Reflection on “Bridging the Chasm by Pulse of the Profession, April 2014”

The article “Bridging the Chasm” discussed the chasm or gap between projects and strategy, and how it can be reflected on the overall performance where is found ineffective and costly. The article also stated that strategy is usually set without putting practices in place in order to ensure successful implementation, knowing that when an organization improve its strategic initiatives that can improve its net profits.

The article also disused some of good practices when it comes to project management, these practices are helping many organizations in responding rapidly to the evolving customers’ needs to stay competitive in this complex and global market place. It was also mentioned that the high-performing organizations in different majors and specialties have some common things; they have a strategic focus on people, outcomes, and processes. Other thing that these organizations do is that they focus on talent management practices such as defining a career path and providing continuous and ongoing development, and that shows that companies with a clearly defined strategy are more successful.

Another success story of one of the firms in the health care industry was also discussed, BAYADA health care. In that implementation project, leaders clearly defined and communicated the firm’s goals, and projects that didn’t lead to achieving any of these goals were rejected. Some of the interesting statistics that I also found in this article is that organizations with relatively high project management maturity accomplish 70% of the strategic initiatives successfully, while only 44% for those with lower maturity. Additionally, 67% of the strategic initiatives are successful at firms that use standardized practices, while only 41% at firms that do not.

Some of the lessons learned from this article is that change management plays a very important role in ensuring close alignment between the firm’s vision and its development activities. However, that can’t be accomplished without the willingness to take that long look at how the firm is working and which areas should and can be improved, and that also helps in creating a culture that encourages this continuous improvement.

For this article I will be reflecting on the part of having more than one PMO in the same firm as was mentioned. The article suggested that when setting up PMOs for various accounts in the same company that can achieve an increase in productivity, efficiency and standardization of processes, leading to cost reductions, increased delivery of projects on time and in budget. Personally I don’t find that completely right, because conflict can happen, and there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration before having that decision of setting up multiple PMOs, such a thing may depend on the type of the PMO (enterprise PMO, departmental PMO, or special–purpose PMO), or it may depend on the PMO structure (Supportive, Controlling, or Directive), knowing that having more than one PMO takes a different level of maturity due to the need of high coordination skills to avoid duplicated work and conflict of interest.