The Project management Office is the section or group that defines and maintains the principles and standards for the processes associated with Project management in an organization. In today’s complex project environments, organizations always seek methods to reduce costs and improve productivity.

The PMO helps to establish a centralized management structure for many projects on the whole. The PMO gives oversight for the overall management and continuous improvement for the organization processes. Investing in a PMO can generally help to provide common planning and reporting processes and resolve conflicts and constraints within an organization.

 

The first step for establishing a PMO is to determine the requirements of the organization. The Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Portfolio management framework breaks down the Project, Program and Portfolio into 12 process groups with 92 processes.

 

These processes speak about the management of the knowledge areas. First, an end to end flexible project management process has to be defined with basic tools for the planning and reporting stages. Once best practices to reduce business risk and optimize resources are in place, the PMO can go beyond Project Management to Program Management and Portfolio Management.

 

In order to reduce business risk, PMO offices need to establish flexible processes that provide the right balance between rigor and overhead. They should facilitate the availability of tools to plan, manage and track all project activities over the company’s intranet.

 

They should provide assistance, coaching, mentoring of problem solving techniques by means of their expertise.

In order to optimize resources, PMO need to use program level visibility to identify and lighten resource controversy issues. They should update the stakeholders about shared responsibilities and establish communications programs to keep them informed and committed to the success of the program.

 

In order to contribute to business growth, PMO can help by enlarging their scope from identifying strategic initiatives all the way through benefits realization. They can aid senior management to focus appropriately on strategic issues. They should implement portfolio management tools with high visibility and analysis that aid decision making. They also need to capture and make available best practices and lessons learned.

 

For the PMO on its staring stage to contribute tangible value, it is necessary to determine the maturity level of the organization. The PMO should set up a measurement plan that describes key metrics for ascertaining the organization’s progress against an established baseline.

 

To make the most impact the PMO must be supported from the top management hierarchy to gain authority to implement and enforce practices. The PMO should be supported by adequate technology to automate and enforce the processes.

 

For example a simple project funding request can be set through an automatic workflow to get the appropriate approvals at all levels. There are PPM software available that can enable organizations to view projects with a portfolio view making it easier to manage projects and resources.

 

The PMO staff and Project Managers should use other relevant quality measures to measure a project’s success in addition to giving importance to schedule and budget and customer requirements being met. The PMO can use competency evaluation tools to ensure right people are selected based on their skills and experiences for the project’s team. Risk assessment tools should also be appropriately used to identify and assess risks on projects.

 

The PMO should act more as a servicing agency adding value to business instead of performing as information consolidators and distributors. An on-going communication should exist both within the PMO and with the rest of the organization to be assured of executive support and also for the PMO to serve as an early warning system. Effective planning in the PMO creation stage itself ensures success right from start. PMO’s should train, lead and mentor by example.

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