Streamline IT Modernization With PMO?

July 22, 2008

IT organizations will be unable to meet rapidly changing business demands simply by working harder than they have in the past. Instead they need to embrace IT modernization as generations of technology, skills and expectations are inevitably replaced by the next ones.

Gartner defines IT modernization as the complete overhaul of the culture of IT with the specific goal of developing a portfolio of processes that will enable the IT delivery teams to close the gap on accelerating business demands.

“Effective IT modernization requires organization, and we believe that the concept of a project management office (PMO) or multiple project management offices is crucial to organize for, and facilitate IT modernization,” said Dale Vecchio, research vice president at Gartner.

According to Gartner, the creation of PMOs, combined with an investment in project and portfolio management (PPM) processes and technology, can provide enough organization, process definition and process automation to identify and address an expected increase and proliferation of IT artifacts needing retirement or replacement during the next five to seven years.

Investments in a PMO and in PPM as a work management discipline can help IT generate the visibility CIOs need to monitor network, telephony, server hardware, storage and system management portfolios, and make effective modernization decisions that funnel into strategic IT projects.

“A PMO can provide a common planning process with artifacts, a common reporting process and oversight and a common IT modernization process,” said Daniel Stang, principal research analyst at Gartner. “It brings structure and support to evaluating, justifying, defining, planning, tracking and executing IT modernization efforts. It also encourages more business-side participation in IT modernization efforts and in the resolution of conflicts caused by limited resources and other constraints.”

Gartner analysts said that moving the PMO outside of the IT organization promotes its independence, removes any perception of bias and encourages the planning of IT modernization efforts for the sake of the wider business and not solely for the sake of the IT organization. This positioning of an enterprise project management office (EPMO) — which plays more of a role in oversight and monitoring, and has no direct project management responsibilities — enables lower level managers to raise any portfolio issues related to IT modernization programs or projects with senior management.