As an IT department, you probably have a project office stuffed full of PMO staff. PM’s, admins, people who are in specialist roles, like those in charge of laughing at timesheets.
They spend most of their time bored to tears, or squabbling over methodologies, denouncing agile, whilst attempting to mate it with waterfall approaches to produce mutant offspring, and hiding in plain sight.
They also have a genetic compunction to invest heavily in project management software. Preferably this should be unheard of, unwieldy, unsuitable for use on any agile, waterfall, or mutant hybrid approach, unreliable, and, perhaps most importantly, never used.
Up until recently this compunction could be realised by purchasing boxed software and then carefully placing it upon a shelf from where it could be viewed in its shrink-wrapped glory. Occasionally it could be dusted. As upgrades are purchased at expense, the box containing the previous version would then be usurped, and the old version hidden in a cupboard to mature for a minimum of 5 years before it was ready to be placed lovingly in a skip with full honours.
If needs be, like anyone asked questions about why it was sat there, it could be hastily installed, and half-hearted training done, before it was then possible to let it fall into disuse and be ignored once more. The breaking of the shrink-wrap was almost unforgivable though.
Meanwhile all the project managers would be happily knocking out plans in Excel, and regularly transposing these into Powerpoint, so that important people could ignore them.
Sadly, with the advent of Software As A Service, an important aspect is now missing from this approach.
One key aspect: The dusty shrink-wrapped box which serves as a beacon of thrilling secret shame at money wasted, no longer appears.
To address this, vendors are rushing to implement OAAS: Ornament As A Service.
In the shining future, PMO staff will be able to view a stylised representation of the shrink-wrapped totem, available via a portal, to be stared at for as long as they keep paying.
The future is now. Never let it be said that your unused software is “Neither use nor ornament”.