Donkey Kong - Which Arcade Game Is Your PMO

The Donkey Kong PMO is often relatively early in its lifecycle but its role (although evolving) is well defined and the expectations of its Customers are clear for the moment.

Because of the accepted need for the team, the Donkey Kong PMO have committed to a future-looking roadmap to deliver improvements to its internal Customer base.

The Donkey Kong PMO team is not large, but is focused on its journey to maturity, are very aware of the external and internal environment, and are very adept at identifying potential risks.

With a small team and a clear view of their role and responsibilities, the team have not felt the need for creating a service catalogue which can lead to challenges in terms of scope expectations, and find themselves firefighting often.

Learning By DoingThe team itself works well together and is happy to support each other in times of need. This means that milestones in the PMO roadmap are often achieved and beneficial change is delivered within any identified constraints.

Due to the frequent day-to-day touchpoints that Donkey Kong PMOs have within the team and with other key Customers, they find themselves struggling to adopt good knowledge management processes (one of the dark arts of PMO). This makes organisational learning difficult meaning the delivery teams often face the same or very similar challenges.

For PMOs already working in this way, it is important to focus on how to improve knowledge management by:

  • Adopting the SECI model to identify and deal with the knowledge that exists in the business
  • Take a wider view and lift the focus from the roadmap to how the PMO can practically solve challenges
  • Develop a service catalogue to provide clarity on the services available for Customers to work within now and in the future
  • Ensure that risk exposure is understood wider than the PMO team and practices are applied across delivery and portfolio management

Be more Donkey Kong:

  • Benchmark where the PMO is now and what the vision is to define a roadmap for the future
  • Take a look at the wider environment to understand any situations that might expose the team to risk
  • Ensure that each individual in the team has a set of tools that supports their individual journey
  • Focus on knowledge management and supporting a learning organisation