Portfolio, Program, and Project Management Offices: The Concept and The Scale

  Governance   PMO   Program Management   Knowledge Shelf  

First  of all, not everything can be called a PMO. And that’s because not everything is a project. There are portfolios, programs, and projects. Therefore let’s agree on some acronyms:

• PfMO for Portfolio Management Office
• PgMO for Program Management Office
• PMO for Project Management Office

In the market, you hear different labels as well: Support Office, Back Office, Business Intelligence Center, Center of Excellence, and Project Office.

In this white paper we will provide a scale to help resolve this confusion.

The Functions

Whether it is a portfolio, program, or project, each has a set of functions based on both best practices and standards. These functions have different effects and we will group them in four different categories.

First, it is important to highlight that:

• The same function can overlap between portfolio, program, and project, but it will have a different flavor in each space. For example, authorizing change could be more scope at a project level, but a different architecture in a program or a different product on a portfolio level.
•  The following categories represent the effect they have on delivery more than the nature of the functions involved.

A. Strategic and directive: This applies when the office can define, modify, or enforce strategic decisions, proactively and …

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