The role of informal control in PMO lite environments

• Authors: Jo Ellen Moore;Clay K. Williams;Mary Sumner
• Venue: Proceedings of the 50th annual conference on Computers and People Research
• Year: 2012

The Corporate Executive Board Company PMO (Project Management Office) Executive Council's report on the State of the PMO: 2010 identified six key findings, one of which was: "A Trend Toward Reduced Methodology." In line with this trend, 47% of the PMOs in the CEBC study indicated "Establishing a 'PMO Lite' function" as a top priority for 2010. PMO Lite is a configuration that has minimal staff and no direct control over the management of individual projects, but supports project managers by creating standards and serving as a project information repository. Viewed through the theoretical lens of control theory, the recently reported trend of cutting mandatory deliverables, making some of them optional deliverables, and moving toward a standards and repository type of PMO implies a reduction of formal controls. If organizations aim to maintain or continue to improve project management outcomes while shrinking formal controls, control theory suggests informal controls will play a vital role in achieving desired outcomes. This in-progress research involves a quantitative field study to examine the extent and nature of informal controls in PMO Lite environments. To ascertain whether informal controls play a more significant role in PMO Lite environments, we also will collect data from project managers in "PMO Heavy" organizations. Participating companies will be drawn from our School's Project Management Advisory Board and a web-based survey will be administered to 200-300 project managers. Data will be analyzed using structural equation modeling. We will relate insights gleaned on informal controls present in PMO Lite environments to the extent to which their organization meets key project management goals. We will also examine antecedents to informal controls in these organizations, to gain insights into how managers can spark and nurture informal controls that contribute to the achievement of organizational project management goals.