Clarise and I attended the PMI [of which we're members] San Francisco Bay Area April supper meeting last night. The topic, "The Natural Evolution of a PMO", is of interest to us because we've been unable to determine if something really new is happening here. The answer is NO. As we suspected, PMO is hype to get companies to establish standard project management methodologies, such as our own 6D™ methodology, complete with procedures and templates. One evidence that this is so, is that there isn't agreement on whether the "P" in PMO is "project" or "program".

As so often happens, the most interesting talk of the evening was that at the supper table with our colleagues. One topic of conversation was on the wiki(Theory of Constraints) and wiki(Critical Chain) Project Management. Managing a project is about managing resources, and Critical Chain Management addresses managing conflicting demands on resources. As Pat, at our table, pointed out, one doesn't necessarily have the data necessary to actually use the Critical Chain model. I liken it to Chaos theory in mathematics; great for understanding what occurred or is occurring, but it isn't so good as a predictive model. So if one can't adequately plan [model] a project using Critical Chain, does it have any value? Perhaps... Create a knowledge base of all projects in the portfolio, and use Critical Chain to understand what happened in the projects and why projects succeed or fail in your corporate environment.

Here's a google search that provides some nice results for Critical Chain in Project Management.