Plain project management

If you’ve ever worked on projects in a small-to-mid-size organization and felt frustrated, this post is for you.

In my experience, formal project management is a luxury.

It’s great when leaders decide they want to formalize the project management function in their organization. Even better when they can dedicate resources to the effort.

Project management, as framed by PMI, is a complex practice involving frameworks and methodologies and processes and jargon. Critical structure for sprawling multi-national corporations and global conglomerates. Chances are, if your company shows up on the NYSE ticker it probably has a PMO.

But what about the rest of us? In the United States there are more than 5.4 million businesses with less than 20 employees. More than twice as many businesses as those with 20 or more employees.

Should a 20-person company deploy a full-on, PMI-certified project management office?