Sustaining the Value of Project Management

As promised, I’m going to blog on the Researching the Value of Project Management study that PMI will release soon (preview PDF here).  This conclusion about value growth and persistence struck me first:

Where Value Is Being Sustained And Continuing To Grow, There Is On-going Focus And Improvement Underway

Well, that sounds a bit obvious. One would expect that value would grow with “on-going focus and improvement”. But is value already demonstrated and delivered automatically “being sustained”? The answer apparently is “No”…

Organizations That Stop Focusing On Value, Or Believe That They Are ‘Done’:
– Stop demonstrating value
– The act of not enhancing value appears to destroy value

Ah… now that’s something to remember. Our PMO fell into this trap.  We thought our “Level 2” project management training was just fine, thank you. Unfortunately, our customers didn’t think so.  It got to the point where one of our most important regions developed its own training to replace ours. 

Some of the value decline was real: our training missed topics that had emerged since its development.  However, the most critical part of the value decline was perceived.  Our unwillingness to address pain points — and the need for one of our customers to become self-sufficient — undermined our relevance. 

The bottom line is simple.  If my group doesn’t stay focused on sustaining and building value, people start to ask: Why do we have a Global PMO anyway?