Is Your PMO Being Left Behind?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  PMO   Strategy  

I was recently speaking with the head of a PMO in a relatively small, not-for-profit organization. The leadership had recognized the value of having a PMO, but didn’t have the money to invest in the latest software tools to help manage the portfolio of initiatives across the entire organization.

As a result, the PMO leader felt that his PMO was being left behind, that he and his small team weren’t able to facilitate the kind of organizational improvements that his colleagues in better funded, better resourced PMOs were.

He was looking for some ideas for how he could avoid being “left behind” compared to all the strategic, portfolio-centric PMOs that were becoming more common among other PMO leaders that he was speaking with.

It’s an understandable concern, and there are arguments to be made that not-for-profit environments are in greater need of some of these technological capabilities than commercial ventures—managing resources where a lot of those resources are external volunteers, for example. But I think that this PMO leader needs to take a slightly different perspective, even while working to optimize what he and his team can deliver.

I also think that similar approaches need to be taken by PMOs working in smaller commercial endeavors. While not-for-profit does present unique challenges, there are many PMO leaders operating …

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