Interview with Cornelius Fichtner - Part 2

The PMI Sao Paolo Chapter has recently published an interview they did with me. It's in Portuguese. This is part 2/3 of the English version:

Have you ever had contact with the Brazilian Project Managers? If so, what was your impression of Brazilian style?

No, I have not. But I’m willing to travel and find out… ;-)

In Brazil, the scope of PMOs in Financial Institutions is still very focused in IT and other similar areas. How would you analyze evolution of PMOs in the main American Financial Institutions?

I don’t think this is unusual. You will find a similar focus around the world.

Financial institutions, and banks in general, need to reduce cost in order to increase profit. And IT is the perfect vehicle to do so. Almost any type of process in a bank can be automated through IT. So PMOs should indeed focus on supporting their project managers in this field.

Banks in the USA have always been under a lot of government regulations. In the 4 years that I have worked for what can be considered the divisional PMO we have seen at least 3 audits every year. Each audit was more detailed than the previous. As such much of our PMO work was focused on improving our internal processes and aligning them with audit standards.

Unfortunately, this lead to a “prescriptive methodology”. By this I mean that the templates of our methodologies were 500 pages long (when empty) and that you had to use them all on your projects. Every single step on your project was defined for you and you had to follow them. For many PMs this was not only burdensome it was also considered a “waste of time”. But only until the auditors showed up… then everyone was happy they had followed it.

What would you recommend for organizations that have not adopted a Project Management methodology yet? What are the first steps to evaluate and select the most suitable methodology according to their business activity, size and strategic direction?

It is impossible to answer this question on less than 200 pages. So here are just a few ideas:

• Start out by defining your requirements. Describe what you want the methodology to achieve, such as: Should it contain all phases from inception to closure or just some? Do you want a proven methodology based on an international standard or do you need a tailored product? How flexible and scalable does it have to be?
• Define who will be using it and where they will do so. Are your users trained project managers or occasional project managers? Will they use the methodology throughout the company or in just a select number of departments?
• Accept the fact that you will need more than just one methodology. You will need a methodology for your business projects and your IT projects. You will need a methodology for small, medium and large projects. Make it clear to everyone that “one size does not fit all” and that these areas have different requirements.
• Lastly: Keep it simple. The most successful methodologies that I have created and implemented were one page long. Yes, you read right: one page.