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I like this approach as well. If someone wants to be this controlling, then
let them, I say. No one is actually good at micro-managing. The attention
span required to do it well simply don't exist. My second marriage would
have gone much better, I think, if I had the attention span to micromanage
my passive/aggressive husband. But I didn't and he ultimately was better at
passive aggressive than I was at fighting it. He won. Yahoo for him.
I would also ask for clarification on the word "document". If this
everything that we might write during the day? Does that include emails?
Documents that we might start to order our thoughts but might never submit?
How about notes files from talking to people or files meant to track things?
Do we need permission to chat with someone in the kitchen/bathroom about
project issues? Or can we retro-approve those? If so, how? Do phone calls
count? How about lunch conversations?
I'd then put all the time for all this activity into each schedule,
including the wait for the permission time - estimate 3 minutes to create
the request, 10 minutes to receive it. So you have 15 minute cycles of
really no activity that forwards the project.
If this is what they want, then let them have it. It's their money; they can
ask that you spend it this way. Remember, "Foolish money spends just as well
as smart money."
Given the situation you described previously (an out-of-control
process butting heads with a PMO trying to assume total personal
control), I think the approach you followed previously still sounds
like the most operable one. Send the PMs and PMO 50 emails
a day with requests to talk to 30 different SMEs, start a new
document, submit a document for review, release, etc. Be sure
each one says "per our current process, further work on this
project cannot continue without the requested approval."
Don't view the time spent on these emails as "lost project time."
If your group charges hours to projects, create a time tracking
category for "obtain PM/PMO approval" and charge for time
spent doing it. If you schedule your projects on GANTT or
similar charts and it takes a day to get those approvals, pepper
every chart with dozens of one-day "PM/PMO approval" tasks
during which project progress stands still.
Give the PMO everything he wants and follow his process to the
letter. Bury him under the weight of his own requirements.
Or, if by some inexplicable turn of events the PMO's approach
actually does bring order to the existing chaos, make your group
the one he holds up to the rest of the company as a shining example.
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