According to PMI Organizational Project Management (OPM) is the systematic management of projects, programs, and portfolios in alignment with the organization’s strategic business goals.

PMI has project, program, and portfolio standards. Next, project managers need to explore how to practically integrate that with the management infrastructure of an organization. Why? Our organizations have stovepipes. We appropriately look to optimize project management practices and inadvertently not always link that to how it improves the organizations we serve.

PMI defines tools and techniques for each project, program, and portfolio areas. We have an opportunity to next define interfaces that bind project, program and portfolio process with the general management process areas of planning, organizing, staffing, leading, controlling and motivating. Why? The budget spent on projects is just one area of spend that is in the control of senior leadership. We are spending the organizations money but how relevant are we to improving organizational results vs. other organizational change projects or sales enablement efforts. I could name other examples but projects are just part of the system of management efforts. Let’s define how we rate vs. other initiatives that can improve results that are important to management or our customers.

Most importantly, Organizational Project Management aims to improve maturity and effectiveness of the organizations we serve not just to deliver projects. We want to measure, and improve internal processes and external linkages to the general management and operations of our organizations.

In your experience, are these concerns that matter to your management or your next promotion? Would love to hear.

Project Management Institute (PMI) has a new community that is launching this Friday; the Organizational Project Management (OPM) Community of Practice (COP.) It is a virtual community of project management professionals that will talk about how to integrate project, program, portfolio management practices with the management infrastructure of an organization.

Project work is important. This blog spends a lot of time talking about how to improve the tools, techniques and disciplines around performing project, program and portfolio work. Staying focused on incrementally improving project management domain disciplines is needed to improve consistently and predictably delivering project results. The only problem is that many organizations don’t need incremental improvements. They need big improvements to stay ahead of the big economic, customer, market and external pressures that the market or other stakeholders demand.

So the question to big bang improvements lies in two areas.

1)       Aligning project work with strategic direction

2)       Providing project work that benefits operations or provides revenue from customers

The portfolio domain has identified practices that allow project spending to be identified, tracked, monitored and optimized. The Organizational Project Management COP wants to additionally influence leadership actions that facilitate successful discussions when monitoring the health or re-optimization of projectized spend.

The program domain states that benefits must be indentified. The Organizational Project Management COP additionally wants to discuss practices and philosophies that apply this concept to real project practices.

In your experience, which one is your organizations biggest pain point; aligning to the strategic direction or providing project work that really helps operations or grows revenue? Would love your comments.

There is a key issue in the project management industry. What? Well, it is no secret that many projects can’t answer this important questions well; what value do you provide the organization?

I want to start a discussion on Organizational Project Management. What is that? There is momentum in the industry that somehow we should better align project work with the needs of the organization. Compare it to a bridge between project work and operations. Someone needs to be a toll keeper to monitor the traffic that gets to use this bridge.

And, by the way, who is responsible to be a toll keeper on this bridge? There could be a couple of answers:

- Project managers responsible for getting the work done.
- Program managers responsible for coordination among projects
- Portfolio managers responsible for intake of the projects and measurement of the health of the project work.
- Business managers responsible for the project funding decisions
- The organization that has to use project results.

Do you have any examples of great projects or great companies that have a clear definition of which of these groups should be the toll keepers for Organizational Project Management?

Oh, and by the way, do you even like the name Organizational Project Management?

Would love to hear from you

Terrie Mui - PMP, a Silicon-Valley based project manager focuses on strategic projects. In this recession environment, sponsors may require project managers to have tighter project control. In this talk she focuses on why project sponsors instead should push control down into the team and groom project managers into project leaders.

This transition from hierarchical control to a high-performance team requires three C’s:
- Clear Goals
- Common Communication
- Collaboration, not Competition

Click Below to hear the Interview with Terrie Mui-PMP.
Strategic Project Management
Approx Play Time 11 Minutes

Ms. Mui can be contacted at Click Here.

Michael O’Brochta, PMP, and a member of the PMI Community Development Management Advisory Group (MAG), discusses critical leadership skills needed for today’s project management professionals.

Michael talks about characteristics linked to project manager success in this interview. He should know. He has studied leadership and helped thousands of project managers by providing them a way to gain knowledge and Project Management credentials at the CIA.

Click Below to Play the Interview with Michael O’Brochta.

CLICK THE PLAY BUTTON TO VIEW THIS VIDEO! RUN TIME 7:00

Check out the book discussed in this interview. Click Here.