PMO: Seeing Double

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

  PMO  

As we have discussed in previous columns, the role of the PMO in organizations can be a varied one. Slap a three-letter acronym on it, and call it done. The problems emerge when there is more than one entity within the same organization called a "PMO."

One recent organization I consulted with actually had PMOs that came in three different flavours: an organizational unit that served as champion of project management to the business, an IT-based unit that co-ordinated the IT projects and more units popping up in the business units that served as home to the project managers – or at least some of them. Which begs the question of who reports to whom, how each of these PMOs relate to each other, and how you ensure consistency of practice when consistency is appropriate? And who determines what is appropriate in the first place?

Even more challenging is when an initiative-based PMO (often a program management office) exists within an organization that also has an organizational PMO (a project management office, often prefixed with the modifier "corporate" or "enterprise"). Again, the question of the relationship between these entities becomes a critical one, especially if the permanent organization has overall reporting responsibilities for all projects. This is a challenge I've recently encountered in more than one customer in recent months. This column is intended to …

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