ABSTRACT
The IT group decided to form an IT Project Office, and it hired an experienced manager from a major Fortune 500 Company, whose expertise was in forming and maturing Program Management Office (PMO)-type organizations. Before that point, each IT Applications Development, Systems, and Infrastructure Group had planned and executed projects within their own groups with limited collaboration across groups. A major consulting firm had facilitated the merger of the two energy companies, and management of the merged company strongly recommended that the IT group use the consulting firm as a guide in forming Information Technology Project Office (ITPO). Peter Senge has written extensively about organizational dynamics and behavior and systems archetypes identifiable from events and patterns of behavior. The particular systems archetype described earlier is called accidental adversaries, because it explains how groups of people who ought to be in partnership with each other, and who want to be in partnership with each other, end up bitterly opposed.
