AtekPC Project Management Office

Summary of the Case

In this case study (F. Warren McFarlan, 2007), we focus on the Project Management Office
(PMO) challenges in a company named AtekPC. The company AtekPC, founded in 1984 and
supported by 2100 full time and 200 part time staff members, manufactures PC. The business f
this company is facing challenges due to industrial changes in the PC market induced by a
significant competition from the mobile devices. While the sales figure of AtekPC in the year
2006 was 1.9 Billion USD, it is certain that the company now needs to deliver more complex
projects to keep up with an industry level driven by cost cutting and efficiency enhancements. A
Strategic Planning Office, created to respond to the changing business landscapes, established a
Project Management Office (PMO) for the IT department of the organization. The principal goal
of the PMO was to standardize IT project management practices, tools and mechanics. AtekPC,
being a functional organization, manages its IT projects by the development staffs - Lead
Analysts. The projects are executed in a culture of rapid responses to the client’s requests. With
the changes in industry and businesses in the time of higher competition, a more definitive and
structured approach of the project management was required. The main goal of the PMO was to
establish its values to the organization by implementing a set of common project practices for the
IT projects. The PMO was started with project level and enterprise level focuses. The project
level activities were focused on consulting, mentoring and training. The enterprise level duties
were oriented towards portfolio management, PM standards, methods and tools. The PMO had
limitations associated with a shortage of staffs in that team. The PMO was a team with four
members including a PMO director and three PM consultants. The PMO started with a set of
minimal responsibilities of establishing project management practices, frameworks, tools and
processes. Other enterprise level activities, such as, portfolio management and knowledge
archiving were not included in the functions of the PMO. The senior management simply
allowed the PMO to prove its effectiveness before granting full authorities to that team. The
PMO organization structure, as that comes with two flavors, namely, PMO Heavy and PMO
Light, was primarily following a PMO Light structure in which the PMO members worked with
the functional or internal IT project managers to establish and practice the PM guidelines. There
was a partition of opinions regarding adaptation of light vs heavy versions without a definitive
decision. The PMO, in its implementation stage, encountered conflicts with the organization
culture as the employees started to treat it merely as an administrative overhead that potentially
slows them down to get their projects done. That perception was mainly due to two facts. First,
the organization was not oriented with disciplined and structured project management
methodologies. Secondly, there was a lack of project management knowledge across the
organization. The market environment promoted the business changes and the changes in
business prompted the company to adopt project management processes through a PMO. But that
 did not guarantee an effective governance of the PMO. There was no measurable or quantitative
governance implemented into the PMO. The entire process of governance was focused on
qualitative information on whether or not the projects were being done effectively and fast. The
implementation of the PMO, although motivated by business reasons, was slow and open ended
mainly due to its mismatch with organizational culture.

Answers to the Questions

1. What is the purpose and mission of a PMO?

In a project management realm, PMO serves as a node in an organization that sets up the project
management standards, tools, and practices for all projects and creates a knowledge archives to
feed into the organizational entities to manage their projects. It should also provide efficiency
metrics to the Portfolio Management and create an effective resource requirement picture to
execute its projects under a consistent and repeatable framework. For AtekPC, the PMO’s
principal purpose was to empower the IT project teams with project management structures and
tools to enhance their efficiencies through consulting and mentoring. The mission was to prove
its effectiveness to the organization for a more comprehensive implementation of the PMO.
While the initial mission and purpose of the PMO was focused on the IT projects, its enterprise
level purposes were being built slowly to choose and prioritize appropriate projects for the
business needs. Due to limited resources in the PMO, it was only set to serve the company at the
project level and not at the enterprise level. The PMO was also having a mission to establish a
proper authority for its performance once it proves its effectiveness.

2. What are the main challenges and obstacles in implementing a PMO?

There were three main challenges and obstacles in implementing a PMO in AtekPC. Firstly, the
organizational culture at that company was not so adaptive to a disciplined and structured PM
practices. As a result, the employees started to perceive the PMO as an administrative overhead
to their works rather than a supportive vehicle providing uniformity and smoothness in project
management practices across the teams. Secondly, a lack of resources in the project management
office made its functioning harder and limited to just project focused activities for the IT
department. This resource limitation constrained the PMO to function in a light mode where its
members were simply providing consulting services to the functional project teams. Thirdly, the
PMO could not get supports from the entire senior leadership due to their skepticism on its
effectiveness for this company. There was, in fact, a substantial knowledge barrier in the
organization that imposed challenge to implement a PMO.

3. What structures and governance mechanisms are critical to effective PMO implementation?
 PMO Light and PMO Heavy are the two versions of PMO considered for AtekPC. In a PMO
Light framework, the PMO members work with the functional and internal project managers to
implement project management practices and tools across the projects. The main advantage of
this version is that it poses less conflict with the organizational culture. PMO Heavy, on the
contrary, requires an authority for the PMO whose members would lead the Project Management
efforts in the organization. The main benefit of this methodology is that it is capable of
implementing a set of uniform and repeatable processes and tools for all projects in the
organization. The main demerit of this version of PMO is that it can cause a friction with the
organization culture. Based on the experience in the AtekPC, a structure in between heavy and
light may be effective for a dynamic yet traditional organization under a market transition. The
PMO governance requires quantitative and measurable metrics focused on its effectiveness. But,
for AtekPC, the governance structure was lacking in quantitative measures. It was just focused
on gathering the information on how effective was the PMO to drive the projects effectively with
adequate speed. For AtekPC, the PMO was an element in the IT organization which did not
allow effective governance.

4. How much PM is enough PM? How much PMO support is enough PMO support?

An organization, depending on its culture and structure, can adapt an appropriate scale of PM.
The appropriate scale should focus on the effectiveness of the project management in fulfilling
the strategic goals of the company. AtekPC was facing severe market challenges that required it
to change its business processes and to get involved in more complex projects. Under such a
scenario, a simple yet effective PM structure would help them achieving their goals without
disrupting its successful organizational cultural aspects. In order to make PM successful, PMO
support is essential. The PMO support can be implemented in the project and enterprise contexts.
At the same time, it can be organized in a light or heavy way in a company. An enough PMO
support should make sure that the complexities in the projects and their interdependencies are
easily addressed through standardization and predictability of the processes and tools. So, a light
version may work for the organization, like, AtekPC for a short term. However, to integrate the
projects with organization’s strategies, the PMO should really be at an enterprise level even for a
company like AtekPC. An enterprise level PMO should act as a vehicle to connect the business
directions with the functional projects. That will help the company to prioritize its projects and
allocate proper resources.

Bibliography
F. Warren McFarlan, M. K. (2007). The AtekPC Project Managemnt Office. Harvard Business School.