Welcome to the Software Process and Measurement Cast 127!

In this week’s Software Process and Measurement Cast I feature the first part of my essay titled, Agile is from Venus and PMOs from Mars.  I also have news from MAIN brought to us by Manfred Bundschuh. The essay begins . . .

Over the past few years I have spent time with many organizations that been struggling with the role of PMOs in their organization as they transitioned to agile. There are a couple of important words in the last sentence.  The first critical word is struggling, struggling is important because many PMO's have become more administrative and control oriented rather than being coaches and leaders.  Agile focuses on self organization rather than control functions.  Also I suggest that combining the roles of administration and control with coaching and leading creates conflict because the goals of these roles are different.  It gets even more difficult and stressful when project managers and administrators are asked to change roles that they have invested substantial time and effort into developing capabilities. Changing a leopards spots is difficult especially when the organization has developed a taste for the control data created by a PMO. All is not lost however because I have found that a path to support both sets of goals and needs can be found if everyone can be flexible and no one is building empires. The second critical word in the first statement is the term agile itself.  It is critical because its meaning has become a bit nebulous; everyone seems to have appended the word agile to a product, process or service.  It is as if adding the word agile will magically convert an non-agile idea into something new.  Remember that  just calling graphite a diamond in the raw won't change pencil lead into something far more alluring.

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Next!In SPaMCAST 128 I will feature my interview with Dave Garmus, Janet Russac and Royce Edwards discussing thier book, Certified Function Point Specialist Examination Guide.