Working with Top IT Management

In some companies, the program management office (PMO) is not considered part of top IT management. We have listed it here because it is the Chief Information Officer (CIO)’s main representative in the IT department’s effort to align IT on business strategies and to continuously improve and track IT performance.

Program Management Office

As the group responsible for IT performance and alignment with a company’s business needs and strategy, the program management office, or PMO, is the first group that you should try to meet and work with.

If you understand the PMO’s concerns, you should not have any difficulty turning the PMO into an ally, since its mission is to ensure that IT projects bring the most value to the business. This is, after all, what we all have learned the product owner’s mission should be on a Scrum project, right?

Figure 3.4 shows one of the many matrices maintained by the PMO. The upper left quadrant is the most desirable because it has high business value and low cost. Use this matrix to quantify your project in order to gain a realistic view of the true business value and cost associated with your project. If it falls into the upper left quadrant for high business value and lower cost, your project has a good chance of being approved.

Figure 3.4. IT business prioritization matrix.

The PMO’s other responsibility is IT project governance. Figure 3.5 should give you an idea of the overall process that goes from the time a project is approved until the post-implementation meeting where the project is reconciled with the original targets to ensure the project’s goals were met. So, verify your product owner has solid criteria and goals for you to work with to ensure that you can meet their expectations.

Figure 3.5. PMO IT project governance.