What is a Project Management Office (PMO)?
A Project Management Office (PMO) is an internal or external team or group that oversees Project Management initiatives and standards across an organisation. Every PMO is unique, they typically have control over resources, workloads, teams, reporting, and the Project Portfolio Management Process.
Is a Project Management Office a luxury or a necessity?
Not every company needs PMO and mainly depends on how many projects and programs the company is running. However, in today’s competitive business climate, the need for PMO has become a necessity rather than a luxury.
How can the Project Management Office support effective project management?
By boosting resource efficiency, cost efficiency and profitability, data efficiency, organisational learning and improvement, and organisational adaptation. A PMO can offer guidance on planning, scheduling, procurement, and all the execution and tracking of related activities.
What does the Project Management Office do?
PMO teams fulfil a range of functions on a day-to-day basis including:
- Developing Project Management methods, best practices, and standards.
- Encourage the use of those standards.
- Managing resources for projects.
- Reporting and preparing different types of analysis.
- Delivering training and mentoring project team members.
- Managing dependencies across multiple projects.
- Monitor and evaluate project performance to establish goals.
- Coordinating project-to-project communication.
How do you run a Project Management Office?
There is no single model that fits the PMO. That makes the trip more interesting!
Spending time to carefully define, design, and deliver the PMO, with the end goal in mind, will ensure that the best practice approach supports the organisational DNA, culture, and current portfolio of changes.
A PMO is an ever-evolving service that needs the right guidance and roadmap, similar to any other successful service in an organisation.
Does the PMO increase the chances of meeting company goals?
If one company is struggling to collaborate, feeling disorganised, or implementing a major change, PMO can help set and maintain organisational processes across the entire business. The ultimate goal of the PMO is to solve business problems and guide the company toward a specific, positive outcome. The PMO expands the scope from the delivery of individual projects to the delivery of value to the organisation. Having a PMO increases the probability of success of projects and their profitability. In addition, it generates new business opportunities by increasing customer satisfaction and creating an image of a more efficient organisation in its work.
How to establish a Project Management Office?
Setting up a PMO is a complicated and involved body of work, the duration of which can take anything from 6-24 months, depending on the scale. Aspira can offer different blends of services to a client in setting up a PMO.
- Aspira can be tasked with delivering the PMO and will provide consultants to do so.
- Aspira can provide the roadmap for PMO implementation and hand it over to the client for them to deliver.
- Aspira can provide the roadmap for PMO implementation and support the client in their implementation through dedicated mentoring.
Aspira are experts in PMO Delivery and Support, please contact the Advisory Team to book your PMO setup consultation today.
Damien Kearns - Head of Advisory
Damien is the Head and Principal Consultant for developing the Advisory line of business and leading the team for the delivery and execution of consultancy engagements. Advisory Services include PMO Audits, PMO Set up and Governance, Project Audits, Project Initiation, Project Maturity Assessment, Project Mentoring, Project Recovery and Project Scheduling.