Project Management Office (PMO) - 2

Bird’s-View on Project Management Office

Project Management Office (PMO) - 1

A Project Management Office (PMO) is an organizational body or entity assigned various responsibilities related to the centralized and coordinated management of these projects under its domain. The responsibility of a PMO can range from providing project management support functions to actually being responsible for the direct management of the project.

The project supported or administered by the PMO may not be related, other than by being managed together. The specific form, function, and structure of a PMO are dependent upon the needs of the organization that it supports.

A PMO may be delegated the authority to act as an integral stakeholder and a key decision maker during the beginning of each project, to make recommendations, or to terminate project or take other actions as required to keep business objectives consistent. In addition, the PMO may be involved in the selection, management, and deployment of shared or dedicated project resources.

Primary function of a PMO is to support PMs in a variety of ways which may include, but not limited to:

• Managing shared resources across all project administrated by the PMO;

• Identifying and development project management methodology, best practices, and standards;

• Coaching, mentoring, training, and oversight;

• Monitoring compliance with project management standards, policies, procedures, and templates via project audits;

• Developing and managing project policies, procedures, templates, and other shared docs.

• Coordinating communicating across projects.

Difference between the role of PM and a PMO may include the following:

• PM focuses on the specified project objectives, while the PMO manager’s major program scope changes which may be seen as potential opportunities to better achieve business objectives.

• PM controls the assigned project resources to best meet project objectives while the PMO optimizes the use of shared organizational resources across all projects.

• The PM manages the constraints (scope, schedule, cost, and quality, etc.) of the individual projects while the PMO manages the methodologies, standards, overall risk/opportunity, and inter-dependencies among project at the enterprise level.

Determining need for a PMO in your esteemed organization:

Not all organizations require the structure and discipline of a PMO. Determining factors might be any combination of, but not limited to:

• Available budget,
• Number of concurrent projects,
• High percentage of failed projects,
• Repeated project management issues,
• Number of inexperienced project managers, and
• Need for centralized project monitoring and control.

PMO’s structured, lucid, and coherent methodology that enables senior management to increase the rate of benefits realization through:

• Reduce failed projects
• Deliver projects under budget
• Improve productivity
• Deliver projects ahead of schedule
• Increase cost savings

Aspects to consider when setting up a PMO in your organization:

Vision:

• Why are we setting up a PMO Office?
• What is our vision?

Maturity:

•  Are we a small or large organization?
•  What is our project maturity level?

Organizational Culture:  

• Do we want a consultative PMO or a centralized PMO Office?

Strategy:  

• Are we committed for the long term so that the benefits of Project Management Office can be realized?

Establishing a PMO that delivers real value to an organization is something which takes time and is best done incrementally, in stages.

Below is a list of some of the key assets a PMO can provide:

Industry Standards

A good PMO will ensure that the project management methodology used within the organization follows industry best practice, such as PMBOK or PRINCE2.

Templates

The PMO will provide standardized documents to all projects, such as Risk Logs and Issue Logs etc, freeing the project manager from creating these and allowing them to get on with the business of running their projects.

Metrics

Over time, PMO’s can establish objective metrics which provide an independent view as to how a project is progressing, provided in addition to the project manager’s status report.

Knowledge Base

The PMO can build, maintain, and share a knowledge base of lessons learned and best practice from previous projects. It can also be used to follow up that the actions identified in the lessons learned are actually actioned.

Process

The PMO can ensure that standardized ways of managing risks, planning schedules, and managing communications are in place. Essentially we want the entire business to be on the same page, and speaking the same language when it comes to projects.

Resource Pool

Some PMO’s maintain a resource pool of project managers. This is useful in obtaining project managers who are project management professionals, 100% dedicated to managing projects. This might be the right choice for you if you’ve identified that your projects are failing because your project managers are trying to fulfill more than one role, for example, business analysis and project management.

Tools

The PMO ensures and promotes the use of the same project management tools throughout the organization, rolling out new tools in a controlled manner to meet the needs of the organization.

Determining the Success Criteria for Your PMO

Determining the Project Management Office success criteria will depend on whether you are inheriting an existing PMO or establishing a new PMO.

If you inherit an operating PMO, review current success criteria with your PMO Sponsor. Obtain their feedback, suggestions, and recommendations for change. Make sure you understand the reasons for their recommendations and their view of whether the current PMO operations kept pace with organizational changes.

If you establish a new Project Management Office, remember to align the PMO success criteria, documented within the Project Management Office Charter, with the objectives of the PMO (also contained in the Charter) and the overall business objectives. Since the PMO Objectives will follow the S.M.A.R.T. formula, the Success Criteria must also follow the SMART formula.

The S.M.A.R.T. formula tells us that the objectives of your PMO, as well as the criteria to measure objective achievement, must be:

S for Specific

M for Measurable

A for Attainable

R for Realistic

T for Timely

A Project Management Office (PMO) is a centralized team striving to bring economies of repetition and standardization to projects within an organization. The key deliverables of the PMO are industry standards, templates, metrics, a knowledge base, processes, a resource pool, and tools. The real business driver for PMO’s is that through standardization they enable organizations to manage projects more consistently, with better visibility, whilst lowering overall project costs (if implemented well). 

Thanks to view my thoughts on PMO. I appreciate your valuable comment/suggestions. It will help me improve and circumvent mistake in future. 

I brought in people who understand what makes projects work, what makes project fail... If PMOs are not staffed well, they won’t understand this.

Why do some organizations see the value of PMOs? This is directly related to the project management maturity of its leaders, not just the size of the organization.

The main goal of the institute is to become more efficient in its use of all resources—people and financial... Additional benefits are to provide a greater level of transparency to the use of government and other grants by providing a clear selection process and up-to-date information.