What's It Worth?: Measuring the PMO

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Estimating   Governance   PMO   Strategy  

At the end of the day, the real measure of a PMO’s effectiveness is the degree to which it improves the speed, cost and consistency of project success.  Without improving these components of a project, the PMO merely adds an additional level of cost and bureaucracy to the process.

While many see the PMO as a pure governance play, its true worth is in its ability to accelerate the success of projects.  To do this the PMO needs the support of the organization’s leadership and project managers (PMs).  This support is best sustained by the PMO providing the leverage PMs need to stay focused on moving projects forward while complying to mature and prudent project processes and protocols.  For the PMO to substantially contribute to the acceleration and successful completion of projects it needs to excel at the following:

• Streamlining compliance processes and paperwork to the bare minimum needed to insure proper oversight of project assessment, approval, conduct and deployment
• Maintaining knowledge-based repositories consisting of all past projects (documentation, history, scorecards, etc.) so PMs can quickly research and learn from other PM’s experiences
• Providing expert guidance for PMs, leveraging their ability to lead effectively
• Maintaining estimating tools and standards allowing PMs to rapidly compile project …

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