POS-Heavy or POS-Light at AtekPC

AtekPC, a US PC maker company, has been growing since 1984 and greatly benefited from the increased demand for PC’s in the 1990s.  With such high sales during that period, AtekPC did not worry much on cutting costs and creating budgets in order to continue to be profitable.  Now with decreased demand of PCs, AteckPC is looking to implement a Project Management Office (PMO), which will streamline current project procedures and standardize them in order to become more efficient.  This is necessary in order for the development of other portable devices like tablets.

Current Dilemma with PMO implementation,

• Current departments have their own culture
• IT department perform projects as they come
• If a project with higher importance presents itself, all other projects get dropped
• Projects are followed through by the Lead Analyst who has full knowledge in their department
• The completion of projects are performed very quickly and effectively
• Procedures and Process’ vary but final results are achieved
• Analysis and lead analysis work very informally
• Informal approach works for them as it creates self-significance/self-worth in the company
• Promotes innovative ideas and initiative from employees

• New PMO will be costly and funding’s will have to come from somewhere
•   Resources acquired at the expense of other operational teams

•  Evaluating and measuring the Project Management
•  Data has never been collected previously to use as a measuring tool
• How to collect data now and make it standardized?

• Who will PMO report to?
• Director of Applications Development?
• Chief Information Officer?
• Vice-President
• Or create someone in the PMO department to manage the PMOs

• To implement PMO-heavy or PMO-light

Current alternatives to the implementation of PMO

• PMO-heavy
• Using current 4 PMO already existent and hire additional PMO
• Additional cost also time consuming on training new PMO on specific department
• Would change company culture and Analysts and Lead Analyst would now report to PMO

• PMO-light
• Using only current 4 PMO already existent
• Allocating them to departments which they already have knowledge of
• Less costly but still changing company culture of working informally

• Apply more responsibility to Leads in their departments
• Creation of a PMO not required
• No additional cost
• Additional responsibilities given to Leads
• Leads would create procedures using personnel knowledge and experience
• Department manager would follow up with Leads in regards to completion

Recommendation

Give the Team Leads more responsibility in the implementation of procedures and process’.  This would maintain the current company culture without discouraging employees.  In the IT Department, the Lead Analyst would use their knowledge to create a more or less operational process for the analysts to follow using their input and coming up with a more concise way of performing projects.  Additional resources will not have to be taken from other departments, or additional costs incurred.  Team Leads are already evaluated by their Managers and will be able to continue to be in the same manner.  Micromanagement is not required in a company, specially if the company culture itself would be affected by it.