Organizational Agility

December 31, 2008 has come and gone. OPM3 Second Edition has officially been released. The new OPM3 Fundamentals training is being rolled out through PMI. I just completed the beta course of the OPM3 Certified Consultant course, including taking the new entrance and certification exams, and found it very well done and a worthwhile effort. 

What is interesting is that I’m not seeing a lot of discussion about OPM3. I wrote about it a little on my blog. There is a pretty active OPM3 Sig on Linked In that everyone should join and participate in. I have seen a little from Lynda Bourne’s group about it. But not much else. What’s going on here? This is huge. We have the ability to dramatically improve the way organizations execute their strategy. Many of us have spent years on this effort. And yet,

chirp…chirp..

First, the OPM3 discussion on LinkedIn is great. There is valuable discussion within the OPM3 community there about the theory and use of OPM3. Everyone who is interested in improving the quality of the standard, the value of the certification, and their own knowledge should be participating in the OPM3 Linked In discussion. But we are talking to each other there. Linked In is not a marketing vehicle.

I have heard lots of complaints that the market is not familiar with OPM3. People say that Organization’s don’t understand the value and don’t see the benefits. I have talked to executives who are waiting for higher adoption because they don’t see enough about it.

Who are we waiting on to start these conversations? We need to start these conversations. Those of us who have invested years of our lives to this practice and the development of the standard need to start talking about it. PMI has case studies showing the benefits. I am aware of three major organizations that have used OPM3 as part of a larger improvement effort to great results. We just had a major release done, and with the new Portfolio, Program, and Project standards it is impressive.

We need to stop just talking to each other about this work, and starting conducting conversations where business executives can find it. The internet is an amazing thing, you can build brand and spread knowledge rapidly with limited effort. If you search for my name (Dennis Stevens) in Google I come up in 7 of the top 10 positions (I am not the gardner or the redefining craft guy). That’s just from writing on the Internet and in some business magazines.

Where are we talking about the standard that is searchable on the internet so an executive who comes in looking for OPM3 sees this as a real? Who is having meaningful successes and publishing them to business magazines and websites? We don’t need to sit around and wait for PMI to drive the marketing effort. Marketing today can be done by community. We need to be on Twitter, writing for business magazines, blogging, and commenting on other blogs about the value of project management in executing strategy and the way OPM3 helps you get there.

You can post here if you don’t have a blog. Drop me an email and I will get you set up. Let’s start to drive some content out where it can be seen and raise the awareness of the OPM3 standard and organizational project management maturity in general.  Please help grow OPM3.

To do list:

1. Join Linked In, Join the OPM3 SIG, and while you are at it send me a LinkedIn invitation.

2. If you are blogging about OPM3, let us know so we can add you to the blog roll here.

3. Drop us a note or add a comment to this post when you blog so I can publish a list of relevant blog entries for everyone to review.

4. When you see a great post or article or case study, let us know. We can do a digest of the OPM3 posts and create a hub for the people who help organizations improve their project management maturity.

5. Comment here on what else we can do to improve the visibility of OPM3 and other Organizational Project Management Maturity efforts.

Let’s start talking about OPM3!