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In our last episode we heard Terry Doerscher discuss the results of the Planview PMO 2.0 Survey Report.

So I decided this week to follow up with Terry. We discuss what PMO 2.0 means to him, where PMOs bring the biggest benefit to a company, whether they should be centralized or decentralized and we discuss the 8 functions which he says are the primary functions that a PMO should support: gathering Information, managing demand, perform analysis, coordinate collaborations, identify issues, manage capacity, provide processes & tools and deliver internal consulting.

Oh… and we also discuss PMO 1.0 and PMO 3.0

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In this episode we welcome Terry Doerscher, who is Planview's Chief Process Architect and we discuss the PMO 2.0 Survey Report that was released earlier this year. The survey was sent out in September of 2008 and it contains 455 responses from a diverse group of companies. It was a rather large survey that required a lot of patience from the respondents.

Questions in the survey focused on PMO performance, operational challenges, organizational challenges, and the organization's future plans. The most surprising result that Terry found was that the PMO had increased the scope of the service within the companies. It is no longer just a Project Management Office, but that they are now reaching out to broader involvement of resource and operations management throughout the complete organization.

In our last episode we announced the giveaway of 2 PM Lectures Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. And the winners are: Joseph Horowitz (Premium Podcast Subscriber) and Mohammed Amin (Free Podcast Listener). Congratulations!

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This is the fourth and final special episode of The PM Podcast where we introduce you to the Manager Tools approach to Project Management. Here is what Mark and Mike have to say about this episode:

In this cast we describe Horstman's Law of Project Management: Who Does What By When.

We've talked and joked about it many times, and this cast will put to rest the details of Horstman's Law of Project Management (HLPM). Mark came up with it several years ago, to help a group of young managers get over their fear of working on fairly complex software development projects. It was actually born over a dinner at Mexican restaurant in Dallas!

The concept is simple: all projects are simply tasks, done by people, within certain time frames. Despite all protestations to the contrary, no matter how complex the project, they all boil down to who is responsible for doing something, what they're responsible for, and when they have to have it done by. Complex tools can be helpful, but only on really large projects (and almost nobody looks at them anyway ;-) ).

Keep it simple with HLPM. Here's how.

This episode is reserved for subscribers of the Premium Podcast. Learn how to subscribe to the Premium Podcast to access this interview...

This episode is sponsored by:

"Why on earth did you decide to write about failing on a project?" is the first question that we ask Leadership Expert Stan Levanduski in this interview on his essay "The Fine Art Of Failing... And Living To Tell About It". The essay is part of the book The Advantage of Leadership, which Stan co-authored.

Once we have this important question out of the way (and Stan's answer may surprise you), we discuss why we fail on our projects, how we normally react to such failures, why we need someone to blame, how to be proactive and most importantly how to recover from such a failure both professionally and personally.

We also continue to give away two copies of Stan's PM Lecture Leadership Challenges of Complex Projects. This is a 4.5 hour long, in-depth project leadership training for our subscribers. Listen in to learn how to participate.