Is your Project Management Office as green as it can be?

This is the first in a series of articles that will take you from project initiation to close out and test the greenality™ of your PMO, and by default, your project.  Greenality is the degree to which a project has considered environmental (green) factors that affect a project during the entire project life cycle.  It is critical for those with PMOs that they approach greenality from the overall viewpoint.  The PMO is where the “buck starts”.  There is power there to manage project management resources and project resources across the organization.  It is also a place where greenality coaching takes place to verify that all project managers are environmentally aware.  The PMO is the greenality policy making body and sets the standard for their project management community, larger organization, and their business in general.
Initiating a Project.

Have you, as a project manager, your PMO, and your larger organization adopted the 5 Assertions of EarthPM?  See below.

Is there are green commitment in your Project Charter template?  Project Managers should be putting a greenality statement in their Project Charter, identifying up front that they intend for their project to be carbon-neutral, or at least to acknowledge environmental impact(s) and set clearly-stated environmental objectives for the project.  An example would be, “I (we) the undersigned request that the project manager use all means necessary to insure that the project processes and product reduce the carbon footprint as much as possible.  If, however, it is not possible to reduce the carbon footprint on parts of the project or the product, I (we) hereby authorize the purchase of carbon offsets to be included in the project budget.  Additionally, I (we) request that environmental impacts and mitigation strategies be included in with the project’s risks.”  By including a statement like this in the Project Charter Template, indicates that the organization truly acknowledged its commitment to being as eco-friendly as possible.

Have you considered the full set of stakeholders – including those who will be effected by the PRODUCT of your project – during intitiation?  This is critical, whether your project is of an environmental nature or not.
In the next article in the series we will discuss greenality during project planning.

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