Program Management Office (PMO) > Developing the PMO

From the Saudi Arabian MOI NIC
The history and culture of the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia posed unique challenges to the Ministry of Interior’s PMO. Like Harris Corporation, they understood the four reasons why many organizations fail to transform their Project Management cultures, and avoided these pitfalls working with OPM Experts LLC. But as a counterpoint to Harris, the NIC’s case shows how the culture can be the driver of process deployment.

Does your PMO Produce Multiple Obstacles for your project or Promote Many Opportunities for success? PMOs often get a bad reputation on agile teams, but it need not be that way--they can also add tremendous support and be a great help.

While working for a small firm, a new PM was asked to go to a major company to help them integrate their IT PMOs...leading to the worst three months of his career. As his two-part article concludes, we find out if if there was truly a light at the end of the tunnel--or just a train coming the other way.

PMOs: A panacea for some, a disaster for others. If like many others you anticipate a bad ending, you've come to the right place. Want some sure-fire approaches for disaster? Here are some tips on killing your PMO. (Optimists can go ahead and do the opposite...)

The head of the PMO has a significant responsibility to the project managers to act as career coaches and mentors. Are you taking that role seriously?

There are many ways you can poison your PMO and ensure that it doesn’t see tomorrow’s sunrise. In our last article, we looked at some leading PMO killers such as failing to identify an identity, ignoring your stakeholders and making things complicated. In the conclusion of this two-part series, we look at five additional deadly deeds.

When it comes to standardizing project management practices, PMOs are essential. If your organization doesn’t have a PMO, here are some ways to approach the concept. (And even if you do have a PMO, they will serve as important reminders!)

With an unprecedented 96 percent project success rate, Dell Services’ Healthcare and Life Sciences team wins the 2011 Project Management Office of the Year award.

Welcome to the PMO! Does your Program Management Office have a plan for helping new project managers? More than any other function, the PMO varies hugely from one organization to the next--and even from one division to the next. That means that there will always be a ramp-up period for anyone entering as a project manager--and yet many PMOs make no allowance for this.

Based on the best practices of winners and finalist from PM Solutions’ annual PMO of the Year award, a new book offers tips, insights and checklists for people management, performance measurement, strategic alignment, organization design and more.

We seem to be moving from the “every PMO is different” model to the “PMOs fit into one of several types” model. However, since the heady days of Y2K the world has changed a lot--and created a lot of opportunities for PMOs to reinvent themselves and create a new model. This writer may be a power-crazed egomaniac, but he thinks PMOs can run the organization (if not the world).

As we enter 2011, it's time for a refresher--it's the perfect time to explore the cross section of views and perspectives about PMOs. It's the perfect time to see what others are thinking regarding the state of PMOs, and this article will focus on starting a PMO, avoiding PMO failure, trends and the future of the PMO.

Trying to convince executives to implement a best-practice methodology is a recipe for failure when establishing a program or portfolio management office. Better to cultivate a PMO identity based on a thorough analysis of what executives really want. Here are some techniques to get started.

Do PMOs have value? Arguably, yes. At least...sometimes. According to the results of recent research, the presence of a PMO was often a contributor to the attainment of organizational value. What was of particular concern, however, was the actual role of the PMO within the organization. Two broad types emerged within the research; find out what they are inside...

When you look at the benefits of a PMO--lower costs, more efficiency, higher success rates--you may start looking for reasons why your company hasn't implemented one. Here's a secret: There are no good reasons, only myths--and here's how you can get around them.

Many PMOs are struggling to survive the cost-cutting knife, facing staff reductions and increased workloads. It is during these periods of adversity that PMO leaders must take steps to discard the PMO’s image as a cost center and recast itself into a profit center.

One of the unsung PMO functions is managing risk. There are a lot of aspects of risk management where the PMO can provide tangible support to project managers in their endeavors. In this article, we explore some of that support in terms of identification, analysis and response.

Before PMO directors pursue ISO 9001 certification, it is important to understand what it constitutes and how it can benefit PMOs. For some, the certification can be a way to increase performance and staff confidence. For others, it can be cost-prohibitive and add little value.

How many people in your organization know what the PMO actually does? Here, we look at the work that the PMO can do to help a key group of people understand how the PMO operates: project stakeholders.

This writer has seen some truly atrocious project communications where the PMO seems at a loss to be able to assist. In this article, he looks at a few ways that the PMO may be able to assist in building a communications model that brings consistency without burying the PM in “dashboard hell”.

What does your project management office need to do to ensure that it's serving your organization? What makes it effective? In this writer's professional experience, five primary factors greatly influence the ultimate success of the PMO.

At Central Arizona Project, the IT department had 89 projects with significant resource management challenges. Although it began with all of these projects behind schedule, over budget and with low quality, it corrected these problems with OPM3. This story is about CAP’s Information Technology department and its journey of project management improvement through PMI's OPM3 assessment model.

Management consultants are being called on to help establish project management offices that are simply not equipped to succeed after they leave. Here are three things they’re doing wrong.

How can you ensure that your PMO is as strong as it can be as the economy recovers? In this article, we look at how you can use this opportunity to improve your PMO--making it a more significant contributor to your organization than it was before the downturn.

It's becoming more common for different types of PMOs to emerge in the same organization, and the drivers of having multiple PMOs appear to be based on four key factors.

Establishing a program management office is a project in Itself. And like all projects, you need a charter that presents a clear and measurable purpose, scope, schedule, quality, budget, risks and critical success factors. Here are guidelines for creating a charter for your PMO project.

New benchmark study on project management offices shows consistent, two-year trend in delivering quantifiable value, with upwards of $400,000 in savings per project.

From Harris Corporation
Harris Corporation offers compelling insights into the impacts that process can have on culture and vice versa. This organization understood the four reasons why many organizations fail to transform their Project Management cultures, and avoided these pitfalls with their PMO working with OPM Experts LLC.

As you promise to drop 20 pounds, exercise three days a week and obtain a better work/life balance, don’t forget to add a few project management best practices to your resolutions.

A project management office can operate on a continuum, from providing project management support functions in the form of training, software, standardized policies and procedures to actual direct management and responsibility for achieving the project objectives. Here, we look at some of the key responsibilities and features of a typical PMO.

This column continues a multi-part series that addresses the practical steps and considerations in setting up a PMO in today's organizations.

As businesses enter the "new normal" era of economic uncertainty, program and portfolio management offices that remain tactically and administratively-focused will struggle. Successful PMOs in 2012 will move towards a strageic, holistic view that embraces agile methods and increases visibility for executives.

As a PMO, do you have a view on project manager certification? When people join the PMO from other areas of an organization, there is often an expectation that they will follow a certification path. So what are the options, and what should you be thinking about in determining whether your PMO should require certification?

Applying 30 years of domestic and international experience in IT from both the customer and provider side, Mark Perry has spent the past decade focused on developing and supporting project management offices. Here, the founder of BOT International and director of PMO Services for gantthead shares his perspective on PMOs and Scrum.

A new global survey indicates disparities in the measurement and effectiveness of PMOs, leaving their value a great unknown.

Too many PMOs are not yielding demonstrable positive financial results, often due to limitations outside of their control. Here are two common problem scenarios that can be fixed by changing the way in which the PMO is chartered, operates and is perceived within the business.

Organizations do a lot to implement what is viewed as project management. But do organizations have an organizational project management capability? To understand whether we do or not, we have to understand what this actually means, explore where organizations are today and evaluate how close we actually are to the attainment of this goal.

In today’s economy, businesses must continuously improve processes and the PMO needs to continue to add value by maturing with the business. How do you know that your PMO and project management processes are effective? Who sets the standards and how do you compare your PMO to those standards? As our look at the Central Arizona Project case study continues, we see how OPM3 stepped in to help.

In the next few years the PMO is going to evolve considerably as EPMOs become the new norm. The concept of an EPMO is gathering support in a lot of different environments, and the recent economic challenges have only accelerated the process. In this article, we look at what that might mean for traditional PMOs and identify some of the things that you can do for the arrival of an EPMO in your organization.

Why do PMOs have such a high failure rate? It's time to take a look at the top 10 PMO worst practices--and advice on how to avoid them.

Many companies struggle with justifying the need to maintain a project management office after it is established. But the onus is on the PMO itself. Here are five key performance indicators that PMOs should use to measure effectiveness and ensure alignment with the needs of the organization.

Interviewing candidates for a PMO position is different than hiring for a project manager position. The following interview questions are just a few that can be used to staff PMOs at various levels in an organization, and should be tailored according to the specific PMO’s form and function.