Well, as they say at the races, Ils sont partis! … the gates are open and the horses are away: the PMO of the Year Award competition is off to a running start. Already I am getting questions from prospective applicants, and from some of last year’s applicants who are ready to try again. One fellow asked me if I could tell him where his organization stood in the rankings, which isn’t really an answerable question, since we didn’t sort or rank below the top six or so who formed the pool from which we chose the winner and finalists. (This is by way of saying, please don’t write and ask me this question!)

What I could do, and what was interesting, was to glance at the evaluation form that had come back from the judge. His PMO had scored high in almost every area; but the area where the judge had reservations was whether or not the PMO had business impact on the organization as a whole.

And, there it is in a nutshell: whether your PMO is a winner or a loser (and I am not just talking about the award here) all hinges on business value and/or perceived organizational impact.

I say perceived because I think that many PMO directors still have not realized that there’s a large component of marketing communications, not only in establishing a PMO, but in institutionalizing it. I’ve written before that PMOs are vulnerable to their own success: once the systems for executing strategy through well-run projects are in place, it’s tempting to think you can rest on your laurels. But, no such luck. When project and program management is working well, it’s invisible: nothing bad happens. And the PMO becomes, apparently, a line item of overhead.

So, the perennial question PMO directors have to answer is: What have you done for me lately?

Implementing a measurement program within the PMO that tracks the benefits provided can provide those answers, but only if it’s wisely designed. Too often, PMO leadership self-measures by metrics I can only call navel-gazing: numbers of people trained in PM, schedule compliance, numbers of project completed, and the like. They forget that a key piece of their role is as liaison with the executive level, and their metrics need to measure things that the executive level cares about.

So, you trained 100 people and they got their PMPs. So what? Aaron Coffman at American Power Conversion (a 2006 award finalist, mentioned in my last post) matched PMP achievement with dollars earned or saved due to projects being delivered on time. Bingo!

It’s not always about money, of course. The 2007 winner, Norton Healthcare, succeeded in large part because the PMO made sensitivity to the needs and concerns of clinical staff paramount. “How will this impact hospital staff?” was a central question involved in selecting and prioritizing the portfolio. Consequently, they have been able to pull off massive capital building and technology projects without ticking off the doctors who run the place … in fact, making themselves indispensable.

So, helping the executive level to perceive the value of the PMO is an exercise in walking a mile in non-project management shoes. What are the drivers of value in your organization? Answering that question is a good place to start.

Join us for more along this same line at our Webinar, Unlocking the Value of Your PMO, next Thursday, March 11. “See” you there.

I wish this were not true, but ever since 2002 when we began facilitating project management benchmarking groups, I have been meeting PMO directors who brought project management to the attention to senior management, created PMOs or Centers of Excellence, drove PM improvements across organizations, improved project and portfolio performance … and wound up unemployed.

Of course, the present economic climate puts every area of the organization under the microscope, but it does seem that PMOs are more susceptible to the ax than many other functions. My theory about this is that great project (or program) management is like great editing: invisible. When the management of projects, programs, or portfolios goes smoothly …. nothing dramatic happens. Things get done, decisions get made, money gets made, schedules are met. No problem. No bloopers, no typos.

“Hey,” says the CEO. “Everything is going so well. What do we need this PMO for? It’s overhead.”

The latest cover story in PM Network magazine focuses on just this issue: the crucial requirement for PMOs to show value, and show it often, in order to simply maintain their place in the organization. (The Accident Fund PMO, by the way, has been a finalist and a winner of our PMO of the Year Award in previous years, under the previous director Norm Buckwalter–something that isn’t mentioned in the article).

Often, PMOs succumb to a disease that is affecting all areas of organizations: the short-term CEO syndrome. Research by executive search firm Drake Beam Morin notes that when CEO tenure drops, businesses focus on achieving quick and short-term results. Since (as our 2008 study The State of the PMO revealed), it’s only mature PMOs that bring business benefits, it’s easy to see how short-term thinking can doom PMOs. Unfortunately, this only harms organizations in the long run.

Have a PMO success-to-sadness story? I’m all ears.

Our PMO Award winner and finalists had their day in the sun in Boston, and the brief case studies of their achievements have been posted on the PM Solutions website, for those of you who weren’t able to be with us at the awards ceremony.

It’s an interesting thing about these case studies; this is the fourth year we have sponsored this award, and each year I’ve pulled together a story from the application materials, checked with the PMO Director, and gone straight to press with it … oh, but how things have changed in 2009!

This year each of the case studies went though more than one level of review at the PMOs’ companies - from legal to PR, and up the chain to VPs of various stripes, our humble few pages of copy were vetted, critiqued, corrected and revised. At first this just frustrated me, but then I realized: for the first time in the award’s history, the upper echelons actually care what is being said about the PMO.

And that, my friends, is progress.

Yet … weigh in here, project managers … although PMs have for decades said they wanted greater visibility in the organization and more executive involvement … now that this is a reality in many companies, I’d bet that visibility is a two-edged sword. Yes, you get the praise and maybe even the funding you deserve. But the presentation of Paul Ritchie’s quoted in yesterday’s post from Kent Crawford tells another side of the story: visibility also means being held accountable for our lapses, and scrutinized on factors we perhaps had not even thought of.

I’ll be interested to hear from those of you who find themselves visible … and nervous … as well as those who are basking in the spotlight.