文/Deborah Bigelow 译/赵克琛

如果你很在乎商业分析师的评价，那么你应该设立CPO（首席项目执行官）一职作为贵公司的关键职位。

随着项目管理的重要性日益得到体现，公司决策层在努力寻找一种方法将项目与公司的商业目标联系起来。很普遍的一种现象是，那些目标很少与公司战略一致的项目得到了批准。其原因通常是，没有一个组织实体具体负责将项目与公司的战略对应起来，并负责监控项目和项目群组的情况使之符合公司战略规划。

设立首席项目官（CPO）一职的实际目的是在公司内部所有领域提供对项目的监管，管理公司级别的项目，以及监督公司范围内所有项目的资源分配和使用情况。跨部门的项目均由此职支持。理想状况下，公司应尽量使CPO以总监或副总裁之级别与其他高管平起平坐。

“首席项目官很容易被架空成虚职——他们制订了宽松的目标，”美国康涅狄格州斯坦福市META公司的高级研究分析师美琳达·贝罗说，“公司必须使CPO成为一名‘推动者’或‘管家’，并获得最高管理层的支持，并配备合适的人员和好的环境，甚至应该为此他建立的严格制度和流程改进。

根据Garter Group（盖勒普集团）的研究显示，在IT企业里面，已经建立了项目管理企业标准的，而且项目管理办公室正常运做的公司，与那些没有建立项目管理企业标准的，也没有建立项目管理办公室的公司相比，项目超支、项目延期和项目取消撤消的情况会减少一半。给予项目所需的资源和重视之后，项目管理必须被提升到企业战略高度，这样它的影响会在财务底线上被体现出来。

由于现有的项目管理在公司里的定位，拥有新的企业解决方案的软件供应商并不能达到很高的层面。项目管理目前还是被过多的看作“职能活动”。

企业战略的一个重要组成部分是为项目的实施设计一个合适的组织架构。项目是设计和执行企业战略的基石，需要进行持续的战略管理和监督。如果缺少合适的机制使项目与企业战略目标结合，那么公司就会遭受由轻率的财务行为、有效战略的延期以及资源浪费等带来的后果，同时，助长了容忍公司资源的管理质量低下的风气。对商业成功的一项最大威胁是公司在认识企业解决方案的价值和有效性方面的能力欠缺。然而公司在引入更强势的项目管理治理手法时必须注重实效。

“这是一项需要权衡的工作，”贝罗认为。“如果一名CPO软弱无力的话，他/她同样会失败。这看上去很简单，‘找个人来负责，你会做得很好。’但事实上这并不管用，人们的习惯并没有改变。”

进入21世纪，项目管理正在发生变化。传统项目管理着眼于效率、运营绩效以及进度和预算目标的完成。今天，这些仍然很重要，但不断变化的商业环境和全球化竞争格局要求我们发掘新的方法来把项目变成强大而有竞争力的武器。

为了达到这些战略目标，项目管理不能够再被当成日常运作行为来看待，它在企业中的定位必须是战略性的。现代的公司正在进行企业变革创新，如再造、标杆管理、同步工程和自我生产管理等，随着这些公司中可选团队的出现，项目管理创立了一种战略性的途径。传统公司的组织结构已经永久的被一种扁平的项目形式组织结构所取代。

下一次使项目管理完全发挥效用的组织变革将会是由一位CPO全面管理跨职能部门的项目活动，同时提供组织所必需的战略远景。

CPO的八项重要职责
1.战略输入与方向引领
2.项目群组管理
3.资源优化
4.业务接口
5.项目管理标准、政策、方针和流程的开发
6.项目的总结与分析
7.预算控制
8.项目管理能力发展

作者简介：Deborah Bigelow，PMP，系PM Solution Inc.的执行副总裁，该公司是一家位于美国宾夕法尼亚州Havertown的项目管理咨询公司。Bigelow于1992年至1996年期间曾任美国项目管理协会（PMI）的常务董事。

原文：

　　　　　　　　Does Your Organization Have a CPO?

By Deborah Bigelow

If you care about what business analysts say, you should have a chief project officer as a key position within your organization.

As project management has gained in importance, corporate executives have struggled to find a way to link strategic business objectives with projects. Too often, projects that have little if any connection to corporate strategy get the green light. This is usually because there is no organizational entity with responsibility to map strategy to projects and to monitor projects and portfolios against strategic initiatives.

Establishing the position of chief project officer (CPO) provides project oversight in virtually all areas of an organization, managing corporate level projects and overseeing corporate wide resource distribution and allocation on all projects. Projects that cross divisions fall under the auspices of this position. Ideally, organization should strive to have a CPO sit at the director or vice president level with other senior executives in the organization.

“Chief project officers can be easily eviscerated – they make easy targets,” says Melinda Ballou, senior research analyst at META Group Inc., Stamford, Conn., USA. “Organization must make a CPO a ‘facilitator’ or ‘steward’ with the highest level of executive support, appropriate staffing and good marketing or run the risk of undermining the very rigor and process improvements that they’re seeking to establish.”

Research from the Gartner Group suggests that information systems organizations, which establish enterprise standards for project management including a project office with suitable governance, will experience half as many major project cost overruns, delays and cancellations as those that fail to do so. Given the resources necessary and the competitive importance of projects, the profession of project management must be elevated to strategic level so that its impact can felt at the bottom line.

Software vendors, with their new enterprise solutions, are unable to reach the senior level due to the current positioning of project management within organizations. Project management is still too often seen as a “functional activity”.

An important part of corporate strategy is an appropriate organizational design for the implementation of projects. Projects are the basic building blocks in the design and execution of corporate strategies, requiring ongoing strategic management and surveillance. Without the proper mechanism for aligning projects with strategic objectives, organizations will experience imprudent financial performance, delay of effective strategies, wasted resources and support of a culture that condones poor quality in the management of corporate resources. One of the greatest threats to business success is an organization’s inability to see the value and effectiveness of enterprise solutions. But organizations must be pragmatic as they bring in stronger project management governance.

“It’s a balancing act,” Ballou says. “Because if the CPO is anemic, she or he will also fail. It may seem easy. ‘Put someone in charge, and you’ll do fine.’ But it doesn’t work that way in practice because people’s habits are unbending.”

Project management in the 21st century is changing. Traditional project management focused on efficiency, operational performance, and meeting time and budget goals. While these are still important, today’s dynamic business environment and global competition require finding new ways to make projects into powerful, competitive weapons.

In the quest to reach these strategic objectives, project management no longer can be perceived as another operational activity. Its position in the organization must be strategic. Project management has created a strategic pathway with the emergence of alternative teams in the modern organization that deal with change initiatives, such as reengineering, benchmarking, simultaneous engineering and self-managed production. Traditional organizational hierarchies have been changed forever in favor of a horizontal, projectized form of organizational structure.

The next organizational change necessary to enable project management to be fully effective will be to have a CPO managing cross-functional activities and providing the strategic perspective that every organization needs.

Eight Critical Responsibilities of a CPO
1.Strategic Input and Direction
2.Project Portfolio Management
3.Resource Prioritization
4.Business Interface
5.Development of Project Management Standards, Policies, Guidelines and Procedures
6.Project Review and Analysis
7.Budget
8.Project Management Competency Development

Deborah Bigelow, PMP, is executive vice president of PM Solutions Inc., a Havertown, Pa., USA-based project management consulting company, She was executive director of the Project management Institute from 1992 through 1996.

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