Since today kicks off the 2010 PMO of the Year Award application period (see the contest information, and download application materials here), and since I’ve been writing a series about roles in the PMO, it seems a good time to review the previous winners of the award, and see what they have in common with regard to people management.

One thing that’s immediately apparent is the quality of PMO leadership. It’s been my privilege to meet almost all the PMO directors of the winners and finalists for the past four years (the leader of the Australian Securities Exchange PMO, a 2009 finalist, has been just about the only one who couldn’t make it). While this may be a very subjective assessment, it’s striking that, in retrospect, they were all charming and personable people … “attractive” not necessarily in the sense of appearance , but in the sense that you wanted to spend more time talking with them, and that their enthusiasm for their work was contagious. At the same time, it was obvious that they were the kind of leaders who constantly say: “I couldn’t have done it without (my team, the project managers, my executive leadership, my spouse).”

Several years ago, Dr. Frank Toney noted that humility was a characteristic of the best leaders; the PMO of the Year award-winning PMO Directors seem to bear this out.

It’s worth noting, as well, that winning PMOs have primarily been staffed PMOs: they follow the trend identified in the research of centralizing project management roles in an organizational home within the PMO. And they have been intimately involved in helping their staffs succeed: providing training and other career development opportunities. Some of the top PMOs even have staked their success on developing their human capital; the case of American Power Conversion, a 2006 finalist, comes to mind: they meticulously baselined their project outcomes by whether the leading PM was PMI-certified or not, and then followed the trend of results as they pushed to certify all the project managers under their umbrella. The results were astounding: take a look at the graph of PMP-led projects vs. non-PMP-led at the link above.

All this makes sense, of course because, in the end. a PMO is just people. Trained and qualified people led by a director they have trust in … are winners every time.

This just in: Our partner in presenting the PMO of the Year award this year is the PMO SIG of PMI. They’ve got a new blog all about PMOs: check it out here.

I’d like to tie those last two posts together with a couple of thoughts engendered by listening to Kent’s keynote, and by some of the conversations I shared with PMO directors at the Summit.

“Governance” is in danger of becoming a buzzword. It’s one of those ideas that many corporate leaders accept is important, and necessary, without having the time to really drill down into what that will mean for their organization’s processes.

Yet, like most profoundly important ideas, governance is pretty simple. I liked the definition Kent used in his presentation, from the IT Governance Institute:

“A set of responsibilities and practices in use by executive management with the goal of:

• Providing strategic direction
• Achieving objectives
• Managing risks
• Using resources wisely.”

When I read that list, I thought: sounds like simply what executives are supposed to do. Yet how easy it is, especially in public companies with the pressure to boost stock price; or in public agencies blown about by the winds of politics; to forget that wisely providing direction is what it’s all about. Every now and then we need a new word to buzz in the ears of management, waking them up to thier true path.

When the buzz of governance is paired with the concept of the PMO, I think we are really getting somewhere, however. The definition of governance above asks leaders to rise to the occasion. The PMO gives them a structure for doing that.

Why do I say that? –in part because I’ve read, heard and seen that, without a PMO, the portfolio management process goes astray … and without portfolio management, you don’t really have a mechanism for governance. In our 2007 book Seven Steps to Strategy Execution, Jim Pennypacker wrote:

“Each level within the organization must apply the same principles of setting objectives, providing and getting direction, and providing and evaluating performance measures. A common governance framework ensures that decisions are made the same way up and down the organization …”

True. And some entity within the organization must specialize in making these processes flow up and down the organization; must be the seat of metrics collection and analysis; must red flag what isn’t working and grease the wheels for what must work. And if that entity isn’t a PMO … then what is it?

Any alternative structures I should know about, readers, for governing the portfolio of projects that is today’s organization?