Does Your PMO Mentor?

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Does Your PMO Mentor?
Tom Nelson (June 28, 2007)

Almost half of the respondents to this month’s Projects@Work survey say their project management offices do a poor job of training and mentoring or don’t do it at all. That’s a missed calling as PMOs can be a nerve center for knowledge-sharing and best practice efforts. Here, two experts share their thoughts on developing mentoring programs within a PMO, and getting the most from them.

At the end of the day, people learn most effectively not from a barrage of PowerPoint presentations and their obligatory bullet points, but by the process of doing. And if we accept that as fact, then it would make sense that project management offices (PMOs) would develop and sustain successful mentoring programs that maximize productivity by taking advantage of our human preference for on-the-job training.

That, however, is not always the case. Impediments to establishing a mentoring program are, not coincidentally, similar to those that can torpedo any project: time, cost and scope. Projects@Work recently discussed these challenges and related issues with two industry experts: Paula Pierce, practice area manager for strategic human capital management at Robbins-Gioia, and Bill Mathis, director of affordability management solutions for PRICE Systems, who has assisted PMO operations at the Departments of Homeland Security and Treasury.

Pierce focused on internal mentoring and knowledge transfer within the PMO via peer-to-peer training of junior project managers by senior subject-matter experts.

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