensuring the PMO remained focused on the business value of the portfolio, rather than tactical project-level performance. Some good case study presentations reinforced many of these topics. We also had an interesting panel discussion on OPM3, followed by an evening workshop on that topic led by John Schlichter, the president of OPM Experts, LLC.

For me the key take-away was that, with few exceptions, almost all of the sessions and discussions showed a marked elevation of how PMO managers are thinking and operating, which is a good sign.

Other News…

For 2009, the PMI PMO SIG has put together a one day, self-contained PMO Track that is designed to be easily added to the agenda of regional PMI symposiums. No muss, no fuss. We'll be trying it out first in Denver at their 2009 Rocky Mountain Project Management Symposium in March. The PMO is a popular area of interest that isn't always addressed at professional development days or similar events. By setting up a plug-n-play PMO track, it is easy to extend the range and value of your regional meeting while providing more visibility to this relevant and growing SIG. Everyone wins. For anyone out there interested in finding out more about this for your local PMI event, contact Jim Carras, the SIG's Vice Chair of Public Relations at dir_km@pmosig.org.

I promise we really are going to get the 2008 PMO 2.0 Survey out to those who participated in the survey this month, and everyone else in mid-January. Leave me cookies and milk and then check your stocking. Actually, we had a review done by a statistician for some input and recommendations and are now going over those results and incorporating them.

Gartner issued an 8-page "Predicts 2009" paper on PPM (dated 4 December, ID Number G00163351), with a dire warning of restructuring or disbandment for those PMOs that are not "directly accountable for projects, programs or portfolios." In other words, if your PMO is just fulfilling a passive reporting function that is not clearly adding value, you might want to freshen up your resume. Among report Key Findings was this:

-  Organizations will be challenged to cut overhead and keep oversight staff to a minimum. This will lead to PMOs that need to do more than monitor activity — they need to be directly accountable for results.

The report also includes a look back at a few previous predictions — a worthwhile read for those of you who are Gartner subscribers.

OK, enough for now. I know many of you will be taking time off during the holiday season (as will I), so don't be alarmed if you do not get a flood of new posts between now and the first of the year. Let's enjoy what is left of 2008 and then get this very odd year behind us!