PMOs Must Self-Promote

Peter Taylor is the author of best-selling books on Productive Laziness, The Lazy Winner and The Lazy Project Manager and is a professional speaker. He is also the head of a global PMO for a billion-dollar software business.

  PMO   ProjectsAtWork  

Even the most capable project management offices are sometimes challenged in the areas of defining their value within the organization, and so a good PMO should market itself. This self-promotion should include addressing stakeholder perceptions and building awareness about the important working being done.

From creating visibility into the progress and costs of projects to supporting training to maintaining consistent, repeatable practices, PMOs are asked to do many things. But even the best PMOs are often challenged in the areas of defining their value within the organization, and so a good PMO should market itself. This internal promotion should include:

• Awareness of what work the PMO does
• Engagement with the widest stakeholder community
• Involvement of other departments
• Value demonstration to peer-level management and executive leadership
• ROI understanding
• Role definition
• Strategic connection

Perhaps most critically, this promotional effort is a matter of survival. Yes, no matter what great work is being led by the PMO, and what good achievements have already been made, if no one outside the PMO knows, then they won’t value the PMO.

Such promotion of the PMO can be considered under two headings: Reporting and Marketing.

Reporting is about satisfying the mantra “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”, and so the …

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