2. What is a PMO?
A PMO is an “office” — either physical or virtual — staffed
by project management professionals who serve their
organization’s project management needs.
It serves as an organizational center for project
management excellence.
3. Where does the PMO exist?
The PMO may exist in one of three levels:
Level 1: The project control office
A Level 1 PMO typically manages large, complex single projects that often require
multiple schedules that need to be integrated into an overall program schedule.
Level 2: Business unit project management office
A Level 2 PMO integrates multiple projects of varying sizes within a business unit
from small, short-term initiatives to multi-month or multi-year initiatives that require
dozens of resources and complex integration of technologies.
Level 3: Enterprise project management office
A Level 3 PMO serves as a repository for the standards, processes, and
methodologies that improve project performance across the enterprise. It also
serves to mitigate conflicts in the competition for resources. It allows the
organization to manage its entire collection of projects as one or more interrelated
portfolios so executive management can get the big picture of all project activity
across the enterprise from a central source. A Level 3 PMO infuses a project
management culture throughout the organization
4. Steps to Deploy a PMO
Assess the current state
Establish short- and long-term objectives
Move forward with some rapid successes
5. Assess the Current State
• What is the maturity of your program/project management
practices?
• Of strategy management practices?
• Are there qualified personnel in house to carry out the
implementation, or will you need outside assistance?
• What cultural barriers will need to be overcome?
Remember, deploying a PMO is an investment and a project — it should be
subjected to the same planning, risk identification, and benefits analysis as
everything else in your portfolio
6. Objectives
• A short-term objective might be to inventory all projects.
• A long-term objective might be to integrate cost and
resource management across the enterprise.
7. Immediate Successes
This will do more than anything to sway the organizational culture toward the
new way of doing business.
Recovering troubled initiatives
Training project teams
Eliminating duplication of effort via the portfolio inventory
8. Functions and Roles of the PMO
There are seven primary components to any PMO, which grow in capability and
complexity as the PMO takes on more strategic responsibilities.
Processes, Standards and Methodologies
A primary role is as developer and maintainer of the processes and methodologies pertaining to the
management of projects. It serves as a central library for these standards (including templates, forms,
checklists), and the expert on their deployment. The PMO also incorporates lessons learned on
projects nearing completion into the project management methodology.
Project Managers
The PMO takes charge of the development of professional project managers. In the fully deployed
PMO, project managers actually report to the PMO and are deployed to projects either as full-time
managers or on a part-time basis.
Training/Professional Development
The PMO is the center of focus for project manager and team training and development. It identifies
competencies needed by high-performance project managers and for executive awareness and team
member participation.
Software Tools
The PMO centralizes the establishment and maintenance of project-related software tools, maintains
project management software standards, and acquires project management software and supporting
software. The project support group identifies software, facilitates or performs the integration and use
of software, and maintains and monitors its performance.
9. Functions and Roles of the PMO
Project Support
In a fully staffed PMO, the project support group is responsible for estimating and budgeting, including cost
estimating and capital estimating. They develop plans and schedules and provide status updates, pulling
data from time collection, timesheets, and the financial system to update the status against the plan. They
perform variance analysis, and are also critical to change control. Project support also keepings a project
repository, maintains issues tracking and handles progress reports.
Mentoring and Coaching
When another department in the enterprise wants to manage a project themselves, the PMO can provide
expert assistance in the form of mentoring and coaching for the staff involved. This also provides an audit
function for existing projects to determine how effectively the project management process is being utilized
within the organization.
Portfolio Management
As a central clearinghouse for project information, the Strategic Project Office is the owner of the portfolio
management process, coordinating between project level and portfolio level to make sure that decision
makers have the best information in the most accessible formats. The investment decisions reflected in the
portfolio form the blueprint for the work carried out by the project managers and teams within (or mentored
by) the SPO
10. How PMO Demonstrates Value
PMO maturity is what makes a difference to the organization. As PMOs
become more mature, organizational success metrics improve.
Organizations with PMOs show significant improvement at each Level
of PMO maturity
• 6.2% overall performance improvement from PMO Level 1 to Level 2
• 14.6% overall performance improvement from PMO Level 2 to Level 3
• 10.5% overall performance improvement from PMO Level 3 to Level 4
11. How PMO Demonstrates Value
PMO maturity is what makes a difference to the organization. As PMOs
become more mature, organizational success metrics improve.
As PMOs mature, they are
significantly better at meeting
PMOs at high-performing critical success factors, High-performing organizations
organizations are 66% more including having effective are more likely to have an
mature than at low performing sponsorship, accountability, enterprise PMO
organizations competent staff, quality
leadership, and demonstrated
value
High-performing organizations
High-performing organizations
High-performing organizations have larger PMOs and rely on
evaluate project manager and
outsource 135% more often more specialized roles,
team competency significantly
than low performing including mentors, team leads,
more often than low performing
organizations planners, controllers and
organizations
relationship managers
