It often seems that a lean, agile development environment will always be at odds with the structure and constraints of the PMO. Rick Freedman described the situation well in a recent blog post:

"Many firms have committed so completely to PMBOK process flows and CMM best practices that many of the core concepts of agile development, such as "barely sufficient" documentation and change-friendliness, seem like heresy. In fact, I've had people in my Agile Project Management classes tell me that their perception of agile is that the key message is "everything you know about project management is wrong."[i]

Estimating time is one of the most challenging aspects of any project plan. This is especially true when it comes to "Agile" software development projects where teams work in sprints (i.e., pre-defined buckets of time) with the goal of shipping products faster without compromising quality.

At one time the notion of a communication plan in project management consisted of whatever the project manager was willing to share with you. Back in the days when project management was synonymous with project scheduling and the primary industries that used project management were construction and defense, and heavy industry, the project manager's word was law and whatever he (or she) decided to report, that was it. Output from the scheduling department might be a simple list of key target dates or perhaps a summary bar chart written by a draftsman and annotated all over the page.

Roses, Stars and the Sun

Medieval England. War of the Roses. On April 13^th, 1471 Yorkist troops, under the command of the king, Edward IV, and Lancastrian forces led by Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick and John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford met near the town of Barnet some twelve miles North of London. At four o'clock in the morning on April 14^th the soldiers of both armies were awakened and started preparing for the decisive battle. Warwick's army heavily outnumbered Edward's, although sources differ on exact numbers. However, according to some historians, Lancastrian strength ranged from 10,000 to 30,000 men, with 7,000 to 15,000 on the Yorkist side.

"How do you pronounce 'EPM'?" I asked one of our consultants recently.

"Enterprise Project Management?" he replied.

"No," I said. "You pronounce it P-M-O."