Don't Lose Sight of PMO Fundamentals

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  

For a long time, I have been advocating for the role of PMOs to become more business-focused. And now, that’s starting to happen.

I can’t take any of the credit. After saying that it was needed for close to two decades, I’m pretty sure that no one was listening to me! But it’s happening now, and that’s a good thing as PMOs are finally in a position to drive more value into the business. So, what I am going to say next might surprise you.

As PMOs evolve, organizations must ensure that the fundamentals that they were previously accountable for aren’t left behind. That’s the process, governance, reporting, and related activities that were the hub of many PMOs’ activity.

In a lot of cases, these elements of PMO work are why those PMOs have a bad reputation. Project managers don’t like the process oversight and the rigid enforcement of governance rules without consideration of the challenges that each project faces.

Stakeholders value reporting, but don’t see merit in the work involved in consolidating information into a portfolio summary with no added analysis compared to team sourced content. And no one understands why it takes a dedicated function like the PMO to address these issues.

In truth, it doesn’t take that dedicated function, and that’s why there is so much potential value in the …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.