By Jiri Porubsky, MAPM | Founder, Kampa Advisors Ltd
It began, as most troubled projects do, not with a failure — but with a silence.
The documents were immaculate.
The Gantt chart was crisp.
The scope? Generous. Ambitious. Gloriously undefined.
The project had many sponsors.
Too many.
Each one speaking of transformation, efficiency, and value… but none saying quite the same thing.
The legacy systems resisted.
Each held together by patches, workarounds, and fear.
And the delivery team — skilled, but hesitant — looked to the PMO not for instructions, but for clarity.
The Real Enemy: Ambiguity
In truth, the enemy wasn’t scope creep or technical risk.
It was the fog:
- Unspoken assumptions
- Political turf lines hidden beneath governance charts
- Power mislabelled as interest, and interest confused with noise
There was no villain.
Only confusion.
And confusion, left unchecked, kills momentum.
The First Move: A Narrative Blade
So the PMO did not start with a status tracker.
Or a process map.
Instead, they told a story:
- Who this project was really for
- Why it was happening now, not next year
- What success would look like from the user’s eyes
They called it a “narrative alignment session.”
The steering board called it a revelation.
And in that moment, the fog began to lift.
Tactical Insight
To cut through ambiguity in initiation:
- Build a shared project narrative early. Not a slide deck. A story.
- Anchor it in real-world impact — not just outputs.
- Validate it with sponsors individually. If they tell different stories, you have work to do.
- Publish it like a charter. Refer back to it when confusion returns. It will.
In every major project, the first act is not execution.
It’s alignment.
And for the PMO Swordsman, that’s where the real campaign begins.
