Best Practices for Project Management Office (PMO)

 

As organizations grow, they create different organizations to manage relevant practices.

A project management office (PMO) is an organization created to manage processes, practices, tools, and other activities related to project management in an organization.

This office (team) defines and maintains project management standards in the organization.


Typically, the management of an organization appoints a group of project management experts to manage the project management office.

The organization is looking for qualifications such as PMI certifications and has extensive experience in managing large projects when selecting staff for the project management office.

Building a Project Management Office

Due to the complexity of existing projects, the project management function needs to be a mature and streamlined practice.

Therefore, organizations are looking for more efficient ways to manage projects in order to maximize profits. To do this, organizations are paying attention to optimizing processes, increasing productivity and building results.

Because project management functions involve many parameters (such as people, technology, communication, and resources), managing a project management function by senior management can be risky.

Thus, the project management office is the ideal solution for building and maintaining project management practices as a capable function of the organization.

The implementation of the project management office is the same as any other organizational change project. Therefore, a strong and rigid methodology with extensive experience is applied to it.

There are a number of key steps involved in setting up a project management office, and the PMBOK (Project Management Knowledge Set) can be a great guide for this purpose.

Is it overhead?

Some traditional organizations view the project management office as an overhead. This is mainly due to the fact that the organization is quite small, where there is no obvious need for a project management office.

In such organizations, general management may regulate project management practices. For other organizations where there are large projects, the project management office is much more than an overhead.

Currently, the global economy is in recession. Therefore, many companies are paying attention to cost reduction in order to stay in the corporate environment.

Among the ways to do this, staff reductions and department closures have become two popular options. In such cases, the project management office becomes an easy casualty, as it does not add any figure to the company's totals.

Therefore, it has become a challenge for project management offices to justify their work to senior management.

Benefits of PMO

Project management is one of the key functions of an organization. Consequently, refining the processes associated with project management can bring great benefits to the final result of the organization.

This is exactly what a successful project management office does.

Why doesn't the PMO work?

According to historical statistics, only one-third of project management offices are operating, and the rest are not working as expected.

This is one of the main challenges that senior management faces when deciding to set up a project management office for an organization. Management has questioned the success of the project management office since the beginning.

One of the main reasons for the failure of the project management office is the lack of support from management. In most cases, executive management lacks knowledge of how to maintain and manage a project management office.

Second, the inability of the project management office causes disruptions. This is primarily due to the people and resources assigned to the project management office.

Conclusion

The Project Management Office is one of the divisions that will ultimately add value to large organizations. A project management office can be overwhelming for smaller organizations, and such an institution can end in failure.

A successful project management office can increase the productivity of project teams and significantly reduce costs. In addition, it can make an organization a more mature and capable organization.