The PMO Communications Hub

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.

  Communications Management   Knowledge Management   Lessons Learned   PMO   Talent Management  

We all know that communications is the cornerstone of success on projects, and we all know that it is all too easy for communication breakdowns to occur. The best process in the world can’t prevent the overstressed and overworked PM from forgetting their weekly status report--or rushing through it without thinking (likely while muttering under their breath that no one reads it anyway).

I think that PMOs have a role to play here, and I’ve seen some very good PMO “communications hub” functions. However, I’ve also seen some truly atrocious project communications where the PMO seems at a loss to be able to assist. In this article, I’d like to look at a few ways that the PMO may be able to assist in building a communications model that brings consistency without burying the PM in “dashboard hell”.

PMO-based communications
I have no intention of suggesting that the PMO should be involved in every piece of project communications; that will simply result in delays, confusion and unnecessary complexity. There should be guidelines that are understood by all as to what type of communications should be provided by the PMO--and which should be provided by projects and communicated through the PMO. Anything not covered there should be exclusively the PM’s responsibility.

There should be two types of communications that …

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