Rebuilding Your PMO

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.

  Business Case   PMO   Strategy  

The global economy seems to be slowly recovering from the worst recession that many will have experienced in their working lives. There’s still a long way to go, and some countries, regions and industries will take longer than others. But projects are starting to be approved again and investments are being made. That means that PMOs that had to dramatically cut back during the last few years will be in a position to rebuild and emerge stronger than ever.

In this article, I want to look at how you can use this opportunity to improve your PMO--making it a more significant contributor to your organization than it was before the downturn.

What do you need?
I have never sat down with anyone who ran a PMO and heard them say, “My PMO is perfect, there’s nothing that I would like to change.” The problem is that change can be hard to implement; a PMO is a complex entity, and you need to keep things running smoothly while making any changes. But if you had to downsize your PMO, you now have an opportunity to implement those changes. In many cases, you almost have to--executive pressure to make the PMO leaner and meaner is almost guaranteed. To do that requires a structured, planned approach.

The temptation will be to post job descriptions and hire PMs and support staff as quickly as possible to support the new initiatives that are starting to ramp…

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