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Hidden Roles of a Project Support Office
John Sullivan is a working project manager who writes and speaks on project and career issues.
Two years after being hired to start and run a Project Support Office (PSO), I was asked to speak about my experiences. While preparing my talk I uncovered some “behind the scenes” roles the PSO plays. While none of these is a “starring role,” these four parts, when played well, can help a PSO contribute to a project’s success:
Broker
The universal item any project support office deals with is information. A successful PSO is an information broker, matching pieces of information to people or teams who need it. Success in brokering information comes by synthesizing and integrating pieces into a comprehensible whole. Don’t just create reports, read them. Don’t just call meetings, attend some. Invite yourself to some engineering meetings and design reviews. Find out who knows what and connect them with the other people and teams that need their information. This makes the PSO function as a catalyst, accelerating information flow and speeding the transformation of information into knowledge.
Translator
The PSO helps translate the larger direction of the company into action by aligning the project with corporate vision statements, divisional objectives and departmental mission statements. The best way to do this is to ask questions. When preparing the project charter ask, “How can the PSO help achieve success?” “What does the PSO need to do …
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